Frequently Asked Questions
There's much to learn about Arkopia. We hope this page will help with your questions. Thanks for visiting.
FREEZE DRIED FOOD
A: Yes. Canada imports fruits and vegetables from all over the world, and they are no longer fresh by the time they get to us in Canada. All fruits and vegetables are imported into Canada, with the exception of a small window throughout the year, from a few smaller producers, that produce a limited variety of fruits and vegetables. To make the long journey, some fruits are picked unripe, ripening inhibitors are used on some, and much of the fruit goes to waste as it goes bad before reaching the end customers. Because of this, Canada is the worst country on the planet for food waste: over 60% of food is wasted, mostly fruits and vegetables. Blueberries come from Peru, Argentina or Chili, Strawberries typically from California, Manderine oranges from China, Bananas and Mangos from Mexico and South America, Ginger from India and China, Oranges from USA, etc.
Arkopia freeze drys the fruit when it is ripe and fresh, locking in all the nutrients as FRESH then importing them. This gives a fresher and higher quality product than if fruit was first imported, then freeze dried when they are old in Canada. We reduced our food waste to absolute ZERO, save 9x on shipping cost because we do not ship the fruit with water weight, and the end result is Arkopia has the Freshest Smoothies available in Canada for a price that is better than any lesser-quality smoothies available in Canada. Canada itself is a huge country with small populations spread out over long distances. Because of freeze dry technology, even Canadians living in the most remote parts of Canada can have the freshest smoothies in Canada! To ensure highest quality control, our facilities have extensive certifications over and above anything Canada requires, and our products are tested in every way a food product can be tested. The end result is the highest possible quality for the most affordable price. Everyone wins!
A: Absolutely. The oxygen absorber is food-grade and perfectly safe. We actually leave the oxygen absorber in the shaker cup when we add water to make it, and discard it later. IF YOU ARE USING A BLENDER, DO NOT BLEND UP AND EAT THE OXYGEN ABSORBER. In the case that you have blended the oxygen absorber, you will quickly tell that your smoothie is ruined because you will get plastic in your mouth. The oxygen absorber is food grade, but it is never pleasant to eat plastic. The oxygen absorber is necessary during the packaging stage to ensure that all oxygen is removed from the food, ensuring the extremely long term shelf life. Step 1 on the packaging direction is to “remove the oxygen absorber”
A: Follow the directions and add water FIRST to the container, and then the freeze dried fruit powder on top of the water. If you add the freeze dried fruit first, some of it will clump up on the bottom of the container (same as any protein powder). Any container with a lid works, but a shaker cup works better. A shaker ball works really well to rehydrate the fresh fruit even quicker. It is also great to use a larger container than is needed, so the Smoothie has more room to slosh around when shaking. Some of the fibrous parts of the fresh fruit will take a moment to completely rehydrate, so give it a few extra seconds and a few extra shakes. Stirring with a spoon does not work well with this freeze dry technology.
A: No! The only ingredients are 100% fresh fruit (and spinach in the green smoothie). Fresh fruit has naturally occurring sugars that affect the body differently than added sugar. In Canada, it is mandatory to show the “total sugar” on the nutrition charts with the %DV, even for naturally occurring sugar. In the USA, the FDA nutrition charts are mandatory to separate “added sugar” and “naturally occurring sugar”. The %DV in the USA for our products with only naturally occurring sugar is 0%, while in Canada it is mandatory to combine the different sugars. We don’t know why Canada does this because it doesn’t make sense, but unfortunately we had to follow Canada’s rules for food labeling. You can find both the Canada and USA nutrition charts on our product pages, but it was mandatory to put the Canada nutrition chart on our packaging, which we do not agree with.
A: Our biggest complaint is that “there is too much fruit” in our smoothies (pretty good complaint if you ask us). Each of our smoothies has a full 3 servings of fruits and/or veg. The Canada Food Guide recommends 4-10 servings of fruit and vegetables each and every day, depending on the age and size of the individual (4 servings for small children, 10 servings for a working age adult). The average adult should drink 1 of our smoothies per day, plus possibly another serving of fruit throughout the day, and then about 6 servings of vegetables on top of all that. A 5 year old girl can drink an entire smoothie. Most Canadians (90%) don’t get even close to their recommended fruits and vegetables throughout the day, which end up being a strain on their own health, as well as Canada’s health care system.
