Trader Joe's Fruity Flakes, Various Flavors

Fruity Flakes. Something which does not look or taste like it sounds. We saw these in the store and really couldn't understand what in the world they were supposed to be. Never mind that there was a picture of them on the side of the box. We didn't see that at the time, so it did not exist. We were going on instinct that day. Anyway, the picture on the box doesn't really help you understand the NATURE of the Fruity Flake, in our opinion. Here is a better picture of MORE Fruity Flakes than are shown on the side of the box:

Okay. There. So, hopefully you can see that these are basically chewy fruit snacks shaped like squares. We think the "flake" in the name is misleading. It made me (Shin Ae) think I was going to be eating something along the lines of fruit-flavored lichen, which, while interesting, sounded gross.

These are decidedly NOT gross.

Ingredients (Apple-Watermelon flavor): fruit (concentrated apple puree, apple juice concentrate, watermelon puree, pear puree concentrate, aronia juice concentrate), wheat fiber, natural flavor, pectin. 

How do they taste?: Yummy. Rob is a fruit snack aficionado and these are a new favorite. My fruit-hating younger son loves them. I love them. My older son has no interest in trying them because he hates all gummy things. The watermelon is very pronounced, and we don't taste apple at all. We also got the Apple-Strawberry flavor and the Apple-Raspberry flavor, and in those, too, the strawberry and raspberry flavors were predominant.

What we love:

(1) They come in little pouches so you can tote them along on a trip or throw them in lunches.

(2) They are sweetened with juice concentrate, rather than sugar. Sure, lots of people would say that juice concentrate isn't much better than sugar, but we still feel better about it, so on our blog, IT COUNTS.

(3) One more way to get our living-food-hating kid to eat something that resembles something that was alive, once.

(4) They are a better option than artificially-flavored and corn syrup-sweetened fruit snacks, if you are the sort of person who would have bought those anyway (we are).

What we don't really love:

(1) Nothing we can think of right now.

Cautions: Contains wheat fiber, and has been made on shared equipment with milk and soy.

Other dietary concerns: These are marked as a vegan product and also marked Kosher, although I don't know what all the kosher symbols mean, so I don't know what this one means, specifically. I'm guessing it's not pareve because it could contain dairy?

What can you do with this product?:

Uh, eat it. Just keeping this question for the sake of keeping all posts in the same format. Maybe you could do whatever other clever stuff with them that you'd normally do with gummy candy, though, if you really need your snacks to be multi-purpose. You know, when people roll out the gummies and cut them with aspic cutters to make flowers, butterflies, etc.?

Price:

$3.49 for a package of 6 pouches. Net wt. 4.23 oz

Do you like these? Do you know anything about Kosher symbols? If you can see the one pictured on the box, can you tell me how it differs from the others? Do you think these qualify as a "whole food?"