The Future of Kids' Snacks is Here!

Are you a mom with little kids in school right now? Or just looking for healthier snack options in general? While kids today love their snacks, most of them would contain artificial flavoring and sweeteners that negatively impact their health. The most we thought we can do was to prepare homemade snacks like sandwiches that have a bit of natural nutrients to counteract this reality...or prepare carrot and celery sticks like people show in the media -- and it’s time consuming, especially during a busy weekday morning when you and your kids are rushing off to school and work.

But not anymore! Lots of brands have been developing ways of preserving as much nutrients in their snack products. Two of these processes are called freeze drying and dehydrating the food. These methods are usually applied to food brought in hiking or camping trips. Most especially, these processes are used for the food products consumed by astronauts and militarymen during their long trips and deployments.

Freeze drying is the process of food being quickly frozen, then the ice is turned into water vapor and removed by placing the frozen food in a vacuum, resulting in a dehydrated product. Dehydrating food follows the same steps, but skipping over the freezing part. They change the texture of the food, so if an apple isn’t crunchy enough -- pop it into a dehydrator or a vacuum to achieve that crispiness you want.

Both processes utilize special machines to achieve this, so it’s a little hard to do at home. They’re also a bit pricey, but good investments if you plan on using them quite often in the future. Seems like a lot of work, right? Don’t fuss though, we’ve got you covered.

We recently featured Made Good, Martin’s Apple Chips and Giving Tree’s Broccoli and Mixed Veggie Chips in our Raw Bites Box. (There’s still some in our e-Grocery if you want some!) Both of these items were either freeze-dried or dehydrated fruits and veggies, making them last longer than usual chips in the market. The best thing is that they underwent minimal processing during production, meaning the nutrients from the veggies and fruits are still present. Just pop them in your kids’ lunchboxes or your work bag, and there you have it, the healthy snack for the day.