Few purchases do more to remind you of your own questionable parenting skills than a delicious, all-natural snack your children won't touch. For me, the latest slap of reality would come via Funky Monkey Snacks, a new line of freeze-dried fruit that comes without added sugar, preservatives, flavors or colors, and as a result tastes like a crunchy, munchy version of the same fruit plucked fresh off the vine. Yum, right? Well, after visiting the company's site and being sold on its basic messages -- Gluten-, wheat- and dairy-free! Delicious in ice cream and yogurt! Three full servings of fruit per ounce! -- I was hooked, and so I asked the nice folks at Funky Monkey for a few bags of their all-natural wares to sample.
When the samples arrived, the kids and I opened them with wide eyes -- they because they thought we were getting another video game to review; I because I was eager to dive into the Bananamon (banana and cinnamon, already a favorite when not freeze-dried) and Purple Funk (bananas tempered with a dose of super-healthy açaí berries) before hitting the Jivealime (pineapple and real lime juice -- awesome) and Carnaval Mix (banana, pineapple, apple, papaya and rasins).
As expected, once past the unfamiliar sensation of crunching into fruit they normally understand as soft and ripe, my kids alternated from flat-out ambivalence (my oldest) to spitting out what little I could bribe them into letting pass their lips (my 5- and 2-year-olds). But theirs were mostly textural, not taste, concerns: As for me, despite my own initial surprise at the crunchy texture (we're talking a good, solid CRUNCH!, not the sort of rubbery nibble you get from most freeze-dried fruit), I found everything to taste like an astronaut-food version of its fresh-picked equivalent, with the Jivealime and Purple Funk in particular having a nice sour edge to complement their natural, not-too-sugary sweetness.
Here's hoping your kids' palates aren't tainted enough by gummi textures or artificial sweeteners to enjoy Funky Monkey's natural alternatives. The snacks retail for $1.99-2.49 and are available at Whole Foods, Kroger, Winn Dixie and a slew of other retailers, and when I'm not writing about them, you can find me munching the things around the house while the kids stick out their tongues and go, "Eeeeewwww!"
Jerks.
