Recently, a new “top stream” has become popular: “looks like fruit, eats like snacks, prices like luxury goods”。
“0 sugar cane, low sugar ceilings”, “no oil, no sugar, only strawberries in the distribution table, no additives, and pregnant mothers can eat strawberries in space”, “ascientists eat strawberries in space”, and under the marketing of net reds and anchors, people rush into the live studios to buy them。
The live feed is aimed at a line of frozen dry fruit, with red dry strawberries firmly in “c” position, anchoring comments about dry apples, mango drys, fig drys, etc., into transparent tanks, and a “blackberries more” screen。
Frozen strawberries have become a fashion consumption under the anly of net-red snackers, with chocolate-covered frozen strawberries placed on ice cream or mixed into yogurt bowls. In the precise market, the unit price of such frozen strawberries exceeds $150 per pound and is 8 to 10 times the price of fresh strawberries。
However, this high-end snack is “falling” before the young people's home is finished。
On 13 march, the new kyoto newspaper reported that a merchant, through the eurofins third party testing agency, had self-inspected a shipment of frozen strawberries that had been found to be as high as 0. 728 mg/kg of heavy metal, almost 14 times above the standard, and had detected more than 20 over-scope pesticide residues, including highly toxic pesticides such as kbavier, which had been banned in 2019 in the country. Soon, topics such as “frozen strawberry detection of more than 20 pesticides” hit the hot list。
Irritated netizens mocked themselves at the "old eaters wrongly boarded the guillotine" and consumers thought that the frozen strawberries bought at high cost were healthy snacks, the ceiling, which could have resulted in pesticide "concentrated pills"。
There are those who “scrambling out of poverty” and who do not buy frozen strawberries can last forever, but in practice, some strawberry ice cream, strawberry cereals, strawberry cakes may be made of faulty frozen strawberries。
01 the magic drift of a venomous strawberry
From the field to the table, the food is subject to a layer of examination to reach the market。
At the plant level, agricultural and rural authorities in various localities are required to provide guidance to growers in the issuance of certificates of conformity, and before processing and marketing, the market supervision authority is required to urge producers to verify the certification and check the products being sold。
Then why is there poison dryberries on the market
According to the ninjing newspaper, there is a problematic industrial chain behind a frozen strawberry, pesticide abuse at the planting end, fraudulent processing-end testing reports, and even the specialized purchase of obsolete, over-standard frozen strawberry。
In january, lin liqin, head of fujian-thai valley food company ltd., was exposed on social platforms, and there were problems of heavy metal excess and pesticide residues in frozen strawberries produced by companies。
Through testing, ling liqin identifies the problem as coming from raw materials supplied by upstream manufacturers and reports the supplier to the market regulator in the location of the upstream plant. The regulator indicated that the national marker did not have a freeze on strawberry cadmium and was not eligible for filing。
However, it is magical that after the web sound, lin liqin was contacted by a number of people in the industry who were willing to deal with the problem of dry strawberries and who said that “the specifications of the product, the date of production, etc. Can be written as the product is sold slowly”. Another company, the staff of conmily natural foods (thai) ltd., contacted lin liqin and stated that heavy metal agricultural residues or products were acceptable when they expired and were recycled into powder for production of products such as ice cream。
Ninjing newspaper journalists visited the strawberry production site and found that in yunnan province, yong-in county, chuyu region, and chongsai county, xinyang city, strawberry plantations contained a large number of pesticides that could not be used for strawberry cultivation, such as thorium and dichlorvos. Due to resistance from pesticide misuse pests, the head of the farm shop in norma village, dzongkhag county, stated that many pesticides were almost ineffective in local strawberry cultivation。
Immediately after the exposure of the case, sam dropped off his “botherless organic strawberry” commodity, and many of the electric operators selling them lost links。
If you can't eat them, can you eat them
“frozen drying is more harmful than fresh strawberries, as it cannot be mitigated and treated by washing and leaching. Strawberries are good, blueberries are good. After freezing dry, pesticide residues cannot be removed, whereas excess pesticide residues are currently common congestion points in chinese plantations.” china food industries analyst, zhu danbong, vice-president of the food safety promotion council of guangdong province, said。
According to fan zhihong, a professor at the school of food sciences and nutrition engineering of the chinese university of agriculture, “the fruit and vegetables themselves do not produce heavy metals in a vacuum. If there is a problem with heavy metal excesses in fresh fruit, most of the soil and water sources may be contaminated, and even if they are not grown later, there is a risk of heavy metal contamination as well.”
