Kind® Fruit Bites are bite-sized snacks are made with only real fruit. You won’t find any juices, purees, concentrates, preservatives or sugar added so you can enjoy a “fruit snack” that’s actually made of real fruit. Currently, Fruit Bites are available in three varieties. The first variety’s ingredients (listed according to weight) are ¾ of an apple, 1 strawberry and 2 cherries. The next variety’s ingredients are 4/5 of an apple, 2 chunks of pineapple and 2 slices of mango. The third and final variety’s ingredients are ½ of an apple and 5 cherries. The quantified listing represents the amount of fruit included in each 0.6-ounce pouch. Currently, a 3-ounce box retails for $4.29 at Target. Review
Children in the U.S. eat three times as much sugar as they should, according to the American Heart Association. Take a look at these startling statistics. An eight-year old child consumes an average 64 pounds of sugar per year— while U.S. children combined consume an average of 45,485 pounds of sugar every five minutes. On average, children consume 80 grams of added sugar per day while they should be eating no more than 25 grams of added sugar per day.
USDA MyPlate guidelines recommend a daily intake of two to four ½-cup servings of fruit for children and a daily intake of three to four ½-cup servings of fruit for adults. Each pouch of Kind® Fruit Bites supplies one ½-cup serving of fruit. The nutritional value of one pouch equals 60 calories, 14 g carbohydrate, 11 g total sugar (0 added sugar) and 1-2 g dietary fiber.
The texture of these bites fall somewhere between soft and chewy. Visually, they resemble dried nuggets of mixed fruit. To eliminate any pre-judgment based solely on appearance, I asked my kiddos to close their eyes before taste-testing this product. This tact may be particularly helpful when offering these fruit bites to kids who are used to eating artificially-colored and/or -flavored versions of smooth “fruit” gummies shaped like beloved cartoon characters. Overall, my kids still prefer real fruit (like apple slices, strawberry slices and mango chunks etc) over pouch snacks in their lunchboxes. But, these can certainly come in handy when a portable, shelf-stable snack is needed.
With the launch of this new product, Kind® is attempting to disrupt the fruit snack category. Currently, nine out of the 10 leading fruit snacks have added sugar as the first ingredient. It will be interesting to see how young consumers react to the taste, texture and appearance of these new—all fruit—fruit snack options.
To learn more, visit kindsnacks.com. If you decide to try this product, please share your experience. Comment below, tag NutritionConnectionsLLC on Facebook, or tag @karenbuch on twitter using #FoodNewsReviews.