It's been a few years since I wrote the article Is freeze-dried fruit always healthy? It's been 7 years and freeze-dried foods have spread from supermarkets to gas stations. However, it is still easier to buy and sell than to actually produce the same thing.
For many years, dTest magazine has been regarded as a reliable consumer helper in the Czech Republic. It provides advice and carries out tests focusing on the quality of various products. In the October issue, it focused on the quality of freeze-dried strawberries, taking a total of 17 different samples for testing. And it's not exactly happy reading.
As readers of our blog already know, freeze drying is simply a method of drying. Nothing more, nothing less. As good quality product is loaded into the freeze dryer, so good quality product can subsequently be taken out of it.
Crunchy vitamins
Setting up the lyophilization process on a conventional industrial lyophilizer is not exactly easy. The operator must have sufficient knowledge and months of trial-and-error testing are required to achieve a perfect result. Two principles go against each other - how gentle the process is and how fast it is. Some large manufacturers deal with this by raising the temperature of the product quite high at the end of the process, up to values of around +70°C. While this ensures almost absolute drying with no residual water, it also destroys fats, vitamins and other nutrients. The result is a dry, but so-called 'dead matter'. If the process is shortened without heating, there is a higher risk that some pieces will not be completely dried.
dTest reports that the winner of the Vitamin C content category is the Rossmann/Genuss Plus Gefriergetrocknete Erdbeeren in Scheiben sample, although it is close to half the expected vitamin C content. Of course, the variety of strawberry, the method of farming and the ripeness at the time of freeze-drying can also play a role in taste and crunchiness. However, the method of packaging, the distance over which the product has to travel, and any repackaging into smaller volumes can also have an impact. The brands that came out worst in the tests were Mixit, Shufan and Goodie The Lyofruits.
The record for the amount of pesticides
The sad reading then comes in the laboratory analysis of the amount of pesticides. Not only did the quantities exceed the previous historical records of dTest tests (fruit teas and raisins), but in some samples the laboratory also recorded the presence of insecticides such as cyenopyrafen, dinotefuran and tolfenpyrad, which are explicitly banned by EU legislation.
"As good quality product is loaded into the lyophilizer, so good quality product can be taken out afterwards."
The "winner" was Farmland strawberries, which contained all the pesticides mentioned above. While a single sample came up with zero pesticides, the Emco brand contained 26 and the sad winner was Allnature strawberries with a collection of 30 different varieties.
Do you buy from the manufacturer or a importer?
From the whole article it seems that hitting a quality freeze-dried product can be a matter of luck. The consumer has no chance of finding out information about the quality of the product when most of the suppliers of the samples tested did not even bother to indicate the origin. Of the 17 samples, only two admitted that they were strawberries from China and one that they were 'from outside the EU'.
A real producer who owns a freeze drier would probably, on principle, be more concerned about the quality of the product he puts into his machine. The Gulicka farm grows its own blueberries, Zamio has its own chokecherry plantations, Zach's Pesto & Chilli dries peppers grown in greenhouses nearby Prague and Shawnee has links directly to Netherlands producers for its cheese.