One-pound bags of FruitFast premium dried fruit are on sale through Sunday.

Looking for an easy way to add the Power of Fruit to your daily diet? Perhaps you’re helping your family take advantage of the numerous health benefits of these wonderful fruits. It’s easy to do both with premium dried fruit from FruitFast!

Add dried montmorency tart cherries to your salad with lunch or dinner. Mix a handful of dried wild blueberries or dried cranberries into your yogurt or oatmeal with breakfast. There are some many ways to enjoy these delicious, all-natural dried fruits. Find plenty more on the FruitFast Blog.

Now through Sunday, save 25% on one-pound bags of premium dried fruit!

Stock up for the coming holiday season, purchase gifts for family and friends, or replenish you personal supply with our lowest prices ever on premium dried fruit!

• Sweetened Montmorency Tart Cherries
Regular Price $9.00, Sale Price $6.75
• Unsweetened Montmorency Tart Cherries
Regular Price $16.00, Sale Price $12.00
• Wild Blueberries – Sweetened
Regular Price $14, Sale Price $10.50
• Cranberries – Sweetened
Regular Price $5.00, Sale Price $3.75

Tart cherries covered in dark chocolate make an excellent holiday gift.

Know someone who deserves a great gift or special thank you? Treat them to a one-pound bag of our chocolate-covered dried cherries! Choose from Dark Chocolate Covered Cherries or Milk Chocolate Covered Cherries. Both make excellent holiday gifts!

• Dark Chocolate Tart Cherries
Regular Price $9.00, Sale Price $6.75
• Milk Chocolate Tart Cherries
Regular Price $9.00, Sale Price $6.75

These are the lowest prices ever offered on our 1 lb. bags of dried fruit. Take advantage of this special pricing and fill your shopping list for:
• Holiday Hostess Gifts
• Thank-You’s
• Stocking Stuffers
• Cookies, Muffins, Desserts and Entrees
• Personal Indulgence – Don’t you deserve a treat?

Click here to shop online or call one of our customer service specialists at 877-591-3101 to order by phone.

FruitFast’s Berry Cherry Challenge is underway now through April 5, 2011.   It’s your chance to show off your cooking and baking talents and creativity in this first ever recipe contest to win $250 in cash OR a brand new KitchenAid Tilt Head Mixer.

www.speckmanphotography.com

FruitFast staffers/ cooks will judge the entries in the two categories – Entrées and Desserts.  In our first round of judging, we’ll rank the entries based on their originality, ease of preparation and creative use of the FruitFast product(s).  Those receiving the highest marks will move to the second phase of judging where we will be looking for originality, ease of preparation, taste and creative use of fruit.

Submissions may also be accompanied with photos or videos, but these are not necessary and contestants must be 18 or older.  You can find all the answers to your questions by reading the Berry Cherry Challenge rules here.  Or you may email your questions to me, debbie@fruitfast.com.

It’s simple to enter:  fill out the entry form and email as an attachment to my email address, or print and mail or fax your favorite Entrée or Dessert recipe before the deadline at midnight on April 5^th.

We’ll be featuring the winners and their creations on our website, blog and on Facebook, along with other FruitFast recipes you share.

So don’t delay!  Participate today by sending in your favorite recipes.

Food labels don’t tell us what foods to eat, but they contain vitally important information in making your decisions of what to buy and consume. 

Basically there are two important parts to reading a food or supplement label; the nutrition or supplement facts and the ingredients.

Nutrition and Supplement Facts -  The nutrition or supplement facts tell us the amount of calories, protein, carbohydrates, sugars, fiber,  saturated fats, vitamins and minerals that a product contains per serving.  Be sure to note the amount of sugars, saturated and trans fats as these compounds should be limited, according to the USDA.

Ingredients List -  The list of ingredients is key to note when purchasing any type of food or supplement.  It lets you know what a product contains, such as unhealthy chemicals.  If a label contains more than a few unpronounceable compounds, chances are it’s not a nutritious choice.  The Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers to list the ingredients with the largest quantities first and the smallest quantities last.

Read and compare our FruitFast labels with others.  Take, for instance, our juice concentrates, they contain only one ingredient – 100% juice without added water, fillers or preservatives.  And our proprietary line of fruit softgels, like CherryFlex, Wild Blueberry and Pomegranate, contain USA grown pure fruit as their first listed ingredients.

FruitFast recognizes the importance of letting our customers know the nutritional facts and ingredients in all our products.  You’ll find certificates of analysis conducted by outside professional laboratories posted on our website.  Have  questions about our product ingredients?   We invite you to give us a call toll free at 1-877-591-3101.

Conducted by the International Food Information Council (IFIC), survey findings indicated that 89 percent of respondents agree certain foods have benefits beyond basic nutrition.  And this is a significant increase from just two years ago, says the IFIC.

