Our local Starbucks has begun a healthier lifestyle kick and now has a table of healthier snack choices available to customers. I cannot tell you how delighted this makes me because as much as I like to ogle the 490 calorie apple fritters behind the glass case at the checkout I also know that they contain 22g of fat (10g of which are saturated!) and 65g of carbs. So the movement to include healthier snacking options in our local Starbucks absolutely thrilled me.

As I stood at the small table across from the checkout I rummaged through the variety of healthy snacks available and passing over the nuts and sugary granola treats I lay my hands on what has now become my all time favorite “treat”: Peeled Snack’s all natural fruit snacks.

Now when I tell you that I love fruit it is the understatement of the century, in fact the only thing I love more than chocolate is fruit, particularly mango so when I found a bag of Peeled Snack’s much-ado-about-Mango I grabbed it without hesitation. By the time I made it home, however, my snacks were all gone and I was craving another bag…oh how embarrassing to admit that publicly! I was completely thrilled with the snacks themselves as well as their outreach to a company like Starbucks who offer literally ZERO healthy snack choices to appease customers like me who drink everything in tall skinny form sans whipped cream. I sat down at my laptop as soon as I got home and contacted Peeled Inc. to let them know how absolutely blown away I was by their product and inquired as to whether they would be interested in providing snacks for review and for one of my readers to try and thankfully they agreed!

Peeled Inc. carries a variety of dried natural and/or organic fruits as well as nut snacks. Of all their products I was lucky enough to try six of their dried fruit products:

Apricot-a-lot – This snack is made from 100% organic apricots and the bag contains 41grams (a single serving) which weighs in at a healthy 110 calories, 0g of fat and 26g carbs. The apricots also contain 60% of your daily intake of vitamin A! Now I will preface by saying that I am not a fan of apricots but for the sake of a fair review I tried them anyway and was pleasantly surprised. The plump fruit tasted something akin to raisins and dates with a thick overtone of honey, and while I’m neither a fan of apricots, dates or honey the taste was buttery and refreshing and were I a fan of apricots I would certainly opt for these succulent non-dehydrated natural fruits.

Apple-2-the-core -This snack is made from 100% organic apples and the bag contains 35grams (a single serving) which weighs in at a healthy 110 calories, 0g of fat and 27g of carbs. Apples are among my favorite fruits, the sweetness of them often satisfies my chocolate cravings following meals and the fiber in them is great for eliminating bad cholesterol from the body. Peeled Inc.’s apples maintain their sweetness without being sticky and are light without leaving you feeling as though you haven’t eaten a snack at all.

Cherry-go-round – This snack is made from natural Bing cherries, although they are not organic they are fresh. The bag contains 42grams (a single serving) which weighs in at a healthy 130 calories, 0g fat and 30g carbs. Cherries are also one of my favorite fruits because of the sweet tart flavor. The one disappointment I had with the Cherry-go-round snack was that it lacked some of that tart taste as a dried fruit but that said they were still absolutely delicious with pure cherry overtones. My favorite aspect of the cherry was that it didn’t overpower with a sugary artificially preserved taste that many other dried fruit brands have.

Much-ado-about-Mango -This snack is made from 100% organic mangoes and the bag contains 40grams (a single serving) which weighs in at a healthy 120 calories, 0g fat and 28g carbs. The Much-ado-about-mango is by far my favorite Peeled snack, the pure taste of mango is unbelievable and nothing akin to the artificially preserved sugar coated dried mango snacks you find sold in bags at most grocery and convenience stores. My favorite aspect of this mango snack is that you can taste real mango…have you ever had a mango that was perfectly ripe? Eating these mango strips is just like eating a ripe mango without all the slippery slimy mess of a real mango so you can take them absolutely anywhere!