If you are concerned that eating fruit is now bad for you, likely because you have heard naturally occurring sugars in fruit is bad like added sugar, it isn’t. Here’s one of many articles of interest:
“People who did not have diabetes at the beginning of the study and consumed fresh fruit in high amounts had a significantly lower risk of diabetes. Additionally, those who had diabetes at the beginning of the study and consumed high amounts of fruit had a significantly lower risk of dying from any cause, as well as a lower risk of developing cardiovascular complications.”
A: After years of Freeze Drying for ourselves, and inventing our first products in our small facility right in Canada, we quickly learned that it is too expensive to manufacture most things in Canada. As well, almost all fruits and vegetables are imported into Canada anyway, so there was no sense in freeze drying expensive-to-ship, nearly spoiled food in Canada, like what is available at our grocery stores. Its not that we can’t do it, it’s that the product we could offer would be a much lower quality for a much higher price. We received quotes, did research, and even tested products (in Canada) from multiple international sources, and settled on the best quality we could find in China. In fact, we tested multiple sources in China that all came back with superior products than other countries, and we went with the best. The farms, orchards, and facilities are the most state of the art on the planet, with the highest quality control, the most certifications, the highest quality food, and the best service, even though labour and costs are now cheaper in many other countries. All of Arkopia’s products are tested in every way that food can be tested, including Pesticide and Herbicide Test, Microbiological Test, Metals Test, Moisture Content Test, and Nutritional Tests, ensuring the highest possible quality food with super-extended freshness! Best food, best quality, best packaging, best price, best certifications, and best value to ourselves and customers.
A: We developed a specialized 4-layer thick packaging that completely protects the food 100% from moisture, oxygen, and light, making our products last almost indefinitely. The barrier material is called “Mylar”. In combination with the oxygen absorbing packet (enclosed in each package with the freeze dried smoothie), the fresh ingredients are locked in a time capsule and stay fresh almost indefinitely. This process is the same as NASA uses to send fresh food up with astronauts. Our packaging is as small and compact as possible with the minimum over-packaging required to provide the product to customers.
A: Our packaging is specialized barrier proof packaging to ensure there is ZERO wasted food. It takes a very long time for this packaging to degrade (for keeping food fresh almost indefinitely). But great news, our packing uses significantly less material than any fast food smoothie and even less material than fruits and vegetables from the grocery store. You have a choice: waste food and have lower-quality packaging that will biodegrade faster, or have ZERO wasted food and packaging that takes longer to biodegrade. Our packaging protects the food completely from moisture, oxygen and light. You can leave a smoothie in water for a month, find it later, and the food will still be dry and as fresh as when it was harvested. If you are extremely concerned with your environmental impact, keep in mind that we reduced food waste to zero in a country that is the worst for food waste, use as little packaging material as possible, reduced shipping costs and emissions by 90-95%, and no refrigeration or electrical costs to store the products.
A: Yes and no. The package is designed to make 1, 16-24oz smoothie. Once the package is opened, the freeze dried fruit is exposed to the open air, and will slowly start to absorb moisture in the atmosphere that will eventually hydrate and spoil the food. In just a few days, this shouldn’t be a problem so you could use 1 of our large smoothies to make 2 or 3 smaller Smoothies. Almost everyone enjoys the whole smoothie, including young children; it is very filling but doesn’t sit heavy. We recommend making the entire smoothie, and if you can’t finish the whole thing, refrigerate it for later that day. Once water is added, it will spoil the same as a freshly blended smoothie, because it is. We have found that the smoothie tastes freshest if you drink the rest that you put in the fridge in just a few hours. If you leave it in the fridge longer than that, it will start to loose some of its freshness, and even taste like the fruit began to ripen (same as if you left a freshly blended smoothie in the fridge for that long).
A: There is enough information available on freeze dry technology now, that everything comes down to a science. It is very complicated, expensive, and time consuming process, but it all comes down to science. For example, one way that people store food is using the science of refrigeration and freezers, which can keep food safe for days or even a year, instead of having food spoil in minutes. Restaurants also use temperature to keep food from going bad using heat, called “hot holding”, keeping the food at a high enough safe food handling temperature to inhibit bacteria growth. With freeze drying, instead of using temperature to preserve food for short periods of time, it uses moisture removal, oxygen removal, light removal, and specialized barrier packaging called mylar. When there are no factors available to degrade the food or packaging, like oxygen, light, and moisture, it lasts almost indefinitely. The way that Arkopia stores our inventory and our own personal food, it would not surprise us if the food lasted over 100 years, and not only just being edible, but as fresh & nutrient dense as the day it was made. For the longest possible shelf life, store freeze dried food in a cool, dry, dark, and stable environment. For us personally, at the time of writing this section (Dec 28, 2020), we have been freeze drying food for ourselves for 6 years.
