Taking Fruits & Veggies Into Outer Space

How’d your kids like to ride one of these babies during Back to School?

Each of the freeze dryers that Ruvi is dried in weigh around 23,000 lbs and are roughly the size of a school bus.

As you can imagine, freeze dryers of this size put out a lot of product. One of the freeze dryers can dry up to 9,000 lbs of food in a single day! (That’s almost enough to feed a teenage boy after a full day of school.)

Part of the magic behind Ruvi is that the fruits and vegetables in it are freeze dried. Because of this, it contains some of the most nutrient-dense fruits & veggies you can find anywhere. Through pressure change and removing water content, nutrients are preserved long-term.

Freeze drying requires pressure that is 1000x less than the air pressure at sea level, which is a lot like taking fruits & veggies into outer space! Read on to find out some seriously cool things about our freeze drying process.

Like taking fruits & veggies into outer space

Want to know why freeze dryers are kind of like alien technology from space? We’re about to tell you why. 

In order to freeze dry a fruit or veggie, it must be frozen first. We blast freeze our produce at -40°F, freezing their nutrients and taste in time. This ensures that every particle of water in the food becomes ice (more on this in a minute). Then, we insert the food into a freeze dryer, which decreases the pressure to 1000x less than pressure at sea level (which is nearly zero - like what is found in space!). This creates a vacuum effect that changes the pressure from normal to near-space level, all in the course of about 20 minutes. 

The absolutely fascinating thing is that because of the lack of pressure in outer space, water cannot exist as a liquid. Therefore, without pressure, water turns straight into a gas. So, when we decrease the pressure inside of a freeze dryer 1000x, the ice crystals in our frozen food turn to a vapor through a process called sublimation. That vapor is then sucked down into the bottom of the tank at the speed of sound where it is converted back into solid ice when it comes in contact with super cold coils. Then, the coils melt the ice and send it out of the tank.

The reason we blast freeze the fruits and vegetables before freeze drying is because every single particle of water in the food must be converted to ice, so that the vacuum effect sucks the ice particles out of the produce. If liquid were present, the pressure in the dryers would cause the food to boil and lose taste and nutrients.

With the combination of the extremely low pressures - as well as gentle heat - ice crystals become water vapor - an effect referred to as sublimation - and nearly all of the water content is extracted from the food. Because bacteria cannot grow without water content, this process preserves the food long-term. In addition, this process of sublimation ensures that food keeps its shape and nutrients and taste are not sacrificed.

Pretty insane, right?

Hey! Want to know something else crazy?

If you were inside of the freeze dryer when the pressure decreased to 1000x less than sea level, your lungs would likely explode due to the difference in pressure inside your lungs vs. outside of them. This is the same reason you cannot breathe in space - it's a pressure thing!

Whether you find that super cool or super disturbing is up to you!

You know what mama told you

In truth, Ruvi really needs no explanation. That’s because everyone knows fruits & veggies are good for them. We can talk about the cool things about freeze drying all day, but at the end of it all, we all understand that fruits & veggies are the building blocks of excellent nutrition. 

When you experience Ruvi, you remember why your mama told you to ‘eat your fruits and veggies.” Ruvi has nothing added in, and nothing taken out. We cared enough about your health to not add anything weird in.

We invite you to get the fruits & veggies you need every single day so you can experience the energy, focus, and digestion you’ve been searching for. Subscribe to get 10% off Ruvi and never miss a ‘beet’ (and 25 other fruits & veggies).

A deeper look into the freeze dryers

Here's a look inside of one of the massive freeze dryers. Foods are put on trays that sit in between the heating plates you see here.

While the plates themselves reach about 140°C, our foods reach an internal temperature of only about 80°C, preserving most of the nutrients, including most of the vitamins and many of the enzymes.

Because we are able to pick our produce ripe, and ship it cold, the nutritional content of our freeze dried produce far exceeds that of most produce you can find at the grocery store.

This is also far above and beyond other drying methods that superheat foods and kill most, if not all, of the vitamins and enzymes.