Cheerios Snack Mix. Original, and Cheddar. $2.59 per 8-ounce bag.
Bonnie: Cheerios Snack Mix includes MultiGrain Cheerios, Chex, pretzels, crackers and lots of artificial ingredients and additive-laden seasonings. If additives don't bother you as much as they do me, a 1-ounce serving (two-thirds of a cup) of either variety does provide one-half of one of the three government-recommended daily servings of whole grains.
The banner on each package claims these mixes have 60 percent or 65 percent less fat compared to regular (unflavored) potato chips, rather than the more obvious snack mix. Sure, these do have less fat than potato chips, but they also contain lots more sodium (about three times what's in an ounce of Madhouse Munchies All-American Sea Salted Potato Chips, for example). And potato chips have none of the additives used to flavor these. Guess which I'd recommend as a snack?
Carolyn: Chex cereal has never been as popular as the Chex snack mix recipe it inspired. And if Chex Mix is popular, how much more popular would a snack mix be that also contained America's most popular cereal?
I can just imagine marketers at General Mills, longtime maker of Cheerios and 1997 purchaser of Chex, brainstorming to create this new snack mix featuring both of these cereals but no nuts (as in the original Chex Mix). Nuts would improve the taste and nutritional value of these Cheerios Snack Mixes. But adding nuts would have also increased the fat content and negated the packages' low-fat boast (which is probably why nuts are among the missing).
I agree with Bonnie that the bags' boastful comparison to potato chips is really unfair: Potato chips taste a lot better than any cereal snack mix.
Swiss Miss Cocoa. Pick-Me-Up, and Great Start. $2.69 per 8-ounce box containing eight individual servings.
Bonnie: Now your Swiss Miss cup of hot chocolate can supply a caffeine jolt or vitamin boost. The Great Start variety is fortified with 15 essential vitamins and minerals, and the Pick-Me-Up contains as much caffeine as a weak cup of coffee, 67 milligrams.
A cupful of either is only 110 calories, 2 grams of fat, and contains as much vitamin D and calcium as a cup of milk. Those are pretty good nutritionals for a hot cocoa mix. I'd still recommend the Pick-Me-Up as a wake-me-up alternative to coffee or tea rather than the Great Start as a substitute for getting vitamins naturally from real fruits, vegetables and grains.
Carolyn: Swiss Miss is borrowing a page from Ovaltine with this Great Start hot cocoa fortified with vitamins and minerals. The Pick-Me-Up is for people who order choco lattes or cafe mochas every morning for their chocolate taste and caffeine jolt.
Both varieties offer a compelling reason to buy Swiss Miss Cocoa over cheaper store brands. If I'm any indication, even junk foodies don't object to paying a little more for a drink that tastes this good and also does you some good.
Stonyfield Farm Organic YoMommy Lowfat Yogurt. Strawberry and Peach, and Blueberry and Raspberry. $2.99 per multipack of four 4-ounce cups.
Bonnie: Ever notice how much better women who are trying to get pregnant eat? They seem to care more for the health of their unborn baby than they do for themselves. This new YoMommy organic yogurt preys on the fears of these women who are planning, expecting or nursing.
Stonyfield fortified the yogurt with folic acid (helps prevent neural tube defects, such as spina bifida), vitamin D (helps prevent pre-eclampsia), DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid that is good for babies' mental and visual development), and six live, active probiotic cultures (purported to enhance digestion and strengthen the immune system). Just consider YoMommy as part of a healthy, balanced nutritious diet with the fortifiers an added plus, not the end all to having a healthy baby.
Like Stonyfield's other products, YoMommy also contains no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners. That's reason enough to recommend it.
Carolyn: YoBaby was Stonyfield Farms' most successful new product introduction ever. No wonder it's been followed with a bunch of YoBaby spin-offs and now this YoMommy yogurt designed for pregnant and nursing women.
Will YoMommy be as popular? I doubt it. One reason has to do with the numbers: There's only one mommy to every 2.1 children in the average family, and babies are babies longer than moms are pregnant and nursing. Another is taste. YoBaby is made from rich and delicious whole milk, while YoMommy is made from low-fat milk (probably because of pregnant women's concerns about weight gain). This makes YoMommy unlikely to be purchased by anyone but new moms.
In any case, based purely on the taste of the Stonyfield yogurts they get to eat, I'd much rather be the baby than the mom.
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, and for more food info and chances to win free products, visit www.biteofthebest.com. © Universal Press Syndicate