Review: Stretch Island Natural Fruit Strips

Far too often, fruit snacks taste more like sweetened gummy candy than real fruit. Stretch Island Fruit Co. takes a different approach with its all-natural fruit strips. Each of the thick strips contains a half serving of fruit. Can natural fruit snacks taste good? I purchased the Summer Strawberry, Orchard Cherry and Autumn Apple fruit strips to find out.

Stretch Island Natural Fruit Strips
Available in seven flavors, these all-natural snacks made with real fruit puree are free of artificial additives and gluten-based ingredients. Each .5-ounce strip is made from a blend of fruit purees with no added sweeteners

Taste and Appearance
Each fruit strip has a strong fruity fragrance and is a rectangle approximately 3 inches long, 1.5 inches wide and 1/8-inch thick. There are no seeds or inconsistencies in the smooth strips. The strawberry strips are a familiar shade of red, but the cherry strips are reddish-brown and the apple ones are beige with green undertones.

To me, the colors reflect natural fruit. However, they proved unappealing to others and I could not get anyone to try the apple flavor.

The fruit strips are sticky to the touch and the texture is more leathery, or firm, than chewy.

Fruity flavors shine and the cherry and apple strips have notes of tartness found in fresh cherries and green apples. Both flavors closely resemble the taste of fresh fruit. The strawberry is especially sweet and reminiscent of other fruit snacks.

Nutrition Content
The ingredient label contains simple, recognizable foods. Each flavor contains a blend or fruit purees, natural fruit flavor and lemon juice. The fat-free strips each contain 45 calories with 9 grams sugars and 1 gram fiber. Visit StretchIslandFruit.com for complete nutrition information.

Price and Availability
I purchased these at Sprouts for fifty-nine cents each. The Stretch Island Fruit Co. website has a handy store locator to find a retailer in your area. The natural fruit snacks are also available online from the manufacturer and Amazon.com.

Stretch Island Coupons
Coupons are periodically available on the manufacturer website and Facebook page. I previously found a coupon in the free booklet at Sprouts.

Room for Improvement
It was difficult to identify the flavors at the check-out display. Most of the package colors look similar or do not clearly indicate the flavor at first glance. Of the seven available flavors, two come in orange wrappers and four come in similar hues -- including purple, maroon, raspberry and red.

The package perforation tears the wrapper open lengthwise and does not leave much room to grip the fruit leather while eating. A perforation across the top would make it easy to eat the sticky treat without having to touch it.

The Last Bite
Stretch Island Natural Fruit Strips are satiating and flavorful. The thick texture did not prove kid-friendly, but I will occasionally purchase these for myself in the future.