Freeze-dried fruit: how it differs from dried fruit

Fruit, minus the water

The fruit is frozen, then the ice is drawn off as vapour under vacuum. It isn’t a cold process from start to finish: the last stage warms the fruit to dry out the water that never froze, and for fruit that may mean 60–70 °C.¹ What comes out is far drier than ordinary dried fruit, which keeps a fifth to a third of its weight as water,²⁵ and that difference is the whole texture: dried fruit bends and chews, freeze-dried fruit snaps.

The shape survives too. Ice holds the structure in place while it leaves, so the fruit barely shrinks (sliced strawberries lost 2% of their volume in one study) and comes out porous, light for its size.³

Water in fresh cherimoya⁴

76.9%

Water in fresh apple⁴

85.7%

Water left after freeze-drying¹

<5%

How much fruit went into a bag

Take the water out of a fruit that’s three-quarters water and the weight falls by a factor of four or five. Our arithmetic, at 3% water left in the dry fruit: one gram of freeze-dried cherimoya was 4.2 g of fresh flesh on the Spanish food composition database’s water figure, or 4.7 g on the USDA’s.⁴⁵ A bag of 40 g was therefore about 170–190 g of flesh. Cherimoya is only 60% edible once you take off the skin and the big black seeds,⁶ so that’s roughly 315 g of whole fruit.

Apple is wetter still. At 85.7% water, one gram of freeze-dried apple was about 6.8 g of fresh flesh, so a bag of 40 g held about 270 g of it, or some 320 g of apples as bought. The small bags, 15 g, work out at about 65–70 g of cherimoya and 100 g of apple. These are calculated figures, not weighed ones; every point of water left in the fruit moves them by about 1%.

The sugar is the fruit’s own, and there’s more of it per 100 g

No sugar is added; the sugars in the bag are the fruit’s own. But they’re concentrated with everything else. Fresh cherimoya has 12.9 g of sugars per 100 g and fresh apple 10 g.⁵ Dried to 3% water, that comes to about 61 g per 100 g for cherimoya and 68–74 g for apple (our arithmetic). Ordinary dried figs have 47.9 g and dried apple 57.2 g, because they keep about 30% water.⁵

So gram for gram, freeze-dried fruit is more sugar-dense than dried fruit, not less. A bag holds what the fresh fruit held, no more and no less; it just takes a few seconds to eat what would have taken a plate and a knife.

Against dried fruit and fruit crisps

The three get shelved together and have little in common beyond the fruit.

Dried fruit may be sulphured to hold its colour, and above 10 mg/kg the label has to say so; in a Bavarian survey of 48 samples, three were.⁹ Ours is cherimoya, or apple with cinnamon, and nothing else.

What the NHS and AESAN say about dried fruit

Neither mentions freeze-dried fruit, and both are wary of dried fruit between meals.

The NHS adds that dried fruit belongs at mealtimes, not as a between-meal snack, because of teeth.¹⁰ AESAN, Spain’s food safety agency, goes further: its 2022 advice puts a portion of fruit at 120–200 g of fresh fruit and says to take fresh fruit as a snack, avoiding dried fruit in that role.¹¹ The NHS’s 30 g is written for fruit that still holds a fifth to a third of its water, so it can’t be carried over to a freeze-dried bag, and no authority gives a portion for freeze-dried fruit. We don’t count it towards anything.

Eat it dry, and keep it dry

Dry, from the bag, with a meal; and drink some water with it, since it brings very little of its own.¹² It goes over yoghurt or a bowl of cereal at the last moment, before the milk gets at it. Crushed, it dusts a pudding. Freeze-dried apple, strawberry and banana are already in our Porridge & Fruit breakfast, where hot or cold water brings them back.

Freeze-dried fruit takes up moisture quickly, and an airtight bag is what keeps it crisp.⁸ The sugars pull water out of the air, and the water softens the structure until it sags.³ If the fruit has gone soft, damp got in.

The fruit bags: weight, price and how long they keep sealed

Pouch	Net weight	Price	Keeps for
Cherimoya	40 g	€5.50	12 months
Cherimoya	15 g	€2.45	12 months
Apple & Cinnamon	40 g	€4.95	12 months
Apple & Cinnamon	15 g	€2.45	12 months

The fruit bags: weight, price and how long they keep sealed

• Cherimoya

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €5.50

  Keeps for

  12 months

• Cherimoya

  Net weight

  15 g

  Price

  €2.45

  Keeps for

  12 months

• Apple & Cinnamon

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €4.95

  Keeps for

  12 months

• Apple & Cinnamon

  Net weight

  15 g

  Price

  €2.45

  Keeps for

  12 months

Close the zip after every handful and finish an opened bag within 7 days. The same physics keeps freeze-dried sweets crunchy, and what drying does and doesn’t do to the rest of a food is in what freeze-drying does to nutrients.

From our range

Cherimoya

Cherimoya and nothing else, crisp from the bag.

€5.50See the cherimoya