Emerging Technologies in Dried Fruit Snacks: Nutritional Enrichment and Sustainable Production

Entrenched eating habits, characterized by the consumption of highly processed foods rich in energy, fat, sugar, and salt, as well as eating snacks between meals or replacing meals with snacks, alongside inadequate intake of fruits and vegetables, have harmful effects on human health. Due to the seasonality of raw materials and limited access to fresh fruit and vegetables, the surplus is often available on the market in dried form, which could be stored much longer. Thus, fruits and vegetable snacks produced through diverse drying techniques are gaining commercial importance within global food processing. However, each process affects the food quality. In this review, a different novel process was presented for obtaining high-nutritional dried snacks, which can help with the enrichment of the dried fruit snacks, including vacuum impregnation, osmotic dehydration, edible coatings, and modifications of the drying process. For this purpose, nonthermal methods applicable to drying were described, such as pulsed electric field, ultrasound treatment, high hydrostatic processing, pulsed light, and cold plasma. Furthermore, different drying methods, including hybrid drying, were presented as methods for obtaining healthy dried snacks. Moreover, some aspects of safety, microbial quality, and storage conditions were discussed for keeping a good quality of dried snacks. The article concludes with guidance for obtaining and maintaining high-quality dried snacks and provides recommendations for future research.