The intriguing evolution of Fruit Roll-Ups through the years

Today we're rolling out the red carpet to figure out how much fruit is actually in a fruit roll-up. The fruit roll-up's roll-out actually started at the beginning of the 20th century. In the Little Syria neighborhood of New York City, Syrian immigrant George Shalhoub began to sell apricot paste imported from his home country, but its real name was Amardine. Amardine continued to be a local favorite until the 1940s, when the entire neighborhood of Little Syria was demolished to make room for New York's Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Many businesses, including Shalhoub's sweet shop were forced to relocate to Brooklyn. A new location also meant a new name for George Shalhoub and son. The titular son had grown up to be a man with a son of his own, and so the shop became Joseph Shalhoub and son. The new son was Louis Shalhoub. Louis was tired of snipping apricot paste off giant sheets in his family store and dreamed of selling Amardine on a larger scale. He and his wife Madeline went about the arduous process of hand-cutting the paste into small circles, hanging them to dry, rolling them up, and packing them for sale in single servings. Louis named the fledgling manufacturing business Joe Ray In 1960 they sold their first individually wrapped fruit leather which they called a fruit roll and by the 1970s the brand was spotlighted in a trade publication and Louis laid out the process of making his popular fruit rolls in surprising detail this proved to be good news for fruit roll-up fans but bad news for Joe Ray because after years of research and detailed production plans General Mills was about to rock the world with its own version of Louis Shalhoub's family recipes. General Mills finally released its fruit roll-up in 1983. Rather than a simple apricot puree, General Mills' fruit roll-ups were primarily made from pear puree concentrate, maltodextrin, sugar, natural flavors, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial colors, and pectin, which is a naturally occurring gelling agent found in fruits. Like many supposedly healthy foods of the 80s and 90s, fruit roll-ups were eventually found to be less than ideal when it came to their sugar content. In 2011, the Center for Science and the Public Interest sued General Mills over its misleading marketing. CSPI claimed that General Mills advertised fruit roll-ups as nutritious and healthy when in reality they contained about as much nutritional value as a serving of gummy bears. CSPI argued that fruit roll-ups weren't so much fruit snacks as they were fruit-inspired candy and that argument ultimately proved to be completely true we know fruit roll-ups aren't great for you but they've got fruit in their name just how much real fruit is in one of those delicious plastic wrap sheets the unfortunate answer is not much that same 2011 lawsuit the Center for Science and the Public Interest pointed out that there were actually no strawberries in the strawberry flavored fruit roll-up zero and so General Mills is not allowed to print pictures of real strawberries on its Fruit Roll-Ups packaging. The ingredients in modern fruit roll-ups are surprisingly similar to the ones found in the original roll-out. They still contain around 7 grams of sugar, and they're just as tasty as they were in 1983.