Shortly after their debut in 2005, we reviewed Peeled Snacks fruit and nut mixes in THE NIBBLE online magazine. Almost two years and perhaps 6,000 products-tasted later, it has become one of a few dozen nibbles that we keep in our home and office all the time, and one of the half dozen that we enjoy almost daily.

Premium nuts and dried fruits are mixed into three different assortments: Bing Bing Cherry (apples, bing cherries, peaches, cashews and walnuts), FigSated (apricots, dates, figs, almonds and pistachios) and Shock-olate (apricots, pears, almonds, walnuts and dark chocolate disks). Unlike ordinary dried fruit or trail mixes, this is a gourmet product. The fruits are moist and tender, and the nuts dry and crisp thanks to innovative packaging that keeps them apart until you tear into the plastic to blend them together. Not only are these "good-for-you" snacks, they're a painless way to get family members off of junk food or higher-sugar sweets. They taste great, and the nifty, individual-serving packages are fashionable for any age group. Peeled Snacks are portable anywhere, delicious anytime, and the company will ship them by the boxful to schools, workplaces, weekend homes or wherever snacking demands.

We love all of our Top Picks Of The Week, but some more than others become part of our every day life-often because every day life is more full of olive oil and mustard than it is of truffles, be they chocolate or the fungus they were named after. When we tasted our first bags of Peeled Snacks, we knew they were terrific, but we had no idea they would become the snack we'd crave every day. Yet—and we will say this under oath-we like them so much, we're just as happy to open a bag as to have a dish of ice cream or a chocolate bar. In fact, we're even happier, because they're portion-controlled: you've had your snack, now get back to whatever you were doing. No more dipping into the pint for another tablespoon of Black Raspberry Chip!

In 2005, company founder Noha Waibsnaider was a young business school graduate looking for a healthy snack. You'd think it would be simple, but the choices at the time were fresh fruit—not always accessible, ripe or easy-to-carry all day without squishing—dull or sugary dried fruits and mixes (including "trail mix"*), or the energy bar† group. Could it be that in an era of health-and-fitness-focused Americans, there was no good-for-you snack that was tasty, attractive, user-friendly and truly good for you?
*Trail mix is a term given to a mixture of high-energy foods such as dried fruit and nuts combined with other tasty additions. It is preferred as a snack especially by hikers and campers because it is lightweight, easily portable and requires no refrigeration. Commonly added ingredients include chocolate morsels or M&Ms, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, and breakfast cereals including granola. One of the early trail mix products was called gorp, an acronym for "Good Old Raisins and Peanuts" or "Granola, Oats, Raisins and Peanuts."
†A "protein performance bar" we eat has corn syrup, chocolate coating with fractionated palm kernel oil and polydexrose.

Like many people in the specialty food business, Noha began on the long road to figuring out how to produce her dream product. Along the way, she discovered that other fruit and nut mixes added sugar and fat to keep the fruits moist and the nuts crunchy. That doesn't result in a "healthy" snack. Her first step was to work with a packaging engineer to develop stay-fresh packaging. The result: The nuts are pouched in a separate plastic compartment, serving as a moisture barrier within the larger package. Peeled Snacks were born—a truly differentiated, "healthy" snack food for discriminating palates, with no added fat or sugar.