The Health Consumer Trending Survey found Americans making the connection that they are what they eat.  Elizabeth Rahavi, RD and associate director of wellness at IFIC, said “Consumers’ awareness of many food and health relationships has reached an all-time high.”

According to the survey, the top functional foods named by consumers are: 1) fruits and vegetables; 2) fish, fish oil, seafood; 3) dairy (including milk and yogurt); 4) meat and poultry; and 5) herbs/spices, among others. But beyond consumer interest in individual foods, research shows people are increasingly associating nutrients with specific health benefits for:

• bone and heart health
• antioxidants for protection against free radicals
• healthy immune systems
• omega 3 fatty acids for cognitive health 1

But as you might expect, saying and doing are two different things.  Maintaining a healthy diet – that includes plenty of fruits, antioxidants, beneficial oils and phytonutrients – is the key.

We invite you to browse our website and research the natural goodness that can always be found in FruitFast products.

1   www.foodinsight.org/

Regular exercise is part of the answer, says the online health site WebMD, along with diet and good sleep habits.  It doesn’t mean you have to buy a costly gym membership necessarily, but chances are you will only stick to your fitness regime if you enjoy what you are doing.  Whether it’s walking, biking, running, tennis, or just taking the steps instead of the elevator, you have to  make it an ongoing part of your lifestyle.  Exercising with a friend is another suggestion to help with the consistency, too, and keep you moving.

When it comes to diet,  a healthy dose of willpower doesn’t hurt either.  Eat well-balanced meals three times a day, control your portions and no binge eating.  That last one’s tough, too.  Stay away from the junk food, and as my boss says, if a product has a long list of ingredients you can’t pronounce, don’t eat it!

FruitFast has some excellent choices when it comes to healthy foods to include in your daily diet.  I’ll be happy to tell you about our Super Fruit juice concentrates in great tasting flavors like tart cherry, pomegranate and wild blueberry, or our line of popular fruit softgels and our low calorie FruitFast bars.  Talk about good for you – these are delicious and make adding more fruit to your diet easy for you and your family.

So give us a call … toll free at 1-877-591-3101 … and we’ll help you on your way to a healthy 2010!

This time of year brings with it personal promises of ways to improve our lives and associations.  And there’s no harm in reminding ourselves that there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Top 10 lists for a brighter year ahead traditionally advocate a variety of lifestyle changes.  Take www.about.com and their advice to fit in fitness, stop smoking and drinking, spend more time with family and friends and simplify life.  AARP.org takes a similar slant at enhancing our existence:  Get out and party, laugh a lot, take naps, dance, get regular exercise, make whoopee and enjoy the great outdoors.

My approach can be summed up in the word “straightforward.”   To me it means forging ahead with dreams and vision, and setting clear-cut goals for this company.  Simplify whenever possible to keep life less complicated.

As FruitFast greets a new year, we’ll continue taking pure USA-grown fruits and developing down-to-earth products for notable health benefits.  We look forward to offering our customers innovative supplements and food products backed by top-flight scientific research.

In 2010, you can bet FruitFast will once again be straightforward in delivering the power of fruit for healthier living.

Happy New Year!

Just in time for the Holidays, we are offering customers a savings of $2.00 per bag on all of our one-pound bags of dried fruit – that’s USA grown Montmorency red tart cherries, balaton cherries and wild blueberries.

If you are looking for tried and true, tasty recipes, you have come to the right place.  Gourmet cook Debbie Colaianni shares her world of culinary delights on the FruitFast Recipe blog.  She welcomes your favorite Thanksgiving dishes, too, at Debbie@fruitfast.com.

Order today by calling toll free 1-877-599-3101.  We’re here to help you!

The timing couldn’t be better either, as another study has just been released, and it’s yet another affirmation that Wild Blueberries are, indeed, a Superfruit! The additional scientific findings – this time from researchers at Cornell University – confirms that Wild Blueberries have a greater antioxidant content than many common fruits such as apples, bananas and red grapes.

Appearing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, study results found that Wild Blueberries performed well in new tests measuring their cellular antioxidant activity. The fruit had already been rated among the top 10 power foods for its naturally-occurring phytonutrient levels.

If you haven’t tasted FruitFast Dried Wild Blueberries, you don’t know what you are missing. These small berries are bursting with flavor, and are perfect for use in salads, sauces, baked goods, smoothies, pancakes and waffles, or when eaten right out of the bag as a snack.

While on the topic of our wild berries, you have a choice of how to obtain their healthful properties: we offer our premium Grade A Wild Blueberries in juice concentrate form, Wild Blueberry IQ Softgels and Wild Blueberry Fruit Supplement Bars. You’ll also find them in our MixedBerry Liquid Fruit Supplement.

With these healthy choices, you can’t go wrong.