I bought a package of what claims to be freeze-dried strawberries. The ingredients list says “100% Strawberries”, and the nutrition facts label says the entire 8 ounce package has only 200 Calories.
When I tasted one of the strawberries, I was surprised at how sweet it was. Also, the texture was hard and crunchy. I have had freeze-dried strawberries before, and they weren’t nearly as sweet as these, and the texture was light and airy, not hard and crunchy.
I’m sure this product is falsely labeled. I’d be willing to bet it’s full of added sugar, and has a lot more than 200 calories per 8 grams. I wish I knew of a food lab where I could take them for testing. I’d report it to a government agency if I thought they’d take any action.
I considered posting this in Cafe Society because it’s about food, but I decided MPSIMS is a better fit. It’s OK with me if a mod wants to move the thread.
A can of Coke clocks in at nearly twice as many grams of sugar as this package and is only 140 calories. 200 calories actually seems kinda high, not low.
Googling, strawberries are roughly 90% water, so even less sweet strawberries are going to have concentrated sweetness when much of the water is removed.
Interesting point. The nutrition label says a serving has 20 grams of carbohydrates (including sugars), 2 grams of protein, and no fat. Carbs and proteins both have 4 Calories per gram, so a serving should have 88 Calories, according to their own numbers. Where do the 200 Calories come from?
Here’s another brand of freeze-dried strawberries:
The nutrition label for this brand says it has 25 grams of carbs and 1 gram of protein per 1-ounce serving, for 100 Calories per serving. Compare that to the claimed 200 Calories per 8-ounce serving for the Strawberry Crunch product in question. Strawberry Crunch claims to have 25% of the Calories per ounce and 10% of the carbs per ounce of the Safeway Signature Select strawberries.
Strawberries have 32 calories per 100 g (wet) with 7.7 g of carbohydrates of which 4.9 g are sugar. Fresh strawberries are 91% water, so assuming that virtually all water was removed in the freeze drying process, the 226 g serving should have around 800 calories, not the 200 suggested in the nutritional information on the package (which is providing the ‘wet’ values), of which about 500 calories is sugar (50-60% fructose, 20-30% glucose, 10-20% sucrose) or ~125 g. So, in that ‘serving’ you are basically getting ten tablespoons of sugar.
In reality it isn’t quite this bad because freeze drying doesn’t remove all of the water (typically 80-90%), but it is still a lot of sugar, and around half of it is fructose that is qualitatively sweeter than sucrose (refined or ‘table’ sugar). In general, dried fruits are really rich in sugars per weight even though the fresh fruit is moderate and satiating, so you have to be careful about how much you consume. It makes for a good constituent in trail mix to provide some constant, easily digestible ‘fast’ calories but pretty bad for sedentary lifestyles where it should be used as a topping at most.
Yeah, between differences in terroir, cultivar, and season, strawberries can be dramatically different.
And sometimes what works best for one application isn’t best for another. The very best strawberry preserves I ever had were from some strawberries that matured early in the backyard. They were nearly inedible straight- overwhelmingly sour. But mixed with the sugar that you put into preserves, and they were transcendental. Like the Platonic ideal of a strawberry in preserves form. Something about that extra acid made them absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, over a few months, it mellowed out and the jars transformed into merely excellent preserves.
Meanwhile ones that you eat make fine jam and preserves, but they’re not nearly so amazing.
I’d guess that these are some kind of strawberry that is high in sugar and relatively low in acid, probably grown specifically for freeze drying, and that’s why they taste too sweet to you.
Sprouts (the mostly-produce store chain) has these for sale, $30 for 50 grams (that seems very expensive). I would not expect them to be carrying a product that is mis-labeled about contents, although I don’t know why I have that opinion. I’ve only shopped there once.
I followed your suggestion. It came out mushy, similar to a strawberry that has been frozen and thawed without being dried. It was still very sweet, though maybe not as much as the non-hydrated ones I’ve tried.
I don’t know what to make of the results, since I have nothing to compare it to.
I’ll say this… strawberries in the grocery store vary wildly in how sweet they are. It’s kind of surprising, considering how consistent most other produce is. One carton is sour and bad, and another is ambrosial. And it’s always a roll of the dice in some sense, in that even using all the tools of picking good ones, you still end up with a fair number that just aren’t quite up to par.