Banan-a-peel - This snack is made from 100% organic bananas and the bag contains 40grams (a single serving) which weighs in at a healthy 150 calories, 0.5g fat, and 38g carbs. The Banan-a-peel was the trickiest of the fruit snacks for me to review because I don’t much care for bananas in their ripe form, I love the bitterness of green bananas but yellow bananas tend to be far too sugary for my tastes but again, in the interest of a fair review I gave them a try. The smell to the banana chips was awful and nearly deterred Buzz and I both from trying the snacks at all (I enlisted his help since I’m not a banana fan!) but we both gave them a try anyway and they tasted so much better than they smelled! The one thing we noted was that the banana chips were soft and not hard and crunchy like the artificially preserved dried bananas in stores. The taste was pure ripened banana which Buzz found extremely pleasant, me? not so much, but again, not a ripe banana fan. Buzz described the taste as “fresh banana” and “like you get in banana bread” which I completely agree with because the pieces were moist and flavorful.

Pine-4-Pineapple – This snack is made from 100% organic pineapple and the bag contains 42grams (a singgle serving) which weighs in at a healthy 140 calories, 0g fat, and 36g carbs. When first opening the bag of pineapple snacks I was a little disappointed to only find three pieces of pineapple; however, after eating the whole ring sized slices I realized that had I eaten anymore than those three I would have felt sick so it turned out to be the perfect serving size. The pineapple rings weren’t nearly as tart or sweet as I had expected them to be but they were pleasantly refreshing with just enough sweetness to maintain a light clean palate.

The Pro’s:
-Healthy, organic and all natural fruit snacks that contain NOTHING but fruit, pure fruit.
-Sweet treats without excessive refined sugars.
-A sweet way to get vitamins in to your diet without forcing spinach down little necks!

The Con’s:
-Cost – $2 a bag may seem a little out of your league but try to focus on what you spend on candy or that chocolate chocolate chip muffin at Starbucks each morning.
-Not long lasting – I’m not sure that this is a con but these snacks are so tasty that they aren’t going to last long at all so you might want to hide a pack or two for yourself!

Overall each of the fruits were fresh, light and a definite healthy alternative to the other snacks offered at locations like Starbucks. While a few of the flavors weren’t ones that I would opt for again the mango pieces have most definitely become a replacement for my once or twice a week candy runs and even occasionally a replacement for my tall, skim, no whip hot chocolate as well!

Where can you buy? If you’re interested in trying Peeled snacks for yourself take a look at the store locator and find a distributor near you! My local Starbucks and Whole Foods are the nearest locations to me and each snack bag runs at approximately $2 each (the same as a Starbucks bakery snack.) If you can’t find local retailers you can always purchase Peeled snacks from their online store in larger quantities!

A Contest? Since the good folks over at Peeled, Inc. were gracious enough to offer me a sample of their fruit snacks I wanted to pass on the goods to you! I have three packs of Peeled, Inc’s snacks (apple, mango and cherry) from the samples they sent to me and will pay a visit to my local carriers of Peeled snacks to pick up six more packs so one lucky winner will receive nine packs of assorted Peeled Inc fruit snacks!

The Prize: One lucky winner will receive NINE packs of assorted Peeled Inc Fruit Snacks.

How to win: Visit Peeled, Inc and then comment on this post telling me which of the fruit snacks above you would most like to try.

Extra Entries – you MUST complete the first entry to receive extra entries:
1 entry : Follow Peeled Inc on Twitter (leave a comment below)
1 entry: Follow me publicly on Google Friend Connect (leave a comment below with your username)
1 DAILY entry: Follow me on twitter and tweet this giveaway, you can use the tweet below if you so wish (leave a comment with your tweet URL for EACH tweet)

Enter to win NINE packs of @PeeledSnacks over @mevolving and get your organic snack on!

http://tinyurl.com/yaduwcv

3 entries: Blog about this giveaway with a link back here and a link to Peeled Snack’s all natural fruit snacks (leave three separate comments with your blog post URL)

Winners will be drawn using Random.org. The contest will end on February 23rd 11:59pm EST and the winner will be e-mailed from the information left in comments so make sure you leave an e-mail address where I can contact you!

Open to residents of the U.S. 18+
ONE set of entries per household

I received a sample of Peeled fruit snacks in order to provide a fair product review; however, the opinions expressed in this post are my own and were not a result of any compensation.

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