Why is freeze-drying not widely used for vegetable products?

While freeze-drying is capable of producing food products of outstanding quality—effectively retaining nutrients, color, flavor, and texture—it is not widely used for vegetable products primarily because the process is very expensive.1

Unlike other dehydration methods that rely on heat to remove moisture, freeze-drying involves freezing the raw food and using a high vacuum to cause the ice to sublimate directly into vapor. While this sophisticated technique avoids the quality degradation sometimes associated with heat-based drying, the high operational costs limit its widespread commercial application for vegetables.12