Minute Ready to Serve! Fully Cooked Rice. White, Brown, Yellow Mix, and Chicken Mix. $1.99 to $2.19 per 8.8-ounce box of two cups.
Bonnie: Uncle Ben's pioneered precooked microwavable rice with its Ready Rice pouches for two. Now Riviana's similar Minute Ready to Serve! makes a plastic cupful in just a minute. I like that you can make only a portion at a time, but I don't like the telltale plastic taste and aroma that emanate from the rice after cooking — something that Uncle Ben's pouches don't have.
If you're not as sensitive to such things, I'd recommend Minute Ready to Serve! whole-grain brown rice over all the other varieties, with plain white a distant second. The brown contains all the goodness of whole grain plus 2 grams fiber, while the white contains neither.
Skip the flavored varieties. They contain additives that push the sodium levels in the Yellow Mix and Chicken Mix to a totally unacceptable 1,030 milligrams per serving, or almost half the day's recommended limit.
Carolyn: Sixty years after Minute Rice was invented, the company has finally produced a product that lives up to its name. In literally one minute these single-serving cups produce rice with the taste and texture of rice that could take up to 40 times longer (in the case of brown rice) to make from scratch (and that's not including pot cleanup time). In other words, this precooked rice is far superior to the traditional boxed Minute Rice you make with boiling water.
These are not better-tasting than what comes out of Uncle Ben's Ready Rice two-serving pouches, but Minute's cups are more convenient for singles or any family on different eating schedules — and these days, isn't that every family?
Murray Sugar Free Cookies. Chocolate Bites. $2.14 per box of six 0.74-ounce packages.
Bonnie: The latest in Murray's offerings of sugar-free desserts are little chocolate, doughnut-shaped, flat discs in pouches that each contain 70 calories. Like all artificially sweetened foods, Murray Chocolate Bites cookies have an aftertaste, although one that's not as bad as other products I've had to taste-test for this column.
Still, I wouldn't buy them, and I don't think most diabetics have to either. The truth is that most people with diabetes don't have to restrict themselves to foods with artificial sweeteners like these. They just need to be even more careful than the rest of us about not overdoing sweets.
My snack advice to diabetics: Enjoy a small amount of what tastes good and have fewer carbohydrates at your next meal (as sugar is just a simple carbohydrate).
That said, if you are diabetic, do check with your own dietitian or endocrinologist before changing your eating habits. They know what's best for your particular situation.
Carolyn: Murray's newest food product is low-cal, high-fiber and sugar-free. No, I'm not talking about a new packaged vegetable, nut blend or whole-grain bread. (It might be more appealing if it were!) It's actually some boring packaged mini cookies — chocolate discs that are hardly worth eating.
A single Chips Ahoy! has about the same calories as a whole bag of these. So does an apple. Either would be preferable.
Kettle Potato Chips. Sour Cream, Onion & Chive; and Backyard Barbeque. $3.29 to $3.49 per 9-ounce bag.
Bonnie: Kettle is just the latest of many food companies to align with environmental causes — from saving the rain forests and puffins to improving the environment. In addition to using solar panels on its factories and recycling its vegetable oil into biodiesel, Kettle has just partnered with the National Wildlife Federation for the introduction of its Backyard Barbeque flavor. If you certify your backyard as a wildlife habitat, Kettle will chip in $1 and send you a coupon for a free bag of chips (details at www.nwf.org/kettlefoods).
But what about the chips? Like most chips, a serving of these contains 150 calories and 9 grams of total fat. The Sour Cream, Onion & Chive has 115 milligrams of sodium; the Barbeque has 170. I like the smoky flavor of the Barbeque over the more ordinary Sour Cream, Onion & Chive.
Best of all, like all Kettle chips, these contain no artificial ingredients.
Carolyn: Kettle has long made a Classic Barbeque chip. But its new Backyard Barbeque flavor bests it. It tastes almost as complex as some of the best competition sauces. Unlike the big-brand barbecue chips, with their thick powder, the barbecue flavor rides on top of the potato flavor rather than obscuring it.
The Sour Cream, Onion & Chive is less distinctive. Almost any one of Kettle's more typical offbeat flavors (the Spicy Thai, for instance) would be much better.
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