Fruit and Nut Snacks for the 21st Century

Lara Merriken didn’t set out to revolutionize snacking when she dreamed up the Lärabar. In fact, the Denver-based fitness enthusiast and founder of the nutrition bar that bears her name says she “didn’t even plan to make a nutrition bar. The idea came to me because I’m passionate about health and nutrition and healthy living. When I thought up Lärabar, I just went back to our roots—what’s simple, what’s unprocessed, what’s whole.”

And Lärabars are about as “whole” as a snack can get while still being wrapped in a fancy, five-layer, UV- and oxygen-impermeable barrier. Each variety contains no more than six ingredients—mainly dried fruits and nuts. The only added sugars are those contributed by the fruit itself, and Merriken notes, “We always use unsweetened fruit, which is very rare in a food product like a bar.”

Her goal was to make a snack that, while acknowledging the fast-paced lives of 21st-century consumers, pledged to “Keep it simple, stupid.” Merriken’s entry offers an example from the grassroots camp, while Plano, TX–based Frito Lay’s True North snacks show how seriously the majors take simplicity. The crunches, clusters and crisps in the line sport ingredients like brown rice flour, expeller pressed sunflower oil, honey and—in the featured role—nuts.

For health-conscious consumers, seeing big, identifiable fruits, nuts and grainy things—whether in a bar, a baked good or a snack mix—is a prerequisite for purchase. Formulators are paring down snack ingredient statements while featuring fruit and nut ingredients that signal quality.

Dried fruit chips have positioned themselves as virtuous alternatives to their fried potato cousins. Even fruit roll-ups are cleaning up their acts. Made mostly with sugars and gums in the past, “now they’re using real puréed and dehydrated fruit,” says Wendy Bazilian, Dr.P.H., R.D., a nutrition educator and author of “The SuperFoodsRx Diet” who consults with industry organizations like the Cherry Marketing Institute, Lansing, MI.

Throughout the “snacksphere,” nuts and fruits are enjoying a healthy renaissance.

The original functional foods

“While fruits and nuts have been around practically forever as healthy, energy-enhancing foods, they’re getting a new kind of caché, because science is catching up to tell us why they’re so good for us,” says Bazilian.

Look at nuts: Almonds are high in vitamin E and show prebiotic benefits; walnuts are a source of the hormone melatonin and the omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid; hazelnuts have more antioxidant proanthocyanidins than any other nut; and peanuts are tops for protein content.

Then there’s the bumper crop of “superfruits,” from cherries, blueberries and cranberries to açaí berries, goji berries and beyond. Touted for their antioxidants and overall nutrient density, they’ve driven growth in a number of food and beverage categories as consumers get wise to their potential health benefits.

“If you think back 12 years,” says Guangwei Huang, senior manager, technical and scientific affairs, Almond Board of California, Modesto, “most consumers thought of nuts as high-fat items. People avoided them. But in terms of the big picture of nutrition research in the last decade, people have gained more knowledge about the different types of fat, and that not all types of fat are bad.” The mono- and polyunsaturated fats that nuts have in abundance are, in fact, quite good, and the science supporting their benefits led the FDA to approve a heart-health claim for tree nuts in 2003. “The health message registered with consumers,” she says.

“One of the reasons that nuts have become more popular, I think, is because of the unique nutrient profile,” Huang says. “Most nuts, especially almonds, meet the human body’s needs for many nutrients. You have high protein, but it’s healthy plant protein. Nuts provide lots of minerals, vitamin E and antioxidants, too. It’s a balanced, high-nutrient package. It offers a more-wholesome snack image.”

Fruits of our labors

The fruits and nuts that get top billing in today’s whole-foods snacks are fairly accommodating to work with. Suppliers are now offering them in forms that not only appeal to consumers, but that pay dividends in processing practicality for manufacturers, as well.

