Fruit Snack

A fruit snack is processed fruit eaten as a snack food. It can be deposited, gummied, freeze dried, or air dried and may be called Fruit Leather, Fruit YoYos, Fruit Bars, Freeze Dried Fruit, or most commonly, are simply known as "fruit snacks".

Many companies sell fruit snacks. A few notable ones are: Welch's, Kelloggs, Betty Crockers, etc...

Most of the fruit snacks are deposited after blending a variety of ingredients, while many are merely sun or air dried. This is like laying out the pieces of fruit in the sun to have the moisture vaporize from the fruit. Air dried gets almost the similar result, which is accomplished 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 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 unhealthy. Freeze drying is another method of drying the fruit. 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 residue of the processed food, but at a lower weight and/or volume.