Clif Kid Organic Fruit Snacks. Grape, and Pineapple Twisted Fruit. Apple Cinnamon and Blueberry ZBar. 79 cents per .7-ounce fruit rope or 1.27-ounce bar.
Bonnie: All of Clif's Twisted Fruit ropes are made from apple puree, and are colored and flavored with fruit and vegetable juice, which adds up to one serving of fruit. Although these are much more natural than other fruit leathers we have tested, please, oh, please do not think of these as a good replacement for actual fruit. Serve your children an apple, a bunch of grapes or slice of pineapple instead, as they contain so many more nutrients.
These new Blueberry and Apple Cinnamon bars would be an OK snack. Each contains 120 calories, 2 to 2.5 grams of total fat, 11 grams of sugar, 3 grams of fiber, some whole grains (7 grams, or fewer than a half-serving), and are made without artificial ingredients. So you can feel good about occasionally giving these to your kids — or yourself, for that matter.
Carolyn: Clif's new fruit-flavored ZBars for kids are what Quaker Oatmeal to Go bars were supposed to be — namely, bowls of fruit-flavored oatmeal in a portable form. The Quaker Oatmeal to Go bars are unappetizingly hard and dry, but ZBars are moist, as oatmeal should be. Any kid who likes Quaker Chewy Granola Bars should like these, although the ZBars are lots heftier and more satisfying, and so should keep kids' little tummies quiet for longer.
As for these two new Twisted Fruit sticks, although only one flavor in this fruit rope line is called Sour Apple, they all should be called that. All are made primarily of apple and are extremely sour, and they should be promoted that way so kids see the sourness as a daredevil positive rather than an unpleasant surprise. These new flavors put only a slight pineapple or grape overlay on that apple sourness.
And the Clif Kid Twisted Fruit Pineapple is the first pineapple-flavored treat for kids I've ever seen that is not yellow. Its maroon color is a consequence of being all-natural but will also make them a hard sell.
Ronzoni Bistro Pasta Meals. Penne With Chicken and Broccoli, Linguine With Chicken and Mushrooms, Rotini With Tomato and Basil, and Spaghetti and Meatballs. $2.79 per 8-ounce package.
Bonnie: Pouches have produced good-tasting rice for Uncle Ben's and other rice companies, so you'd think it should also work for pasta. Maybe it can, but it definitely does not work in the case of Ronzoni Bistro — unless, that is, your idea of a bistro meal is Chef Boyardee.
I laughed when testing the Penne With Chicken and Broccoli, as I found only three teeny chunks of meat and green specks instead of pieces of broccoli. The only positive thing I can say about these is that the pouches meant no pan to clean up.
Carolyn: Suddenly it seems that everybody's going after Stouffer's and Healthy Choice's workplace cafeteria business. How else to explain the flood of shelf-stable meals from Hormel (with its healthy and quite tasty Compleats), Del Monte (with its Harvest Selections, which we will be reviewing in the next few weeks), and Ronzoni, whose Bistro line ruined at least one of my recent weekday dinners.
Let me explain. I normally try to test new products in the course of my regular eating. But I disliked the Penne With Chicken and Broccoli so much that in the same meal, I decided to move on to the Spaghetti and Meatballs, then the Linguine With Chicken and Mushrooms, then ... you get the picture. The best of these — the Rotini — is boringly reminiscent of canned Chef Boyardee. The worst — the white-sauced ones — are slop, plain and simple. The Bistro line name is so inappropriate that if I owned an Italian bistro, I would consider suing over the denigration of the word.
Klondike Slim-A-Bear 100 Calorie English Toffee and French Vanilla Bars Variety Pack. $4.29 per 16-ounce box containing eight bars.
Bonnie: I had to open four of these individually wrapped new Klondike Slim-A-Bear 100 Calorie Bars before I found an English Toffee one. You see, each box of Slim-A-Bear contains two different flavors of low-fat ice cream bars coated in milk chocolate flavored coating. But the bars inside the packages are unmarked, so it's a crapshoot as to which one you'll get.
As it turns out, it was not worth the hunt, as these bars taste more like chemicals than ice cream. In fact, these Slim-A-Bear bars made the 115-calorie Eskimo Pie ones I recently panned in these pages seem good.
Carolyn: Klondike Slim-A-Bear is just the latest in a bunch of new diet-conscious ice cream novelties. Slim-A-Bear ice cream bars are distinguished by having two flavors in one box (unhelpfully unmarked, as Bonnie just rightly complained).
Slim-A-Bear seems to have mainly achieved its calorie and fat savings through portion size, because these taste virtually the same as store-brand ice cream bars — they just cost a lot more. Those who can eat half a store-brand ice cream bar and put the other half back in the freezer in a plastic bag could save a lot of money. But I suspect there are more people in this country capable of being vice president than are capable of that.
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