A fruit snack is a type of

gummy Gummies, gummi candies, gummy candies, or jelly sweets are a broad category of gelatin-based chewable sweets. Gummi bears, Sour Patch Kids, and Jelly Babies are widely popular and are a well-known part of the sweets industry. Gummies are availab ...

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 regular gummy candies, this is sometimes considered false advertisement, since they contain fruit flavoring instead of actual fruit. However, some brands are made with real fruit juice.

History

The first modern fruit snack was Joray Fruit Rolls, which were developed by

confectioner Confectionery is the art of making confections, which are food items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates. Exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confectionery is divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categorie ...

Louis Shalhoub in the 1970s. It was used by backpackers as a lightweight, high-energy food. The name ''fruit snack'' was first used in 1983 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 orig ...

, which they used to describe their version of Shalhoub's product, Fruit Roll-Ups. By the mid-1980s, the fruit snack was a multimillion-dollar business. However, sales peaked in 2013 and declined over the next few years.

Nutrition

More than half the weight of the fruit snacks is simple sugars. They also contain an average of 12% water by weight, 25% starch, a small amount of fat, and a negligible amount of protein. The nutritional value or content of fruit snacks has long been contested. Much of the controversy surrounds the

nutritional value Nutritional value or nutritive value as part of food quality is the measure of a well-balanced ratio of the essential nutrients carbohydrates, fat, protein, minerals, and vitamins in items of food or diet concerning the nutrient requirements of t ...

, especially surrounding its

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 ...

content, which is found in large amounts in some fruit snacks.

Lawsuits

In some cases, manufactures of fruit snacks have faced class-action lawsuits over their marketing claims that fruit snacks are "healthy." * In 2015, two women filed a class-action lawsuit in New York against Welch's Fruit Snacks, alleging illegal supplementation with vitamins, in violation of the jelly bean rule. The jelly bean rule prohibits food manufacturers from deceiving consumers into buying candy by adding vitamins and marketing the candy as a healthful food. The licensed manufacturer replied that the complaint is without merit, "It is a fact that fruit, whether in the form of juices or more recently purees, has always been the first ingredient in Welch’s Fruit Snacks. Our labeling is truthful and gives consumers the information they need to make informed decisions.” The case was voluntarily dismissed in 2017. * In 2017, another person filed a class-action lawsuit in New Jersey against Welch's Fruit Snacks, alleging that the snack food is marketed as being more healthful than similar products despite being nutritionally similar to candy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fruit Snack American snack foods Food for children