Prune Juice Manufacuring!?

Question

Plums are dried to make prunes, then the prunes are extracted with water to make prune juice; why don't they just squeeze the plums directly?

Is there some kind of chemical change caused by drying &
reconstituting?

Note: please, this is serious; don't just reply "because then they would have to call it plum juice"!

Thanks in advance for your help in this pressing matter.

Answer 1

An interesting question. I had to look this up:
Raw Materials

The basic ingredients for making prune juice are water and prunes. Prunes are the dried fruit of the prune plum. In California, most of the prunes are of the La Petite D'Agen variety, a prune plum native of Southwest France.

The Basic Prune Juice Manufacturing Process

1. The prunes are washed and placed in a cooking tank along with the appropriate quantity of water.

2. The contents of the cook tank are then heated and stirred until the prunes mostly dissolve and the sugars go into the water to make juice. This can take from several hours to as much as a half a day (12 hours).

3. If viscosity reduction is required, enzyme is added at this point.

4. The juice is then strained or filtered to remove the pits and the un-dissolved solids.

5. The finished juice is then canned, bottled or made into prune juice concentrate.

6. For canning and bottling, the process is a hot fill and hold at 190°F.

Additional comments: The drying process apparently concentrates the sugars. FYI: the German word for plum is Pflaume, for prune plum it is Schwetzge, but pardon my spelling.