"If you don't like (it), wait a minute" was Mark Twain's sage advice about weather in New England. To which we would add: If you don't like the new crop of supermarket products, wait two years. Two years ago, low-carb products almost completely dominated new food product introductions, whereas this year, our digestive systems were swept clean by all our testing of whole grains.
We also ate a lot of nuts and (what put us in a particularly jolly frame of mind, even before the holidays) dark chocolate, thanks to new studies touting their health benefits.
Were any of these new products worth trying and continuing to buy into the new year? Answering that question is the job of this special annual column, which includes our individual best-of-the-year product picks, our joint Golden Shopping Cart Award for best new product of 2006 and, to start off, five 2006 product introductions we suggest you ring out with the old and forget.
Double forks down
Starkist Tuna Fillets. Pouched pre-cooked and flavored tuna steaks aimed for the center of the plate that unfortunately didn't taste any better than regular canned tuna (several flavors were worse). Sorry, Charlie.
Quaker Oatmeal to Go and Breakfast Cookies. Quaker's failed attempt to make oatmeal portable includes overcooked brick-like Oatmeal to Go and bland and gummy cookies. Both were too sweet (even for Carolyn).
Dole Veggie Pasta Salad Kit. Dole mixed and matched bags of unblanched veggies, inexpensive uncooked pasta and salad dressing under different names so it could make a quick buck on people who thought these were innovative and convenient pasta salad kits. They were neither, and also not worth buying.
Betty Crocker Suddenly Soup. Betty is about 30 years late with this creamy Lipton Cup-a-Soup clone, considering all the modern microwavable liquid soup cups that taste infinitely better.
Lunchables Sensible Solutions Lunch Combinations. Oscar Mayer is calling these new slightly nutritionally tweaked lunch kits with candy, Kool-Aid and additive-filled food "sensible." We call that crazy.
Bonnie's favorites
McCormick Smoked Paprika. Ground, wood-smoked sweet peppers to add sweet smoky flavor to foods wherever you'd use regular paprika.
Seeds of Change Spicy Yucatan Frijoles & Vegetables Frozen Entree. It's delicious and nutritious. Don't be put off by the unattractive box photo.
Del Monte Garden Petite Diced Select Tomatoes. Jarred diced tomatoes to use when summer fresh ones aren't available. Much fresher-tasting than canned.
Santa Cruz Organic Dark Roasted Peanut Butter. Dark roasting heightens the flavor and enjoyment of this excellent, inexpensive source of protein that's also packed with vitamins and minerals.
Sara Lee Hearty & Delicious All-Natural 100 Percent Whole Grain, Multigrain and Whole Wheat Breads. Breads with all the goodness of whole grains but with a texture closer to white for all you whole-grain newbies.
Lipton Pyramid Teas. A small change in bag shape has produced a giant leap in taste. The best of the bunch include White With Island Mango and Peach, and Green With Mandarin Orange.
Ready Pac Cool Cuts Ready Snacks. A more widely available copycat of Sunkist Fun Fruits. These are good-for-you apples, grapes and carrots individually packaged in kids' lunch-bag-size portions that also make a great snack.
Morton Coarse Sea Salt. Gourmet salt made affordable and available. Just don't forget to get your necessary iodine elsewhere, such as from saltwater fish.
Buitoni Whole Wheat Four-Cheese Ravioli. Tasty whole wheat pasta with a hefty 5 grams of fiber per serving (not the 2 stated in our original review and on their original packaging).
Carolyn's favorites
Breyers Double-Churned Light Ice Cream Bars. The indulgent taste and satisfaction of a Dove or Haagen-Dazs bar with about a third the calories. In other words, these are a dieter's dream come true.
Jolly Time Sassy Salsa Microwave Popcorn. A mildly and deliciously hot popcorn from Blast O' Butter hitmaker Jolly Time destined to once again burn up supermarket sales scanners. Yes, it's that good.