A: Yes. Arkopia sources and produces NON-GMO food. We DID NOT pay the private company for a “NON-GMO Project Verified” sticker, because that sticker is meaningless according to the CFIA (Canada Food Inspection Agency). We did our own due diligence on the farms that we source our food from, where all food produced is NON-GMO, sun ripened, and natural. Be careful buying food from the USA if GMO is something you are concerned about, as USA is the biggest producer of GMO crops: Papayas for instance that are grown in the USA are mostly GMO.
Here is an article of interest about how meaningless “Non-Gmo Project Verified” is – according to the CFIA.
“Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) now says the “butterfly” label does not imply a non-GMO claim”: https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/04/cfia-now-says-non-gmo-project-verified-doesnt-mean-non-gmo/?fbclid=IwAR3arGHhSY-Np3IirH7wyJArNrPwE8FaP8Y4eCPYbcQUefmJY9gwx52sYXQ
A: We do not have an organic sticker on our products. Our products are tested in Canada with the best AOAC2007.1 (mod) pesticide residue tests, as well as microbiological, moisture, and metal tests. Canada has very strict standards for pesticides, and we are HUNDREDS of times under Canada’s regulations. To go with “certified” organic products, we felt that the price increase would be too high for customers, and because our goal is to help many people eat healthy, we did not want to price our products out of the affordability range of most people, as freeze dried food is already the most expensive & high quality food to produce. The CFIA (Canada food inspection agency) did a study on organically-stickered products to find that about 50% of those products were not organic, and 1.8% of the organically-stickered products had pesticide levels so high that they did not comply with Canada standards. Arkopia’s products tested so low that the equipment barely registered anything, making our products more organic than most organic-certified products in Canada! With the new organic regulations where products that are 70% organic or more can get organically certified stickers, we may consider going through the process to get this sticker in the future, if it doesn’t increase the affordability to help Canadians eat our high-end, healthy, real food products.
Here’s an article of interest: “Canada;s organic food certification system is little more than an extortion racket” https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-organic-food-certification-system-little-more-than-an-extortion-racket-report-says
A: Yes. It is deceiving with our lightweight and compact products. Fresh fruit is mostly water; on average 80-95% water content. With the freeze drying process, all the water is removed without using heat, leaving behind fresh fruit with all the nutrients as fresh, but no water. Each smoothie contains 56g of freeze dried fruit in powder form. For example, there is 454 grams in 1 pound, and our products are 56g each. 454g divided by 56g gives a percentage value of the water removed to be 81%. Spinach for example is over 95% water content, where as bananas on average are 84%. Our company has an extensive database from our research and development with detailed lists of water content values based on actual hands-on freeze drying. The government of Canada also has data on water content of different fruits and vegetables.
When developing our Freeze Dried Smoothie products, it had actually crossed our mind to leave the freeze dried fruits whole (without powdering) and putting them in a package about the size of a medium bag of chips (for marketing to customers and because it’s that much fruit). You would then have to use a blender to make the smoothie at home and the price would be significantly higher because it would be bulky to ship. We decided to save space, save packaging material, save shipping, save the planet a little bit, and powder the freeze dried fruit so that people could have a NO BLENDER smoothie, making it by just adding water, shaking and enjoying.
A: Yes. The freeze drying process does not use heat, unlike canning, dehydrating, and cooking. Freeze dried food retains up to 98% of the food value, unlike any other method of preservation that can destroy more than 50% of the food value. Freeze drying is the most expensive and luxurious way to preserve food. For an example of the power of sublimation (freeze drying), you can freeze dry yogurt and years later use it as a yogurt starter culture, you can germinate freeze dried seeds, and you can even freeze dry blood, that when rehydrated years down the road can be reintroduced back into the body (NASA freeze dried blood for space blood transfusions that they say lasts “indefinitely”). Our Freeze Dried Pure Fruit Smoothies are the Freshest Smoothies in Canada. Frozen fruit looses nutrition every day it is in the freezer, and the “fresh” produce at every grocery store in Canada is already old by the time it reaches the grocery store. The average grocery store apple is already 14 months old before you get to eat it. Gross.
A: Of course. When we were pregnant with our first child, we drank our products daily. Our baby’s first solid food was our own product, and our child now eats these daily, as we do. Our products double as baby food: to make a pure fruit puree or a smoothie bowl, just add less water (300ml) to make it thicker, shake and enjoy. Our products were also a life-saver with our difficult child-birth, as we were able to have the freshest fruit smoothies in Canada in our hospital room. We solved our own problem of not having convenient and affordable access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Prices are skyrocketting in Canada and now our family gets to eat our daily recommended fresh fruit every single day, for the most affordable price possible.
