A few days ago, I came across this article about invented a technique invented by some Swedish graduate students for turning fruits and vegetables into powder.
That's right, powder. They call it FoPo.
The point of the the new product is to have shelf-stable (they supposedly keep for up to two years), easily shippable food that can be sent to disaster sites, thus improving the diets of people attempting to recover from disasters. According to the article, the fruit powders at least taste a lot like the original fruit and can be mixed with other foods for eating.
I'm not sure exactly how adding powdered fruit to an emergency diet helps refugees, though powdered vegetables might provide nutrients that would not otherwise be available. Then again, adding different flavors to a bland emergency diet might be enough of a benefit in itself, especially if the product is not expensive to make.
Powdered emergency foods (think pemmican) have been available since prehistoric times, but this is the first effort I've heard about that adds produce to the powdered repertoire. It will be interesting to see whether the new powders will become a part of emergency foodstuffs everywhere or fall by the wayside on practicality grounds.