Let’s start with the fruit. “Nothing beats the real fruit,” says Kristen Borsari, senior manager for global marketing, Ocean Spray Ingredient Technology Group, Lakeville-Middleboro, MA. But, what manufacturers need “are products with clean ingredient statements, that taste great, and are versatile, but that are process-tolerant and aren’t going to get mashed or crushed in their manufacturing process, so that they still look, feel and taste like the real fruit,” she explains.

By and large, that means dried, especially when the application runs to the typical bar or trail mix. A classic snack-friendly example is the raisin. “The perception of fruits and nuts as healthy, natural, wholesome and packed with nutrients makes raisins a wise choice for both consumers and food-product designers,” says Thomas J. Payne, market development specialist, California Raisin Marketing Board, Fresno, CA.

California raisins clock in at about 15% to 18% moisture, with low-moisture varieties going as low as 12% to 14%. Even when compared to other fruits with the same moisture content, Payne says, “California raisins generally have a lower water activity than other dried vine fruits, because of their intact skin and fructose-glucose content. This prevents moisture migration to or from other ingredients in preparation and allows them to be added to formulas without concern for adding unneeded moisture.”

Other raisin advantages include firm skins, which hold up during manufacturing and help retain the fruit’s shape and structural integrity. Naturally occurring organic acids, including propionic and tartaric, act as mold inhibitors. And raisins are natural sweeteners and humectants. Their natural sugar content allows raisins to “function as a replacement for refined sugar,” Payne says, “allowing formulators to eliminate or reduce refined sugar in a variety of snack applications. When used in place of sugar, California raisins, as well as raisin paste and raisin juice concentrate, provide not only sweetness, but the advantages of longer shelf life, humectancy and textural contrast.”

Payne, who also represents the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, Folsom, CA, sings the praises of those superfruits, too: “Manufacturers have discovered that using blueberries and blueberry formats offers the dual advantage of sweetening and coloring the product naturally, plus the ability to tout the nutritional benefits of their products. Consumers perceive blueberries as a healthy ingredient and are, therefore, drawn to products featuring them.”

Manufacturers can tailor their blueberry choice to the products’ moisture, notes Payne, with options like unsweetened freeze-dried berries at 0% to 2% moisture; dehydrated with 11% to 18% moisture; and osmotically preserved at 40% maximum moisture. The latter, he says, is “an innovative format in which fresh or frozen blueberries are placed in a vacuum chamber and undergo a slow, natural infusion process with a syrup solution or stabilizers, after which they are carefully dried to preserve color and flavor.”

Another dried-fruit innovation that not only conveys the color and flavor of premium fruits, but at lower cost and improved functionality, is real cranberry pieces “disguised” as other fruits—cherries, blueberries, strawberries, orange and mango. They have the processing versatility and tolerance of sweetened, dried cranberries, Borsari says, but the appearance and flavor of the mimicked fruit. “Whether it’s a frozen blueberry or real mango piece,” she explains, “the real fruit is often very difficult to use in manufacturing, or very costly or hard to get. These give them a great alternative.”

How they’re made is fairly straightforward. For a blueberry piece, says Kristin Girard, principal food scientist, Ocean Spray Ingredient Technology Group, “we extract some of the goodies out of the cranberry, mainly the acid, to give it a more-neutral palate. Then we co-infuse sugar and blueberry juice back into the product.” Gentle air-drying finishes it off. “It has blueberry aroma, blueberry color and flavor, and it also has a little bit of a textural difference from the real dried blueberries, which can be grainy and seedy,” she says.

The advantage of dried options is that they help manage moisture in products, possibly the biggest processing consideration with fruits in snacks. The details of how to achieve that management vary with each application. In something like a fruit and nut mix, the dried fruit tends to be the moisture source rather than its sink. So, to keep the product equilibrated and its water activity at a safe 0.39 to 0.46, Girard suggests glycerated fruit to “help maintain a nice, soft piece when you’re adding it to a really dry or low-water-activity environment.”

