Freeze-drying was first commercialized during WWII as a way to dry blood serum. It could then be shipped and re-hydrated on site to perform blood transfusions for injured soldiers. The standard drying methods at the time used hot air which did not preserve the chemical and biological properties of the serum, so the gentle process of freeze-drying was developed.
Fast forward to today when freeze-drying is often used in the food industry and although it is by far the best way to preserve the biological and chemical nutrition of a food (just like it did the blood serum), it is still not widely used due to its higher cost. But we are slowly learning that nutrition matters and as our knowledge about the health benefits of fruits and veggies grows, our willingness to pay a higher price for a high-quality ingredient is also growing. We are well aware that a dehydrated kale powder sold by one of our competitors will cost you half the price, it might even be labeled as a "raw" product, but when it contains half the nutrition and your health is on the line, the higher price for a more nutritious product starts to make more sense. Freeze-drying is after all a cold process… a freezing cold process.
Call us picky, but we can't stand when a brand claims to use whole-food on the front of their product's label, then you read the ingredient list on the back and the first 5 ingredients aren't whole foods.
We define whole-food as the entire edible portion of a food. You wont find us using juice powders, added sugars, proteins, fats, fibers, or extracts of any kind our products. We only use 100% whole, plant-based foods because we believe that nature provides the perfect balance of nutrients for the optimal human diet.
You probably already know - a raisin is just a dry grape. By the typical definition of raw food (never heated over 115 degrees F - 46 degrees C) a raisin is also considered a raw grape. But a raisin doesn't look like a fresh grape: its not vibrant in color, nor is it as nutritious.
A freeze dried grape on the other hand is just as vibrant in flavor, color, and nutrition as a fresh grape, but it is dry. We use the freeze-drying process on all of our fruits and veggies to not only retain the active enzymes and healthy microbes, but also the vibrantly colored phytonutrients in each, creating a truly raw product.