Peeled Snacks - Review and Giveaway

I like fruit. I think I mentioned that before. I don't eat much dried fruit, but on occasion like to pick up some dried fruit. The kids, of course, enjoy raisins and usually, if I buy a bag of dried fruit for me, they eat it too.

I recently had the opportunity to check out Peeled Snacks. Peeled Snacks offers a line of organic dried fruit snacks and they contacted me because they are now available in store in Ohio (you can always buy them online too!). In fact, they recently became available at Marc's Deep Discount stores and will soon be available at Acme and Giant Eagle.

They sent me an Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler to check out all of their great products.

Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler

-Enjoy our 8 new organic fruit pouches including 4 brand new varieties
-Each stay-fresh, resealable pouch contains 2 to 6 servings (depending on the variety)
-Natural source of vitamins, minerals, iron & fiber
-Contains 8 pouches: 1 each of Apple-2-the-core (2.8oz), Apricot-a-lot (5oz), paradise found (3oz), much-ado-about-Mango (2.8oz), Banan-a-peel (3oz), Raisin expectations (8.4oz), farmer's market trio (4.5oz) & GoFigure (5oz)

When the package arrived, my kids could not wait to try it. I asked my son to at least wait until I was home, because I wanted to get to try them too!

The first variety that we tried was the Banan-a-peel. The first thing that I noticed was that the banana aroma when you open the bag was intense, in a good way. When I tried the first one, I was surprised to discover that the bananas were chewy. When I think of dried bananas, I actually normally think of banana chips (based on some quick research, banana chips can be dried or deep fried - interesting). Looking at the bags, I noticed that they say "gently dried" and "nothing added". I'm guessing the gently dried is the difference between chewy and chip. I was pleasantly surprised by the dried banana - it had a rich flavor and a good texture. Visually, the bananas are a little brown and at first, my kids hesitated, but after eating one, they immediately grabbed another.

Over the course of a few days, we worked our way through sampling all of the varieties. The overall consensus was good. The dried fruit seems to be plumper and moister than other brands that we have had in the past. The raisins in particular were a much larger size fruit than the raisins that we regularly consume. The product delivers well - most offer a good fruit flavor and are just the right sweetness, using just the natural sweetness of the fruit.

According to the package, the product is made with organic fruit from sustainable farms. As a mom, I love that the ingredient list is only the fruit in the bag. The varieties that I am currently viewing, have about 120 - 130 calories and 2 - 4 g of fiber per serving.

As my husband was standing in the kitchen, sampling from the various open bags, he asked aloud, "what is the advantage of dried fruit?" and then proceeded to answer his own question and I kicked in. His first thought is that it can be shared. You would rarely offer someone half of an apple (or other fruit), but you could easily pour out a handful of dried fruit. The next thought is that it is less messy. Our children are uniquely qualified (okay, probably not unique, but they are certainly pros) at making a mess of even the most innocent looking food items. With the dried fruit, there is none of the juicy, sticky mess that you can achieve with their fresh fruit counterparts. The next answer is portable. It is a lot easier (and the experience at the end of the day probably much better) to throw a bag of dried fruit into a back pack or diaper bag before heading off to school, a hike or a day at the park, zoo, etc. My answer it stays fresh longer. No worries about the bunch of bananas getting brown in a few days time, the bags of dried fruit (at least the ones I have) are good until late in the fall. That's five or six months vs five or six days.

My favorite is the much-ado-about-Mango and the variety paradise found which includes Mango, Pineapple and Banana. My kid's favorite is definitely the Apple-2-the-core, although they seemed to really enjoy them all. My husband didn't really select a favorite.

Want to give them a try? There is a deal that is available until sometime on Saturday on Gaggle of Chicks, you can get a $40 voucher for only $20 to purchase from the Peeled Snacks website. Click on bonus deals to see this offer.

For those of you that are local and shop at Giant Eagle, you will definitely want to check out the giveaway that Peeled Snacks will be doing to promote their launch at Giant Eagle. To enter, you must "like" Peeled Snacks on Facebook and then complete the entry form on their website (not there yet, starts tomorrow). They will be giving one lucky winner a $100 gift card for Giant Eagle!

Giveaway!
Thanks to Peeled Snacks, I have the opportunity to share one Organic Pouch Fruit Sampler with one A Busy Mom of Two reader.

To enter: Visit the Peeled Snacks website. Come back sharing something that you learned about their products and let me know what variety you are most interested in trying.

Additional Entries (be sure to leave a comment for each entry):

Like Peeled Snacks on Facebook.

Follow Peeled Snacks on Twitter. Please be sure to include your user name in the comment.

Follow A Busy Mom of Two on Twitter. Please be sure to include your user name in the comment.

Tweet about this giveaway. You can copy and paste this directly: I just entered to win a @PeeledSnacks Organic Pouch Fruit Sampler #Giveaway. http://bit.ly/ko0alk hosted by @ABusyMomofTwo, ends 5/24. This can be once daily, please be sure to leave a link to the tweet in your comment.

Post about this giveaway on your blog and leave a comment with a link to your post.

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Add my button to your sidebar or my blog to blog roll. Leave a link letting me know where you added it.

Share this giveaway on a link-up and come back and let me know where you shared it. (This can be done five times)

The Giveaway will run through May 24th at 6pm and is open to residents of the US and Canada only. Winner will be selected using Random.org random number generator. The winner will be contacted by e-mail (Please make sure that your email address is either in your comment or clearly visible on your profile or blog) and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner may be selected.

No compensation was received for this post. Peeled Snacks provided a complimentary Organic Fruit Pouch Sampler so that my family could experience the product and share our reactions. In addition, they are providing the same sampler to the winner of the giveaway.