The so-called kiwi fruit chips, cherry tomatoes chips, peach slices, apricot slices, apple slices, sugar-coated hawthorn, honey jujube etc. on the market are all considered as preserved fruits instead of dried fruits. If they were made directly into dried fruits, they wouldn't be that sweet. Sweet potato chips, winter melon strips, orange peel, etc. can also be made into preserved fruits after being soaked in sugar. Since many fruits change color after cooking, maintaining a beautiful color is a great challenge in making preserved fruits. In order to prevent the preserved fruits of apples, pears, and peaches from turning brown, sulfur dioxide has been used for fumigation since ancient times. The situation of excessive sulfur dioxide was extremely serious in the past. I remember when I led students in food chemistry experiments between 92-95, one of the projects was to measure the sulfur dioxide content in preserved fruits. Almost every sample was over the standard limit, with one sample's residual amount being 1000 times the standard! Fortunately, due to people's lower living standards in the past, they only ate a few pieces occasionally, so it didn't cause any serious consequences. However, with the increasingly strict supervision by the state, the situation of serious excess has become rare now.
As for candied fruits, they are more complex than preserved fruits. They not only add sugar, but also acid, salt, and other flavor ingredients. In order to reduce costs and enhance flavor, candied fruits often add various sweeteners to reduce the amount of white sugar, and use enhancers like ethyl maltol, as well as some fruit flavors. Because of the reduced sugar, and sweeteners have no preservative effect, preservatives are usually added. Apart from minerals and fiber, the nutritional value of candied fruits is obviously lower than that of fresh fruits.