Let fruit be fruit -- not candy

Eat more fruits and vegetables! We all know we should do it. Food companies, mindful of the fact that most of us would prefer to eat candy, sometimes seem bent on turning fruit into just that.

Today --in just the latest of many similar announcements -- we received a release about "a delicious, natural line of wholesome freeze-dried fruit snacks that are "made with only the finest freeze-dried apples and strawberries – with just a hint of pure, natural sugar." (Added sugar seems close to achieving sainthood status these days.) We checked out the product, FruitziO. Each serving comes in a resealable bag -- which seems unnecessary, given that the entire snack is 25 grams (less than 1 ounce) in weight. That 25-gram serving contains 100 calories and 19 grams of sugar (you can't tell how many of those are added). You get 2 grams of dietary fiber.

By comparison, a medium sized apple, at about 180 grams -- more than seven times the bulk of the snack -- is also 100 calories, according to the USDA. It contains twice as much fiber as the snack and the same tally of sugars, none of which are added. The snack contains more vitamin C than the apple -- 58% of a person's recommended Daily Value compared with the 14% listed for an apple.

Freeze-drying and concentrating fruit products seem to sidestep many of the benefits of eating fruit. We're are not talking missions to Mars, here, where every last ounce of weight adds a kajillion dollars to NASA's budget. The good thing about the apple, in addition to the fiber, is: 1) the time  it takes to eat it, 2) the other things we don't eat when we're eating it, and 3) the satiating power that comes from its bulk and 4) the lack of density of calories.

Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutrition at Penn State, wrote a whole book (Volumetrics) about the influence of calorie density on how many calories we eat. Right near the beginning of the book she notes that 1/4 cup raisins contains the same number of calories as two cups of grapes. "Which," she asks (and we sense she asks this rhetorically), "is likely to fill you up more?"

How many freeze-dried snacks could we snarf down -- feeling ever-so-virtuous all the time we were doing it, because, after all, we are eating fruit -- in the same time it takes to crunch through an apple? 

Rosie Mestel 

Photo Credit: Elaine Thompson // AP

Comments

[Hemi Weingarten (Fooducate)]

Great commentary Rosie.

I think the goal of the fruit-snack category companies is to show off their products as healthier when compared to candy, not fruit.
For some consumers, real fruit is "too messy" when on the go (for example: apples can get bruised and start to brown; taking a bite, the nectar spills over onto your chin and blouse; hands get sticky; where to stash the core once you're done?).
Bite size snacks in a plastic bag are so much more "sanitary".

Go figure.

[Snack-Girl]

I was sent these freeze dried snacks to review and I wasn't sure what to do with them. I usually keep my website very positive - so I didn't want to shred them. Thank you for writing a very clear and informative piece on the type of food this is - a fun treat - NOT a nutritious snack.
Snack-Girl
http://www.snack-girl.com/

[Mark Vaughan]

The word 'fruit' should be removed from the product or the word 'candy' added if added sugars are used. If even they aren't, each stage of processing a food tends to be about increasing the flavor and reducing the bulk. I love processed food, don't get me wrong, and I am not fooled into thinking these products are healthy, because they aren't, but many people are. I recently did an entry on those 'fruit snacks' that are really candy (http://youarenotafitperson.com/2010/01/13/to-illustrate-a-point/) and I was stunned by the comments I saw online from parents who were happy to give their kids these 'healthy' snacks... I have no problem with candy and processed foods, just stop tricking people into thinking unhealthy choices are healthy. That in itself is plain wrong.

[Yehppael]

My sixth grade biology teacher, said this (15 years ago), each time you process fruits or vegetables, either boil or just drying them, they loose more than freshness. Good health and living? Ask people that live most of their lives in the country side and then move to the city to tell you the difference.