King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour. $2.99 per 5-pound bag. Available in many supermarkets and also at www.bakerscatalogue.com.
Bonnie: ConAgra was the first company to come out with a whole-wheat flour that looked and acted like all-purpose white. But Ultragrain was unfortunately available only to food companies and restaurants — unfortunately, because using this flour is a great way to increase consumption of whole grains, especially for those who prefer the texture and taste of white flour.
But now the King Arthur Flour company has introduced a similar product that's available to consumers. Substitute its White Whole Wheat flour cup-for-cup for all-purpose flour in cookies, quick breads or brownies, and no one will probably be the wiser. In other recipes, begin by substituting only half, to see how it works in your recipe.
Your dough may be a tad drier or thicker, so you may have to compensate a bit by adding some more liquid. But the results will be worth it: baked goods with all the goodness of whole grains.
Carolyn: We all know what white flour is. Most people know what whole-wheat flour is, too. But what's white whole-wheat flour? Flour made from the sweet white winter wheat that has all the nutrition of whole wheat but not the usual strong wheat taste.
Sound interesting and innovative? It is. And because of that, King Arthur needs to do as much education as it does selling. Right now its information is vague and contradictory. The package says to substitute "part of the all-purpose flour" in your favorite recipes, while the Web site says to substitute it cup-for-cup. So which is it?
An expert at the company's you-pay baker's hotline (802-649-3717) warned against using white whole-wheat for any light-tasting or light-looking baked good (angel food cake or sugar cookies, for instance). But she said I could use half to all white whole-wheat in most other bread, muffin, breakfast bread and cookie recipes. When I mentioned the classic Toll House cookie recipe, she said she had made them with 100 percent white whole wheat and that it had worked great.
For her and Bonnie, maybe. When I did it, the cookie dough didn't hold together that well, nor did it spread out or puff up in the usual way. Although they didn't taste horrible, they also didn't taste like Toll House.
Cookies really aren't the best place to get your government-mandated day's supply of fiber anyway. Baked goods take too much time and work and are too important to risk ruining with untried new ingredients.
Life Vanilla Yogurt Crunch Cereal. $2.99 per 14.7-ounce box.
Bonnie: This new Quaker Life Vanilla Yogurt Crunch Cereal isn't as sweet-tasting as I thought it would be, considering that it contains 12 grams of sugar per serving (or about as much as Frosted Cheerios). Most of that sugar seems to be in the yogurt-covered oat clusters.
That's only one of the many reasons I would not buy this cereal. It's also a bit too high in fat, with 3 grams per serving (including 1 gram of saturated fat), compared to 1.5 grams of fat and no saturated fat in other Life varieties. The yogurt coating offers no calcium boost, and this contains as many artificial colors, preservatives and other unsavory ingredients as are in the other Life cereals. That's why I'll stick with the real "Life" blood of Quaker's cereal line: its whole oatmeal.
Carolyn: I fail to share the cereal industry's current fascination for yogurt coatings. They add a bit of sweetness to cereals, sure, but so do raisins, frosting and granola clusters, which have served cereal eaters so well for years.
It could be argued — though not by me — that the sugar-sprinkled Life is sweet enough as it is. I think Life would taste even better with freeze-dried fruit, that other addition that has recently captured the cereal industry's imagination.
Stonyfield Farm YoBaby Plus Fruit & Cereal Yogurt With DHA. Strawberry Banana and Raspberry Pear. $3.39 per mixed flavor multipack of six 4-ounce cups.
Bonnie: YoBaby now offers a cereal containing DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid that's naturally found in high concentrations in fatty fish like salmon, lake trout, tuna and herring, and also in breast milk. DHA, which stands for docosahexaenoic acid, helps in babies' brain and vision development.
Although the addition of DHA to foods like this yogurt and to formula is not harmful, the scientific evidence is mixed on the benefits.
I'd say breast-feeding is best for the first year of a baby's life. As for this yogurt, I suggest checking with your pediatrician before making it a foundation of your baby's diet, as would be my suggestion before giving a baby any additive.
Carolyn: I tested this YoBaby Plus With DHA with Ella Adams, age 1, a regular YoBaby yogurt consumer. Ella accepted the first spoonful with caution, then with table-hitting enthusiasm when her mom didn't come up with the second spoonful fast enough. At another point, an impatient Ella even licked some errant YoBaby off her mom's blouse.
Ella's mom said her daughter seemed to like these Raspberry Pear and Strawberry Banana flavors better than both the plain YoBaby and the Apple YoBaby Plus Fruit & Cereal that she's previously eaten.
If that's a correct reading of Ella's feelings, then I must respectfully disagree. I think all varieties of YoBaby Plus Fruit & Cereal's fruit purees are too sweet, to the point of obscuring much of the creamlike richness of the YoBaby yogurt. (The berry flavors also dominate the pear and banana ones in these new Plus flavors.) The cereal has hardly any more of a presence than the DHA (which is to say, it's hardly noticeable).
In sum, I would buy this only if DHA were as good for forgetful middle-age brains as it is for developing ones in babies (or if Ella were going to be visiting).
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