The raw materials for this frozen strawberry product were sourced from young-in county, chuyu county, yunnan province, and chongze county, chiang city, both formerly mineral resource-rich areas. According to historical records published by the yunnan department of civil affairs, tsingzawa county, historically known as the “ten-nam copper town”, has a history of copper mining and smelting for over 3,000 years. Cadmium is usually found as impurity in lead and zinc ores, and in long-term mining, large amounts of cadmium sludge, wastewater is discharged into soil and water sources。
Strawberries, on the other hand, are a multi-year herbivorous plant with well-developed roots and strong absorptive capacity, and therefore have a “gold” quality. According to a study by china's inorganic analytic chemistry, a study of fruits and soil in chengdu plains by experts found that strawberry cadmium had the highest excess rates。
But that does not mean that strawberries cannot be eaten, with the country's prevailing strawberry cultivation, which is dominated by solar greenhouses and plastic sheds, accounting for 85 per cent, with zero chemical pesticides and biological control in some advanced production areas, and a 60 per cent decrease in chemical use across the country from 10 years ago. In the face of the unregulated use of pesticides by a number of occupant and small farmers, fan zhihong expressed the need to strengthen scientific and technical guidance to farmers and strengthen traceability mechanisms for agricultural products in order to block them from sources。
A small frozen dry strawberries, just the tip of the iceberg of frozen dry food, permeable almost most of life。
Frozen-dry technology and hard work
Many people have office drawers with frozen strawberry, yogurt, coffee, etc. In the afternoon, battered workers “continue” with these snacks, which are used by fitness workers instead of sugary snacks, which the “students party” mixes into yogurt for breakfast, and used by the baby as “no added snacks”。
Fd, freeze dry, i. E. Freezing fresh fruit at short notice, in a vacuum environment, making the ice glacial, without destroying its form and nutrition。
In fact, the tundra technology was not used in the food sector at first, but to save lives. During the second world war, experts developed this technology in order to transport plasma and penicillin over long distances。
In the 1960s, the national space agency of the united states, in an effort to solve the dietary problems of space missions, improved the technology of freezing drying for use in space foods, resulting in the birth of famous astronaut ice cream。
To date, many frozen dry snacks still prefer to label themselves as space technology。
The first report on frozen dried fruit was an article in the 2013 ziru evening. “how can you achieve this if you want to eat fruit from the americas in asia and from the summer in winter?” the chairman of cybert, a highly processed foreign trade enterprise, promoted frozen dry fruit。
Frozen dried fruit captures the “fruit freedom” consumption itching point and is beginning to become popular in the country。
With the development of the electrician economy, between 2015 and 2018, three squirrels and weeds of the country's recreational zero-food brands rose and frozen dried fruit began to dry as high-end fruit, breaking the unhealthy image of traditional fried fruit。
In three squirrels' flag shop, the price of frozen dry snacks is five times higher than that of traditional fried snacks。
The quantity of frozen dried fruit is small and easy to eat, compared to fresh fruit, which is much healthier than fried fruit, which is low in sugar. Some vendors also promote frozen dry fruit “select organic base materials, green without hazard; stand-alone organic code, traceable throughout”。
At a time when consumers are increasingly focusing on health, freezing drys are gradually linked to the labels of fresh locks, health, etc., leading to the break-through。
The panorama of china's free dry food industry at 2025, published by the forward industrial research institute, showed that china's frozen dry market reached 3. 8 billion yuan in 2024, with the largest demand for fruit-like dry foods, at 39 per cent。
Fan chi-hong explained that freezing dry dehydration was currently the best method of processing for the preservation of nutrients, which preserved vitamins and did not introduce contamination, but could not eliminate heavy metals. It was therefore crucial to strengthen the testing of raw materials and ensure their safe quality。
The freezing of dried fruit, which was intended to keep the nutrients locked, is a step of “locking”, which may magnify the problem。
03 promotion of diversification of food products
“all solvents are condensed during the drying of fruit. For example, the protein content of milk, which had originally been 3 per cent, was eight times more condensed, making it 24 per cent. Similarly, heavy metal content is concentrated after dehydration and drying. So, if the same safety standards are used for the cold strawberries and the fresh strawberries, there is a situation where the proper strawberries are dried by the freeze and become ultra-standard strawberry dry.” fan chi hung says。
Healthy foods are new and the regulations are a little slower than market practice。
On 16 march, the national food safety risk assessment centre responded to the dispute over the “frozen strawberry cadmium limit” and made it clear that the freezing of strawberries should be subject to the “national standards for food safety” limits for contaminants in food products, that the cadmium content of the raw strawberries would be thorium 0. 05 mg/kg, that no additional contamination would be added to the drying process, and that the regulatory authority could push the material into compliance by detecting finished products and combining dehydration rates。
Fan zhihong believes that the lack of standards is an important and urgent issue。
“in recent years, chinese consumers have integrated paint management, weight management, nutrition management and health management in their daily lives. Consumer health awareness is strong, but health knowledge is relatively poor, giving bad traders and brands the opportunity to see the appearance of frozen strawberry food.” judambhorn said。
Both experts stated that the issue of pesticide residues and heavy metals was a management issue for agricultural systems, that there was a need for proper feedstock management by food enterprises, greater monitoring and punishment by regulatory authorities and a lack of expertise on the part of consumers to identify them。
Nevertheless, consumers could install a “pit-proof radar” for themselves。
Fan chihong noted that the underlying logic of food safety is risk assessment, which includes exposure assessment. If the actual exposure of some food is very small, for example, it is taken several times a year, each time a small package, there is no need to panic about it. She called for healthy diets to promote diversity of food products, “do not always stare at one thing, one product. Dispersing food choices would reduce the risks associated with the long-term accumulation of a polluting substance.”
Vista, look at the u. S. W. News, march 17, 2026
