Fruity Cheerios. $3.29 per 11.5-ounce box.
Bonnie: General Mills is back with the 11th version of its popular Cheerios. This time it's a fruity one, to compete with Kellogg's Fruit Loops. Both are colored artificially, although Fruity Cheerios doesn't have any of the bright blue found in Fruit Loops. Fruity Cheerios also contains some real fruit juice; Fruit Loops has none.
Fruity Cheerios contains less sugar than Fruit Loops but the same amount as Fruit Loops 1/3 Less Sugar. Unlike Fruit Loops 1/3 Less Sugar, though, Fruity Cheerios is made with whole grains, has 1 more gram of fiber and is a good source of calcium. General Mills' Trix is also colorful, made with whole grains and is a good source of calcium but has less fiber.
Yet regular Cheerios is better for your kids than any of these fruity cereals. It's all-natural, has more fiber and iron, and has only 1 gram of sugar, which is 8 fewer grams per serving than the fruity one. That's the Cheerios I can recommend.
Carolyn: General Mills is trying to make it so that Cheerios is the only cereal you'll ever need to buy. Want a frosted cereal or one made with multiple grains or clusters or freeze-dried fruit? General Mills has a Cheerios for you (specifically, Frosted, MultiGrain, Yogurt Burst or Berry Burst, respectively). And who can blame General Mills, considering Cheerios best-selling sales status and its health halo. Heck, pediatricians even suggest it as one of the first foods to feed kids.
And now there are these new boxes of cereal pieces that look and taste like candy that General Mills is calling Fruity Cheerios. Don't be fooled. These don't taste anything like Cheerios — probably because Cheerios' signature oats take a backseat to both corn and sugar on the ingredient list. This is Fruit Loops or Trix with natural fruit flavors and less sugar, either of which will probably be of little interest to those who want green, orange and purple cereal for breakfast.
Borden Shred Medleys. Pesto Parmesan, Southwestern Style, Garden Blend and Tuscan Herb. $1.98 per 7-ounce bag of cheese-and-spice packet.
Bonnie: I gotta give credit to Borden for an interesting concept. This cheesemaker has included so-called Season Sensations spice packets inside resealable bags of shredded cheese blends. What I like is that you control the amount of seasoning spices, depending on your taste preference. What I don't like are the flavor combinations or the taste of any of the seasoning packets.
I think anyone with a cookbook or magazine with recipes and fresh herbs and spices in the cabinet can combine seasoning for pasta, soups, salad and wraps that are much more sensational than these.
Carolyn: Borden's "Season Sensations" packet plan for seasoning its shredded cheese not only cuts down on potential unwanted sodium but also makes these more versatile than the preseasoned competition. You can (and I did) use part of the Southwestern Style with the seasonings in tacos and the rest of it in a casserole without the packaged seasonings. I like being able to "buy" the knowledge of how to mix various spices to create ethnic flavors that these seasoning packets represent. At less than $2, this product is also a bargain: A single jar of almost any of the spices in these would cost more than that.
As for the individual flavors, the Pesto Parmesan's cheese blend is too bland, and the crunchiness of the dehydrated vegetables in the Garden Blend seasoning packet is disconcerting. And while I'm glad that the cheese bags are resealable, given the "use as you want" nature of this product, the spice packets should be, too.
Marie Callender's Crock-Pot Meals and Soups. Old-Fashioned Beef & Vegetable Meal, Chunky-Style Chicken and Dumplings Meal, Chunky Chicken and Noodles Meal, Harvest Turkey and Vegetables Meal, Homestyle Chicken and Noodle Soup, and Hearty Beef Vegetable Soup. $7.99 per 38-ounce to 46-ounce bag.
Bonnie: Having tried and intensely disliked the Banquet Crock-Pot Classic meals also made by ConAgra, I began testing these new Marie Callender Crock-Pot Meals and Soups with extremely low expectations. Surprisingly, these were much better than I feared, although I still have some criticisms. For instance, the sauce in the Chucky Chicken and Noodles Meal is too gelatinous. And the bread stuffing for the Harvest Turkey and Vegetables Meal transforms it into an unappetizing thick and bready goo (I suggest that you do not add it). Also, most of the meals contain very little of the package-touted beef, chicken or turkey.
But my biggest complaint is about serving size. One package realistically serves four, not the eight stated on the label. That's a moderate 1 1/3-cup serving, not a serving of two-thirds of a cup. So to correctly evaluate these, you need to double the nutrition facts data.
With those real portion sizes, the best of the lot nutritionally are the Old-Fashioned Beef and Vegetables Meal and the two soups. Each has only 6 to 9 grams of fat and a decent 6 to 8 grams of fiber but way too much sodium (about 1,100 milligrams). These are still a lot better than the inedible Crock-Pot meals from ugly stepsister brand Banquet.
Carolyn: As someone who knows her way around a supermarket freezer, I can tell you that Marie Callender makes great-tasting, old-fashioned frozen comfort foods usually containing near-unconscionable amounts of calories and fat.
Her new Crock-Pot Meals and Soups are every bit as great-tasting and contain the same great big premium pieces of tender meat and veggies but have a surprisingly modest 300 to 400 calories per Bonnie-specified double-serving size (which I agree is much more reasonable).
I also agree with Bonnie that these are oh so much better than the similar Banquet Crock-Pot meals, which were a huge sales hit for ConAgra. If you liked those, you'll love these. These do cost $2 more per bag and $2 more per person (going by Bonnie's four-person serving size), but the bags are bigger — and that's still cheap for a delicious, almost work-free dinner.
My only (minor) complaint — the bags' too-frequent, schoolmarmish entreaties to wash your hands.
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