A: We will not make any claims ourselves, but many studies show that REAL FRUIT (like our products) are not only safe, but beneficial for diabetics. Studies have shown that eating REAL WHOLE FRUIT in large quantities can only do good for everyone. Drinking “Fruit Juice” is not the same as a whole fruit smoothie (Arkopia Smoothies). Please consult your doctor about the benefits of eating REAL FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. If your doctor tells you that Fruit and Vegetables are not good for you, consider consulting another doctor! We will say with 100% certainty that eating LOTs of Real Fruits and Vegetables on a regular basis will 100% reduce your risk of getting diabetes, lowering your overall blood sugar levels!
——-Here is an excerpt and link to one of the many studies:
“People who did not have diabetes at the beginning of the study and consumed fresh fruit in high amounts had a significantly lower risk of diabetes. Additionally, those who had diabetes at the beginning of the study and consumed high amounts of fruit had a significantly lower risk of dying from any cause, as well as a lower risk of developing cardiovascular complications.”
A: Arkopia’s products are pure fruit &/or vegetables. Our products do have some protein from the real fruits and vegetables; the kind of protein that is natural in the fruits and vegetables. Arkopia’s products are the opposite of every other shake, drink mix, drink powder, protein powder, smoothie additive on the market: We are the actual Fresh Fruit Smoothie that many other products say to “add to”.
We didn’t add protein to our pure fruit and vegetable smoothies in the same way that protein powder & smoothie additive companies didn’t add any real fruits and vegetables to their protein shake. Fruits and vegetables are harder to come by and more expensive, and protein is one of the most readily available, inexpensive products in any pharmacy, grocery store, supplement store, gym, or health food store. Arkopia is the only REAL FRUIT smoothie.
Many people are off whey, pea protein, synthetic products, etc. Nobody should ever be off eating REAL FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. If you are looking to build muscle, good carbs (fresh fruits and vegetables) are more important than protein (contrary to popular belief) Protein is an important part to a healthy diet, but not quite as important as fresh fruits and vegetables. If you would like to add your favorite protein powder to our Pure Fresh Fruit Smoothies, there are 10,000 different protein powders to choose from, from low-grade inexpensive Whey, to high end expensive different proteins. If you are looking to loose weight, our pure fruit smoothies are very filling with only 200 calories. You can also add anything else you like to Arkopia’s actual large real food smoothie: collagen, magnesium, vitamin d, any supplement, any “smoothie booster”, any dairy, any grain, different fruits, and any protein if you wish. We, and most customers, enjoy Arkopia Pure Fruit Smoothies with just water.
A: This is by-far our favorite question! Arkopia’s products are actual REAL FOOD with all of the benefits that come with eating real, healthy food. Eating real, raw, whole, natural fruits and vegetables every single day, in large amounts, is the BEST THING YOU CAN DO for your health and vitality. We realize that most food products, supplements, and brands are telling people that their products “fix this”, “help that”, make you “loose weight” or “gain muscle” or “look younger”, or are a “miracle food” or “super food”. The best thing you can do for yourself is not fall for most of this nonsense and simply eat HEALTHY FRUITS AND VEGETABLES on a regular basis. Arkopia provides the most convenient, most affordable, most nutrient dense, most enjoyable way to eat healthy on a regular basis. A healthy and fulfilling life is a daily commitment, most importantly a healthy diet (and exercise of course).
A: It isn’t! It’s the same as blending up fresh, whole, ripe fruits and vegetables to make the same smoothie at home. If you are looking for a slushi with blended up ice, you can add ice to a blender with an Arkopia smoothie (just remember to remove the enclosed oxygen absorber before blending). The ingredients are on the back of each package, with the amount of each fruit &/or vegetable, if you would like to go to the grocery store to make the same smoothie at home with a blender. Adding exactly 400ml of water to Arkopia Smoothies will yield a 16oz smoothie, that is exactly the same thickness, nutrients, size and taste as blending up the exact ingredients from the grocery store that we have listed on the back of our packaging. Fruit “juices” are bad for you and you should stop drinking fruit juice and start enjoying whole fruits and vegetables! It is easy to over indulge on fruit juice (which is water, sugar, some nutrients, with the fiber removed from the fruit) and it is impossible to overindulge on Arkopia Smoothies because the whole fruit is very filling.
