History of Dried Fruit

Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia and is prized because of its sweet taste, nutritive value, and long shelf life. Traditional dried fruit such as raisins, figs, dates, apricots and apples have been a staple of Mediterranean diets for millennia. This is due partly to their early cultivation in the Middle Eastern region known as the Fertile Crescent, made up of parts of modern Iran, Iraq, southwest Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and northern Egypt. Drying or dehydration was the earliest form of food preservation: grapes, dates, and figs that fell from a tree or vine would dry in the hot sun.

Know more about the process of

1. Drying Fruits

Dried fruit is a fruit that has had almost all of the water content removed naturally or through drying methods like sun drying, heated wind tunnel dryers or dehydrators.

The fruit shrinks during this process, leaving a small, energy-dense dried fruit. Dried fruits keep most of the nutritional value of fresh fruits.

The high drying and processing temperatures, the intrinsic low pH of the fruit, the low water activity (moisture content) and the presence of natural antimicrobial compounds in dried fruit make them a stable food.

1. Freeze-Dried Fruit

The freeze-drying process offers the flexibility to remove moisture content and preserve almost any fruit or vegetable.

Dried fruit is simply been subjected to a freeze dryer. This machine removes moisture from the fruit using cold temperatures and preserves the actual color and shape of the original fruit. Freeze-dried fruit is completely dry, lightweight, and has a crisp, crumbly texture. 

2. Fruit Powder

To produce fruit powder, the fresh fruit or vegetables are freeze-dried. In this process, the water is gently extracted from the frozen fruit or vegetables under a vacuum. Through this process, large parts of the nutrients, as well as the structure of the molecules, remain preserved. This makes the fruit crunchy and less heavy. Then the fruit is powdered, and we get the desired result.
There is a wide range of different fruit powder flavors, as fruit and vegetable options can be mixed in different ways.
What is special about fruit powder is that no flavour is lost in the freeze-drying process. Additionally, the fruit hardly loses any nutrients, so they are just as healthy as fresh fruit. In addition, fruit powder has an extremely long shelf life, which is a great advantage in many respects.