Issue 32

A family in Nakorn Pathom has discovered a way to preserve the goodness of fruit and vegetables by transforming them into crunchy snacks.

Healthy eating does not need to be a difficult process. Many snack brands in Thailand are following the global trend towards health food by producing a variety of ready-to-eat snacks made from Thai-grown fruit and vegetables.

Sa-ard Juengsamarn, founder of Pritip snacks established the Sanamchan community enterprise in Nakorn Pathom Province in 2005 determined to produce healthy snacks.

“We started with okra chips, buying the fresh produce from farmers in the area,” he says. “The okra is then cooked in a vacuum oven at 60 degrees Celsius, so it retains the taste and vitamins while losing 90% of the water content.”

After receiving good feedback from customers for the crunchy okra chips, Juengsamarn then rolled out other vegetable and fruit chips such as broccoli, shitake, banana, jackfruit and pumpkin.

Though most of its products are sold in Thailand, this April Pritip launched Daijie, a crispy mushroom snack, in Singapore as part of its plan to expand overseas.

“We’ve also been to many tradeshows such as those held in Vietnam, India, China and Japan,” says Kalaya Juengsamarn who manages the business with her husband. “The best-selling product is the okra. Most customers don’t know okra at first, but once they taste it, it always sells out first.”

She adds that okra chips, unlike fresh okra, are much easier to eat whilst retaining the nutrients and fibre of the fresh vegetable. The popular okra chips have additional vegan-friendly flavours like seaweed, wasabi, Tom Yum and Laab added to them.

“Okra is a rich source of fibre and vitamins and really helps to ease constipation,” says Kalaya Juengsamarn. “It’s like a Thai way to detox your intestines.”

Her husband adds that all produce is grown in different parts of Thailand, from pumpkin in Chiang Mai province to mango in Kampangpetch province. Pritip also works with other community enterprises to process surplus raw fruit and vegetables each season.

The brand is now working hard to gain more internationally-recognised certifications in order to enter overseas markets.

“I think that Halal certification is important; we’re working on getting the certificate for that,” says Juengsamarn. “People are also very keen on following health food trends, and that’s where our products will answer their needs.”

Words by Sirinuch Borsub