Stonyfield Farm Organic Vanilla Chai Ice Cream. Don't be scared off by the words "organic" and "chai," as I initially was. This unique, mildly spicy vanilla ice cream is as rich and delicious (and as filled with fat and calories) as Ben & Jerry's.
Kellogg's Go-Tarts! Sixties breakfast staple Pop-Tarts smartly slimmed down and individually wrapped for the grab 'n' go '00s.
Pillsbury Ready to Bake! Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Oatmeal lends a nice crust and chewy texture and cuts down on the sweetness of chocolate chip cookies. It's about time we got a commercial version.
Kashi All-Natural Frozen Entrees. Kashi's signature whole-grain pilaf provides the filling, nutty-textured starch base for these frozen entrees, which are so delicious, even I can't hold their great nutrition against them. The Lime Cilantro Shrimp, Black Bean Mango and Lemon Rosemary Chicken are three standouts.
Hamburger Helper Microwave Singles. Single-serve, even more convenient (if misnamed) versions of Hamburger Helper skillet meals because these packets are microwavable and already contain hamburger.
CocoaVia Chocolate Bars. Good-tasting (if you like bittersweet chocolate), 100-calorie, nut-, dried fruit- or crispy soy-studded chocolate bars that are also — praise be! — good for you. If only stores would sell them next to Snickers instead of hiding them in the health food aisle.
Yuban RainForest Alliance Certified Dark Roast Coffee. Finally a reasonably priced mainstream canned supermarket coffee that makes a Starbucks-strong cup of coffee. The fact that 30 percent of its beans are certified sustainable makes it even more lovable.
Golden Shopping Cart Award
And now for our joint 10th pick, and the winner of our 17th annual Golden Shopping Cart Award for a product that was tasty, healthy and on-trend: Eagle Mills All-Purpose Flour With Ultragrain.
Bonnie: Loyal readers of Supermarket Sampler might now be struggling to remember when we talked about this product. The answer is never. But we did review an identical ConAgra product made under the Healthy Choice brand name in early November. That flour is currently being sold only in Wal-Mart stores in Texas, Virginia and North Carolina. But the identical Eagle Mills Flour is available nationally at Sam's Clubs.
Why are we supermarket samplers awarding our top prize to a foodstuff currently available only outside of traditional supermarkets? Because it's that good.
Eagle Mills/Healthy Choice is an all-purpose flour blend with Ultragrain, a whole-wheat flour made from white whole wheat. That means the flour both looks and acts similar to white flour, yet has the goodness of whole wheat, a whole grain, something Americans need to eat more of. A quarter-cup of this flour contains 9 grams of whole grains, or about half of one of the three government-recommended daily servings.
You can substitute this flour cup-for-cup in any of your baking recipes, unlike King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour, which contains about three times more whole grains per quarter-cup but requires recipe-tweaking that might be daunting to occasional bakers like Carolyn.
Carolyn: I have nothing against whole grains, if adding them to foods doesn't make you wish you weren't eating them. But bad taste was the unfortunate case with most of the whole grain products we tried this year, including the 100 percent whole grain Sara Lee breads Bonnie just praised, Whole Grain Chips Ahoy! and King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour — the only widely available supposedly white flour-like whole wheat flour until Healthy Choice and Eagle Mills came along.
But cookies and cakes I've baked with the 30 percent white whole wheat flour/70 percent white flour Eagle Mills (or its much less widely available clone, Healthy Choice Flour) taste virtually identical to ones made with regular all-purpose white flour. So you get the whole grain gain without the grainy-taste pain.
Not lucky enough to live in those three Healthy Choice Flour states and not a member of Sam's Club? Not a problem. Nonmembers can shop at Sam's Club with a day pass you can obtain from club managers or by typing this column's name — Supermarket Sampler — into the upper right-hand corner search field at www.samsclub.com. However, Bonnie and I are hoping this award will make ConAgra executives resolve to get this great flour with Ultragrain — by whatever name — into every supermarket in the country by this time next year
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