The ingredients in our Vejo blends are freeze-dried to preserve nutrients, increase shelf life, and reduce food waste; all while exposing you to new food types that we handpick with our scientists and nutritionists.

In crafting Vejo blends, we source only the most nutrient-rich produce from our farms. To ensure that you get those same nutrients when you enjoy your blend, we’ve utilized a process called freeze-drying—it’s how we can maintain consistency with every blend that comes to your door and lock in the nutrients that make Vejo blends so deliciously healthy. 

Our fruits and vegetables are harvested at peak ripeness and immediately frozen. Then, through a process called lyophilization, we lower the temperature and decrease the air pressure around them, which turns their water into a vapor, which is then removed.  The remaining ingredients are ground into a finished powder which retains the majority of the produce’s compound nutrients that are immediately refreshed when they come into contact with liquid or become rehydrated in your Vejo blender.

Figure 1.1: Lyophilization Process

Benefits Received from our Freeze-drying Process

1. Freeze-Drying Preserves Nutrients

In most conventional farming practices, fruits and vegetables are harvested well before they’re ripe, and before they’re dense with micronutrients and antioxidants. They are then loaded into trucks and shipped to grocery stores, where heat and light continue to degrade the nutritional value of the produce.

Through our process, farmers are able to pick the fruits and vegetables when they are at their peak ripeness, and then utilize freeze-drying to preserve the nutrients. This means when you enjoy any of our daily blends, like Pacific Northwest Tart Berry or Strawberry Banana, you’re getting micronutrients and antioxidants straight off the vine.

2. Freeze-Drying Increases Shelf-Life

While we always encourage eating whole fruits and vegetables, we also know it can be difficult to eat them before they go bad. The freeze-drying process not only preserves the nutrients in our fruits and vegetables, but it also increases their overall shelf life. By removing moisture before grinding our ingredients into a powder, we’re extending the life of fruits and vegetables from a few days to a few months.

For example, our Clean Greens blend contains organic fuji apples, cucumber, spinach, and sea buckthorn. You can make the most of their nutrients (fiber, phytonutrients, lutein, antioxidants, and more) on your own time, as opposed to those store-bought ingredients going bad in your fridge.

3. Freeze-Drying Reduces Food Waste

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, approximately 40% of food in the United States goes to waste¹. Yet, one in eight Americans doesn’t have enough food to put on their table. The primary reason for this is due purely to visual aesthetics, misshapen or blemished fruits, and vegetables that are disposed of before they even get to the grocery store.

At Vejo, we don’t care how our fruits and vegetables look. We just care that they’re nutrient-dense, sustainably raised, and organic whenever possible. By using our freeze-drying process, we ensure that nothing goes to waste or is needlessly disposed of because of an odd shape. If it’s nutritious, it makes the cut. 

At Vejo, we’re rethinking how you can incorporate nutritious fruits and vegetables into your daily routine, and freeze-drying is a big piece of that. Next time you drink one of our blends, know you’re getting the same nutrient-dense ingredient that was harvested from the farm, as well as reducing food waste at the same time.

Figure 1.2: Vejo’s Freeze-Drying Benefits

Just Add Water & Blend

Our farm-to-blender process ensures the produce that makes your blends has been picked at peak ripeness, freeze-dried on site to retain 97% of it’s nutrients, and powdered so that when you simply add water and blend, you are drinking the freshest, most nutritious fruit and vegetables you can buy.  And you can be comfortable knowing that by supporting sustainable farming and processing, you’re not only doing something good for yourself, but for the planet as well.

References:

1. Gunders D. Wasted: how America is losing up to 40 percent of its food from farm to fork to landfill. NRDC Issue Paper. 2012;12-06B.