To dry tomatoes in the traditional Italian way by sun is slow and labor intensive. It takes 8 to 10 days under the weakening late summer sun. Leaving the tomatoes exposed that long to insects is somewhat questionable, too. Italians use their sun-dried tomatoes in pasta sauce, so they are always cooked before eating. Americans, on the other hand, eat their sun-dried tomatoes raw or blanched quickly to reconstitute the moisture content. Drying does not destroy the bacterial contamination so for export, they add sulfur and salt to eliminate bacteria. The California processors also tried heat treatment to solve the problem.