Fruit Gushers (also simply Gushers) are a

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, ...

-branded fruit snack introduced in 1991. They are soft and chewy with a fruity-juice center.

History

Fruit Gushers (sometimes simply "Gushers") were introduced in 1991 as a Betty Crocker fruit snack. Each box of Fruit Gushers was

list price The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which its manufacturer notionally recommends that a retailer ...

d at and contained six pouches of Gushers, each of which had nine individual pieces for per pouch.

Composition

Strawberry-flavored Fruit Gushers are composed of

pear Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the family Rosaceae, bearing the p ...

concentrate A concentrate is a form of Chemical substance, substance that has had the majority of its base component (in the case of a liquid: the solvent) removed. Typically, this will be the removal of water from a Solution (chemistry), solution or suspens ...

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 double ...

, dried

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 softe ...

, corn syrup, modified

corn starch Corn starch, maize starch, or cornflour (British English) is the starch derived from corn (maize) grain. The starch is obtained from the endosperm of the kernel. Corn starch is a common food ingredient, often used to thicken sauces or sou ...

fructose Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a Ketose, ketonic monosaccharide, simple sugar found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galacto ...

, and

grape juice Grape juice is obtained from crushing and blending grapes into a liquid. In the wine industry, grape juice that contains 7–23 percent of pulp, skins, stems and seeds is often referred to as ''must''. The sugars in grape juice allow it to be u ...

concentrate. Targeted at children, they were

acorn The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...

-shaped with a soft "

licorice Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) ( ; also ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted. The liq ...

-like" exterior and a liquid inside, included "

strawberries The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...

and

puree concentrate", and came in two flavors: "Strawberry Splash" and "Gushin' Grape". In 2003, one serving of any Fruit Gushers variety was one package with 90 calories, zero protein, of fat, and of

carbohydrate In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may or ma ...

s. In his 2018 book, ''Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom'', Fred Provenza noted that while Fruit Gushers are fruit-flavored, their nutritional composition is very different from their produce counterparts. While 90 calories worth of Strawberry Fruit Gushers equaled and contained of sugar, 1g of

fat In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers spec ...

, and cost ; 90 calories worth of actual

equaled and contained of

dietary fiber Dietary fiber (in British English fibre) or roughage is the portion of plant-derived food that cannot be completely broken down by human digestive enzymes. Dietary fibers are diverse in chemical composition, and can be grouped generally by the ...

, "many

minerals In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...

and

vitamin A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an Nutrient#Essential nutrients, essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its ...

s, and thousands of

phytochemical Phytochemicals are chemical compounds produced by plants, generally to help them resist fungi, bacteria and plant virus infections, and also consumption by insects and other animals. The name comes . Some phytochemicals have been used as poisons ...

s." Provenza called Fruit Gushers "

empty calories In human nutrition, empty calories are those calories found in beverages (including alcoholic) and foods composed primarily or solely of sugars and/or certain fats and oils such as cholesterol, saturated or trans fats, that provide little to no us ...

Varieties

Betty Crocker released a new variety of Fruit Gushers in early 2020: "Galactic Fruit Gushers". These featured the flavors "Asteroid Apple", "Berry Star Cluster", and a mystery flavor labeled "Unidentified Flavored Object"; the latter was part of a contest where consumers could guess at the unknown flavor and win prizes "like sweatshirts, hats, blankets, pop sockets, and more". Galactic Fruit Gushers were sold through

Walmart.com Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

for .

Reception

A 1991 ''

Sun-Sentinel The ''Sun Sentinel'' (also known as the ''South Florida Sun Sentinel'', known until 2008 as the ''Sun-Sentinel'', and stylized on its masthead as ''SunSentinel'') is the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as well as surrounding Br ...

'' review said that the insides oozed rather than gushed, and found the confectionery surprisingly pleasant. In 2013, ''Complex'' magazine ranked Fruit Gushers the second-best fruit snack of all time, coming in behind another Betty Crocker product, Shark Bites.

References

External links

Fruit Gushers at BettyCrocker.com
{{General Mills American snack foods brand name confectionery General Mills brands products introduced in 1991