Kellogg's Snacks Pouches. Granola Honey Oat and Brown Sugar Cinnamon Munch'ems Bite-Size Snacks, and Special K Strawberry, and Vanilla Snack Bites. $3.39 per 4.97-ounce to 6.3-ounce box containing six pouches.
Bonnie: Kellogg's recently introduced two new sets of multigrain on-the-go snacks: Special K and Munch'ems. Both of the Special K varieties contain fewer calories and less fat in a pouch than the Munch'ems, and yet I can't recommend them.
Why? Because they taste horrid, with their artificial vanilla and artificial strawberry flavorings overpowering everything else. One reason the Munch'ems pouches contain more calories and fat is that they offer 25 percent more bite-size snacking by weight. They also taste much better. Think crunchy Cinnamon Teddy Grahams, with a gram more of fiber.
Those are what I'd reach for if I wanted a snack other than fruit.
Carolyn: Highly portable bar versions of Special K cereal and granola already exist. And Special K Snack Bars and most granola bars contain the same or even fewer calories than these new Special K and Munch'ems Granola pouches. So what's going on here?
I suspect something that reaches a bit deeper into consumer psychology and taps into people's sense of satisfaction (especially people on diets), which is greater when a food has lots of little pieces and takes a long time to eat.
How do these taste? The Special K bars taste like Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal, only sweeter. The strawberry is actually too sweet. The vanilla is better.
The Munch'ems are a cross between granola bars and graham crackers. The tasting experience begins with sugar and ends with grain. But for nearly the same 140 calories, I'd prefer two packaged cookies or a mini bag of Fritos, which also cost less than these.
Weight Watchers Yogurt and Yogurt Smoothies. Vanilla, Strawberry, Black Cherry, Blueberry, Peach, Raspberry, Key Lime Pie, Lemon Cream Pie and Strawberry Banana Yogurt, and Strawberry, Raspberry, Mixed Berry and Strawberry Banana Yogurt Smoothies. 79 cents per 6-ounce cup of yogurt and $3.79 per package of four 7-ounce smoothie bottles.
Bonnie: Weight Watchers recently introduced two new dairy lines: nine yogurts with 100 calories apiece, and four smoothies with 80 calories apiece. For those counting Weight Watchers points (a method of calculating how much you eat), all the yogurts and smoothies have 1 point each.
Their ingredients include fiber-boosting inulin, and both sugar and the artificial sweetener Sucralose. The first sip or spoonful of each was actually quite good, but after I swallowed, I was left with a horrid medicinal aftertaste.
If you don't mind the artificial sweetener aftertaste and are following the Weight Watchers program, you might want to try these. I couldn't recommend them to anyone else.
Carolyn: One-hundred-calorie diet or light products account for about one-fifth of yogurt sales. Little wonder, then, why Weight Watchers is entering the dairy case with an all-light line.
Weight Watchers Light pretty much sticks with the industry standard of 100 calories per 6-ounce cup. The gelatinous consistency and fruit-flavor mixed-in style is similar to its competitors: Dannon Light 'n Fit Creamy, Yoplait Light and Breyers Light. Where they differ is in the choice of artificial sweeteners. Most of these other brands use aspartame or aspartame and ace-k. Weight Watchers uses Sucralose, whose artificial taste in most of these Weight Watchers flavors is overpowering. That surprised me because I don't mind Sucralose in soft drinks.
Could it be that I'm so used to eating light yogurts with aspartame that anything else stands out as weird? I thought so until I tried Weight Watchers vanilla and peach yogurt and the companion Smoothies, where the artificial taste didn't seem nearly as pronounced. I guess the food scientists at Weight Watchers didn't work long enough on the recipes for the black cherry, lemon cream pie and strawberry banana yogurts — which is why I recommend you also don't waste your time on these flavors.
Altoids Mango Sours. $1.79 to $1.99 per 1.76-ounce tin.
Bonnie: The mango is a fiber-rich, low-calorie source of beta-carotene, which forms vitamin A (the bright orange flesh is the telltale sign of that in any fruit or vegetable). It's also rich in vitamin C and contains some vitamin B6 and E.
Altoids Mango Sours contain only sugar calories, artificially flavored to taste somewhat like an unripe, tart mango. The only redeeming factor about these Altoids is that they're low-calorie: Five pieces contain only 20 calories.
Carolyn: I never really understood the appeal of hard fruit candies. I assume it's some infantile sucking impulse that's deep in our psyche, because it seems to me that you get a very modest pleasure payoff for the damage they do to your teeth. The compensation from original mint Altoids (and even the newer ginger ones) is possibly fresher breath.
These new mango ones seem to be for people who are too old to be seen eating Sour Patch kids candies. The Altoids tin and mango flavor (vs., say, plebian peach) adds the aura of sophistication. I liked the flavor once I got through the torturous super-sour white coating.
My new definition of love and intimacy? Someone who would be willing to suffer through the first minute of one of these before handing it off to me.
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. For previous columns, visit www.supermarketsampler.com.
© Universal Press Syndicate