Fresh soursop (top)and Freeze Dried soursop (bottom)

Freeze Dried Soursop – Everything you wanted to know

Freeze dried soursop is a rare and usually food product indeed. As more and more people discover the wonderful benefits of soursop fruit and soursop leaves they start wondering what other foods come from the tropical fruit tree. The answer is freeze dried soursop fruit.

So what is freeze dried soursop fruit?

It is the soursop fruit pulp dried using a desiccating process called freeze-drying.  A low-temperature dehydration process is used on food products to remove water – it involves freezing the product, lowering pressure, then removing the ice by sublimation (ice turns into gas). This is in contrast to dehydration using heat to remove water. The freeze dried end product is pieces of soursop pulp that look like popcorn or chips. It is dry, crunchy, and sweet. But yet the freeze-drying process retains 99% of the nutrients compared to the fresh product.

Why do people eat foods made from the soursop tree, including its fruit and leaves?

The most famous compounds found in the tree. It is called acetogenin compounds (AGEs). Acetogenins block nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, which is part of the membrane of cancer cells. Soursop has high concentrations of AGEs, found is in its fruit, stems and leaves.

Soursop fruit also contains many minerals, including calciummagnesium, and iron. In one cup of the fruit (or about 1/8 of a cup of freeze dried soursop) provides 46.4 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C in one cup of soursop pulp, which is over half the recommended daily amount for adults. For context, women need 75 mg of vitamin C per day, and men need 90 mg.

Advantages of  freeze dried soursop fruit

One of the challenges with soursop fruit is that it only grows in tropical and sub-tropical climates. You might see a soursop tree in Florida in the U.S., but even then it’s rare. The tree is very sensitive to temperature so if it gets cold enough to see frost on the ground then it means that a soursop tree will not thrive in that environment even if the rest of the year temperatures are in the 80s and 90s (25 to  35 C).

soursop fruit on tree

Soursop fruit on a tree in Malaysia

So the fruit has to be grown in the tropics. However, that means it is grown in South America, the Caribbean, and equatorial Asia (like Malaysia) and Africa. Soursop is a large fruit and it is heavy with water. It also has a thick green spiny skin. So shipping it in its fresh form can be expensive.

The advantage that freeze dried soursop fruit has is that the water is removed in the freeze drying process. Freeze-drying process and so it is light like a chip and crunchy too. So it is much cheaper to ship.

Where can I buy freeze dried soursop fruit?

You can buy freeze dried soursop fruit from specialty food suppliers like SoursopStore.com in the U.S. and from SoursopStore.ca in Canada.

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