It’s with a sad heart that today we bid farewell to our Fruit & Nut line.  When I joined the Peeled Snacks family in 2006, we were devoting all of our attention to our Fruit & Nut varieties.  These snacks, made with moist, gently-dried fruit and crunchy, roasted nuts, was our first foray into the snack food world. 

It was a bold step at that time, for unlike the sugar-filled, oil-coated trail mixes on the shelves, our Fruit & Nut snacks were made with ingredients you recognize -- large pieces of dried fruit and dry roasted nuts without any added sugars or oils.  In contrast to the overprocessed food out there, our fruit was naturally sweet and our nuts just lightly salted.  Finally, you could feel good about snacking!  And while we love these fun mixes of flavors with equally playful names, we have to say good-bye for now.

The complexity of our Fruit & Nut line made getting these yummy snacks into the hands of hungry snackers a challenge.  The shelf life was too short, meaning most retailers could not stock them.  And, we had to use more packaging than we would have liked to keep the nuts crunchy and the fruit moist.  Our capricious cherries and fickle figs just wouldn’t stand for the unnecessary waste, and it didn’t mesh with our belief that keeping things simple is best for everyone. 

The good news?  Our good-bye is only bittersweet.  While we’ll miss our old friends (Shock-olate, I will always love you!), we’re celebrating the launch of a new line of snacks, many of which are inspired by our old favorites.  Our new line of snacks is made of organic, gently-dried fruit and has nothing added.  Like our single-serving Fruit Picks, we offer many favorites like much-ado-about-Mango and Apple-2-the-core, but we’re also introducing three new fruit mixes.  Bing Bing Cherry enthusiasts, I’d like to introduce you to farmer’s market trio, a mix of organic apples, cherries, and raisins (all grown in the USA).  FigSated fanatics, meet GoFigure, a sweet mix of organic figs, dates, and apricots. 

Shock-olate fiends, I’m sorry to say, there’s just no replacing Shock.  How about something completely different?   …Something tropical…like paradise found, a tropical mix of organic mango, banana, and pineapple.  We’ve learned a lot in this adventure, and still have a ways to go, but we’re having fun as we try to be responsible snack makers, while filling bellies with yummy snacks along the way.

We'll miss you, Fruit & Nut.  Happy Snacking,

Cassie Abrams, Peeled Snacks guest blogger and Shock-olate lover

Posted by iankusc at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I SHOULD be blogging right now about the Food Safety Modernization Act (formerly known as the "Food Safety Bill"), but I'm not.  I have a very good reason for this- no personal experience.  The Law as written doesn't yet pertain to companies like Peeled Snacks, because we don't do terrible things to our food.  I'll be sure to let you know when we run afoul the new legislation.  IF we run afoul it.  I really hope we don't.

What instead I have to inform you about is the hullabaloo surrounding an article published yesterday in the Huffington Post.  Read it HERE....

Have you sifted through it?  Only takes a minute.  I'll wait.  Done yet?  Good.  So what have YOU been hoodwinked by lately?

So there's a cruel list of products marketed as healthy but which all turn out to be really not that good for you.  I consume a couple of these products (like Raisin Bran.  Like EVERY DAY), and I suspect that if you're reading this blog, then you've had a mouthful or two of this article's targets.  You might even be craving one right now.  Should you be drinking some chocolate soy milk whilst surfing the web, I won't hold it against you.

I CAN'T hold it against you- it's how you're programmed.  The thirst for fat, sugar, and salt is what kept our species alive long enough amidst the saber-toothed tigers and mastodons to eventually get numerous and smart enough to invent the cheese-doodle, therefore solving all our thirsts for fat, sugar, and salt.  You better off BECAUSE you want those products, in a twisted way.

And most of the products on this list have relatively clean ingredient lists, at least when compared to the average offerings at your local 5-&-Dime.  Odwalla has, you know, fruit, and some Terra chips have 3 ingredients.  So don't fault the product, and don't fault the person buying the product.  If you want a head to roll, fault the marketer.

Sheesh, it's got to be tough being a marketer these days.  As I AM a marketer, I shouldn't speak hypothetically about something which I know so well.  If you've got something that's "healthier" than some of its competition, it's so EASY to call it "Healthy" and be done with it.  But that's the corner into which American food manufacturers have painted themselves- if all the other guys are using corn syrup, and I'm using sugar (which is sometimes twice as expensive), then I need all the extra consumers to cover the costs.  And if I call it healthy, that's extra consumers, right?

I extend some sympathy to my industry-mates for, you know, the sake of compassion, but I'll take this moment to offer up that Peeled Snacks has never called itself a "diet" product, and in general we shy away from nutritional claims.  And yet, we're vegan, gluten free, organic, boast VERY short ingredient lists, AND are yummy.  So, alas, we didn't make the Sweet Beet list.  So much for that PR opportunity....

-Peeled Skinny, amidst a snowy New York City

Posted by iankusc at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)