Chew-ets Peanut Chews. Original Dark and Milk Chocolaty. 65 cents per 2-ounce bar. Also available in 3.3-ounce bars, and 8- and 14-ounce bags of miniatures.
Bonnie: Like many Northeasterners, I grew up eating Peanut Chews. With the recent sale of the brand to Marshmallow Peeps-makers Just Born, these chewy chocolate-covered peanuty candy bars will now be available nationwide.
The first and primary ingredient in each Peanut Chew is protein-rich peanuts, although if all the corn syrup, sugar, molasses and dextrose were combined and listed as "sugars," they'd probably be first. Nutritionally, Peanut Chews are similar to Snickers, containing the same amount of protein (5 grams), similar amounts of sugars (about 28 grams), but also 2 to 3 grams MORE total fat.
The original regional Peanut Chews were all-natural. No longer. To keep these "fresh" on their trips across the country, the new owners added non-natural ingredients, including the preservative TBHQ. If that's progress, I'll vote for stasis and keeping foods regional.
Carolyn: All you Southerners, Midwesterners and Westerners: Get ready for a treat. The Just Born candy company is in the midst of launching Goldenberg Peanut Chews nationally. They're a delicious pair of chocolate-coated candies featuring peanuts and molasses that were previously available only in the East.
In ingredients and taste, the milk chocolate variety is actually quite similar to a Snickers, except it's much chewier and comes in pieces (like Almond Joy and Mounds).
But East Coasters need to be prepared for a few changes. Only dentists should mind the way new owner Just Born has made Peanut Chews centers slightly softer. I don't even mind how the molasses taste in the milk chocolate has been toned down to something more like caramel (and more like the best-selling Snickers). The reason? I prefer the bracing molasses flavor in the original dark chocolate variety, and its recipe hasn't significantly changed.
But I am sorry to see that Just Born is now calling this candy only Peanut Chews, instead of Goldenberg Peanut Chews, as they've been known regionally since David Goldenberg invented the candy back in the early 1890s. Just Born was apparently afraid an ethnic name wouldn't fly outside its urban East Coast strongholds.
Sen. Barack Obama and heartthrob-actor Jake Gyllenhaal, for two, know better.
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese With Double Calcium. 89 cents per 7.25-ounce box.
Bonnie: Carolyn corrupted my sons. Years ago, when my kids were preteens and she was watching them for me, she served them Kraft Mac & Cheese for dinner. (Truth be told, Carolyn is a good friend, just one who has neither culinary skills nor taste in food.) Anyway, that's how my sons began eating Kraft Macaroni & Cheese — "dinner" at Carolyn's.
Kraft just reformulated that blue box to contain double the calcium of the original macaroni and cheese dinner. A cup now provides 250 milligrams, or 25 percent of the daily recommended amount. That's great, considering the popularity of this macaroni and cheese with kids, calcium's important role in protecting kids' bones in later life, and the tiny percentage of U.S. kids who are already getting enough calcium. One USDA survey said that only 10 percent of our kids do, and that was before the government's new dietary guidelines raised the calcium bar.
Kraft Mac & Cheese still has more artificial ingredients, sodium and fat than I like. But thanks to this added calcium, I will no longer consider serving Kraft Mac & Cheese to processed-food innocents to be a total corruption.
Carolyn: Calcium-fortified orange juice doesn't taste quite as good as regular. But extra calcium doesn't affect the taste of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese at all. That makes sense, considering the calcium that's always been in the dinner's cheese powder and the added milk. And that's good, considering its legions of fans. In fact, I know of many kids raised on Kraft's version who forever after scorned homemade or more natural brands (especially those without Kraft's hunter's-vest hue).
Me? I was grateful for this excuse to once again be reminded of this product's humble goodness. Kraft Mac & Cheese's affordability, keepability, versatility, familiarity, ease of preparation and broad taste appeal make it a quintessential American food — much more so than apple pie, hot dogs or hamburgers.
We all have our trademark improvements on our most beloved processed foods. Mine for this: Don't add milk. The cheese melts fine on the hot noodles, and the cheese taste is more intense, although I suppose also not as calcium-rich.
Yoplait Go-Gurt Smoothie. Wild Berry, Strawberry Splash, and Paradise Punch. $3.49 per package of four 5-ounce bottles.
Bonnie: I immediately looked down at the label after taking a sip of my first Go-Gurt Smoothie, fearing I might have accidentally grabbed some medicine. Yes, the Strawberry Splash tastes that much like Pepto-Bismol. That's probably because these new smoothies are artificially flavored and artificially Day-Glo colored.
Like medicine, these smoothies do contain some good things: calcium, vitamins A and D, and some minerals. These smoothies actually contain more vitamins and minerals, ounce for ounce, than Go-Gurt tubes.
But why add these pointless bright-colored dyes? And why make them so sweet? Let's instead encourage and teach our children to enjoy more natural, less-adulterated foods like plain yogurt with added fruit, or Stonyfield Farm's Juice Smoothie, which, although as sweet as Go-Gurt, contains none of its artificial ingredients.
Carolyn: Yoplait Go-Gurt pioneered yogurt that could be eaten without a spoon. You squeezed it out of a tube. But the brand is several years behind its competitors in introducing the equally portable kids' yogurt drink.
In other words, nobody needs Yoplait Go-Gurt Smoothies the way we needed Go-Gurt tubes. And the only people who might want them are kids who don't notice the strawberry's visual kinship to amoxicillin and parents who aren't bothered by the highly unnatural colors Yoplait has given this supposedly natural food — not to mention the highly nature-unfriendly, ultra-sturdy containers all the kids' smoothie brands seem to use.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. © Universal Press Syndicate