Fruit Roll-Ups is a brand of

fruit snack A fruit snack is a type of gummy snack made with fruit flavoring. They were first made by confectioner Louis Shalhoub in the 1970s as a lightweight high energy snack food for backpackers. Although they are marketed as a healthier alternative to ...

that debuted in grocery stores across America in 1983. It is a flat,

pectin Pectin ( grc, πηκτικός ': "congealed" and "curdled") is a heteropolysaccharide, a structural acid contained in the primary lamella, in the middle lamella, and in the cell walls of terrestrial plants. The principal, chemical component o ...

-based, fruit-flavored snack rolled into a tube, spread on a backing sheet of

cellophane Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and liquid water makes it useful for food packaging. Cellophane is highly permeable to water vapour, but may be coated ...

to prevent the product from sticking to itself. Fruit Roll-Ups are manufactured by

General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company or ...

and distributed under the

Betty Crocker Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. The character was originally created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 following a contest in the ''Saturday Evening Post''. In 1954, G ...

brand in the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

market and under the Uncle Tobys brand in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

. Several similar products have been marketed by General Mills and by other companies, notably under the Kellogg's brand in the UK as Fruit Winders.

Advertising

Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups were heavily marketed on television in America throughout the early 1980s. Most spots featured the tag line "Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups: Real fruit and fun, rolled up in one." Later spots featured children innovating in the "Fruit Roll-Up Fun Factory". The overall marketing theme is that parents can feed their children "fun" processed foods that are based on real

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in partic ...

. Studies of American mothers have shown that the mothers are surprised at how sweet Fruit Roll-Ups are and how little fruit is present in them. For example, the strawberry flavor contains no strawberries, and the only ingredient derived from fruit is concentrated pear juice.

History

General Mills' research for the product began in 1975. Joray Fruit Rolls are a round, fruit leather product from New York that predates Fruit Roll-Ups. Fruit Roll-Ups have a more rubbery texture than the natural rolls and though were originally round in shape, they are now shaped like a

parallelogram In Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is a simple (non- self-intersecting) quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. The opposite or facing sides of a parallelogram are of equal length and the opposite angles of a parallelogram are of eq ...

. Fruit Roll-Ups have featured variants on the original plain sheets such as punch out

shape A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie ...

s on the rolls and temporary tattoos for

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste ...

s and formerly on skin. * Berry Lemonade/Cherry Slushie *Crazy Pix Cool Chix Berry Wave *Crazy Pix Wild Ones Blastin' Berry *Electric Blue Raspberry *Flavor Wave Betty Crocker sells Fruit Roll-Ups in single-flavor boxes and flavor variety packs.

Ingredients

The main ingredient is sugar, and Fruit Roll-Ups contain five different types of sugar: sugar from pear juice concentrate,

corn syrup Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn (called maize in many countries) and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soft ...

, dried corn syrup,

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or do ...

, and a small amount of

dextrose Glucose is a simple sugar with the molecular formula . Glucose is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. Glucose is mainly made by plants and most algae during photosynthesis from water and carbon dioxide, usin ...

. They also contain small amounts of partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, citric acid, sodium citrate, acetylated monoglycerides, fruit pectin, malic acid, ascorbic acid, natural flavors, and artificial colors.

Lawsuit over health claims

In 2011, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued General Mills over Fruit Roll-Ups, saying that their packaging and marketing was misleading because it presented the product as a nutritious, healthful, fruit-filled snack, despite having approximately the same nutritional profile as

gummy bear Gummy bears (German: ''Gummibär'') are small, fruit gum candies, similar to a jelly baby in some English-speaking countries. The candy is roughly long and shaped in the form of a bear. The gummy bear is one of many gummies, popular gel ...

candies. The lawsuit was

settled out of court In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. A collective settlement is a settlement of multiple similar legal cases. The term also has other meanings in t ...

with General Mills agreeing not to put pictures of fruits on the labels, unless that fruit was actually present in that flavor of the Fruit Roll-Up, and to either stop claiming that the product is "made with real fruit", or to include in that potentially misleading statement the percentage of the Fruit Roll-Up that is made from real fruit. These changes took place in 2014.

References

5. https://www.snackhistory.com/fruit-roll-ups/#History_Of_Fruit_Roll_Ups

External links