In a bar, on the other hand, the manufacturing process determines the approach to moisture management. “If the bar is extruded without being cooked,” Girard says, “it would be more of a wet bar.” Then, a formulator needn’t worry about the fruit losing water to the surroundings. “But if it’s a baked bar, like the harder ‘original’ granola bars, those were really low in moisture,” she says, and would require a glycerated piece.

Nuts to you

Nuts present a different set of challenges. Paramount is oxidative stability. “Oxidation is always an issue with all nuts,” says Vicki Nesper, marketing communications manager, Hazelnut Council, Jersey City, NJ. The culprit is the thing that makes nuts such nutritional powerhouses: their unsaturated fats. “Companies can work closely with their suppliers to make sure that they’re purchasing their nuts packaged so as to keep them very fresh until they’re used in the product,” she says.

The form of the nut can affect stability as well. Whole, unprocessed nuts are usually most stable, but some nuts are more stable than others. Huang points to almonds’ “unique cellular structure” and “the ratio of oil to proteins and fiber” as contributing to their stability. Almonds’ higher levels of antioxidants also “provides natural protection,” he says.

Beware of over-roasting. “People tend to use a higher temperature to bring out the stronger flavor of nuts,” Huang says. That can play havoc with that protective cellular structure. “Naturally, the oils are contained in separate compartments in the cells,” he says. “But when you high-temperature-roast the nuts, you rupture those cellular structures, making those individual oil cells an oil sack. That makes the almond more susceptible to oxidation.”

Ironically, some degree of roast, when done at the right temperature, actually increases shelf life by denaturing enzymes that would otherwise leave the nut less stable. The real key to stability, though, is smart post-roast handling. “Our recommendation for roasted products is that they should be vacuum-packed, probably under cold storage, although vacuum packaging alone can help preserve the shelf life,” Huang says.

Nitrogen flushing will help retain freshness, says Nesper. She also suggests “a light spray of antioxidants to the product or to the nuts themselves, and that will extend the shelf life.”

A candy coating is another way to “seal” the nut and protect it from oxidation, notes Michelle McNeil, marketing director, California Walnut Board, Folsom.

But in the end, the surrounding product matrix and the package itself are the linchpins in keeping a nut snack in good shape. “You’ve got roughly 9 to 12 months on a product, depending on how fresh the nuts are when you’re using them,” McNeil says.

The nut industry has a selection of ingredient forms for product developers to choose, the most popular of which, Nesper notes, are roasted. “But nuts are available in many forms,” she says. “They can be diced to whatever size specification a customer wants. They come in meals or flour-type preparations where they can replace some of the flour in products. They come sugar-coated, as well, so they can be used to add flavor in applications.” Then there’s butter. She notes that 100% roasted hazelnut butter adds quite a bit of hazelnut flavor, as well as moistness, to bars.

Peanut powder, peanut flour milled to a finer particle size, is also an option. “That powder is very soluble, very aromatic, very fragrant and has a lot of flavor in it,” says Bob Coyle, marketing team leader, National Peanut Board, Atlanta. “We’re now working with different channels to get peanut protein powder into more beverages and other snacks.” One innovative snack concept is an energy bar featured at the Fancy Food Show called Pure Power, made with a triple threat of peanut ingredients—the whole nuts, the flour, and roasted aromatic peanut oil. He says this gives “that added protein and all that nutrition in the bar. So here, we’re tapping into several different consumer trends and wants in terms of having a great-tasting snack and a very clean label.”

And that’s just what today’s—and tomorrow’s—snackers are looking for.

Kimberly J. Decker, a California-based technical writer, has a B.S. in consumer food science with a minor in English from the University of California, Davis. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she enjoys eating and writing about food. You can reach her at[email protected].

Healthy Perceptions

According to Chicago-based Mintel’s “Healthy Snacking” report, released in Feb. 2008, 86% of consumers surveyed consider nuts and seeds a “healthy snack,” while nearly 90% feel the same about fruit or dried-fruit snacks.