Fruit snack
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A Fruit snack is a processed fruit that eats like traditional snack food. It can be fried, frozen, or dried and may be called Fruit Leather, Dried Fruit Pieces or the commonly known "Fruit Snack".
Most of the fruit snacks are merely sun or air dried. This is like laying out the pieces of fruit in the sun to have the moist vaporize from the fruit. Air dried gets almost the similar result, which is done by blowing hot air over the fruit in some sort of an oven; this is most like a Fruit Leather.
More and more fruits are being fried in socalled vacuum fryers. The use of a vacuum in the frying process causes the processed food (fruit) not to take in as much fat as traditional frying. This makes the processed food less bad.
Other ways of processing a fruit is by freeze drying. This helps to retain the good of the fruit while drying. THis process also makes use of vacuum. The fruit retains it cell structure which causes it to be crisp. Freeze drying is often used for astronaut food. Most of the nutritional values maintain in the residu of the processed food, but at a lower weight and/or volume.
The Fruit Snack most familiar to consumers are commercial products produced by combining fruit juices and fruit purees with colors and flavors. They may contain other ingredients including starches, gelatin, sugar and corn syrups. Typically they contain between 15 -20% moisture to give the product a desirable soft chewy texture. Welch's® Fruit Snacks, manufactured under license by by The Promotion In Motion Companies, Inc, most closly resemble this type.
There are also fruit snacks that are processed snack food made from frozen gelatin, and fruit which can consist of grape, lemon, orange and cherry. Specific brands of fruit snacks include Frispy, Majans BHUJA Mix, CLIF Kid Organic Twisted Fruit, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Roll-Ups, Joray Fruit Rolls, CUB Foods. Some fruit snacks may also have a liquid filled center and are known as Fruit Gushers.
Often Fruit snacks are thought of as a healthy snack. But not all of the fruit snacks are in reality healthy. They are often processed in such a way that most of its original nutritional values have declined. There is only one that is almost similar to the original fruit and that is freeze dried fruit.
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