I went for the all-out decedant Triple Chocolate Chunk first for my after-dinner dessert last night. It was very good! Quite chocolatey, with only a slight hint of "this tastes healthy" to it. But that slight difference between a VitaTop and a bakery chocolate chunk muffin wasn't enough to keep me or my 6-year-old from loving every bite! For breakfast this morning, I moved on to the Apple Crumb flavor, crumbling it on top of my usual morning yogurt. Oh my....quite delicious. However, it definitely had more of a healthful, high-fiberish sort of flavor/texture to it when eaten alone. This afternoon, I tried the Fudgy Peanut Butter Chip variety and it was just as tasty as the Triple Chocolate Chunk. I'm afraid I've found a new addiction! These things are awesome for breakfast, snacks, and dessert! I'm looking forward to trying out some of the recipes they have on the website. They look delicious!
Now to break down this week's supermarket finds newsletter, Brown-Bag Makeover.
First up, we have Tumaro's Gourmet Tortillas New York Deli Style Wraps. I'd give these a YELLOW light because, while they are thankfully free of the big culprits like HFCS and PHVOs, a couple of varieties use bleached enriched flour which is esentially white bread flour which strips out everything beneficial about the wheat grain and replaces it with artificial vitamins. I'd lean towards the Pumpernickel or Rye since they use whole wheat flour and stay away from the Everything, Cracked Pepper, and Sourdough.
Next, there is Oscar Mayer Carving Board Meats. These get a big old flashing RED light for trying to pull a fast one on us and renaming HFCS as "cultured corn sugar". as well as being heavy on preservatives like most packaged deli meats are. Your better choice for a packaged lunch meat would be Hormel's Natural Choice. They're 100% natural with no preservatives, artificial colors or flavors.
Next up, we have StarKist Pouches of Low Sodium Albacore White Tuna in Water. The ingredient list ist is nowhere to be found, but even if it was perfect, Starkist has been under scrutiny by the FDA recently for various food safety violations (and gads, if the FDA, who allows HFCS and PHVOs to continue to infest our food, is actually calling something out like this, it must be bad). So, I'd definitely steer clear of this one for now. A better alternative would be Bumble Bee Prime Fillet Solid White Albacore Very Low Sodium in Water. The name is actually longer than the ingredient list (which is simply "white tuna, demineralized water").
The next products on the list are Kraft Sandwich Shop Mayo: Horseradish-Dijon, Chipotle, and Garlic & Herb. These are essentially flavored Kraft Mayo, which is, like most Kraft products, riddled with artificial preservatives, modified starches, and so forth. You know it can't be good for you when half of the ingredients come with a little asterick that designates "ingredients not normally found in mayonnaise". Then why put them in there? A better bet would be to just pick up an all-natural jar of mayo like Cain's Foods Light Mayo and add your own flavoring.
For our first lunch "side", HG offers up Pepperidge Farm Baked Naturals Simply Cheddar Cracker Chips. BING-BING-BING we have a winner! These are all-natural and oh-so-good! Munch away!
Also good to go, are the Blue Diamond Almonds 100 Calorie Packs. All of these have all-natural ingredients except the Wasabi & Soy Sauce flavor which includes fractionated oils and modified starch.
For dessert we have some lovely chemical-laden sweets for you, starting with Weight Watchers Coffee Cake. The ingredient list starts out pretty benign with "Sugar, whole eggs, enriched wheat flour", but then goes downhill fast into what looks like someone's chemistry experiment, complete with PHVO, corn syrup, modified starches, artificial flavors and preservatives. Stay far, far away from this one, folks!Also on the "bad dessert" list we have Slim·Fast Snack Bars, Peanut Butter Crunch Time. Yet again, another sweet loaded with PHVO, corn syrup and preservatives. If you're craving a great peanut butter bar, go with a Clif Crunchy Peanut Butter Bar. Yes, it had twice the calories of the Slim-Fast, but you won't be hungry an hour later because it not only has 5g of fiber to the Slim-Fast bar's 0g, but it's also made from real food, not chemicals.
Last on the dessert agenda, we have Extra Dessert Delights Sugarfree Gum. Okay, you think, it's gum, how bad can it be? Bad....really, really bad. There is not a single natural ingredient in this stuff. It's all artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors, and preservatives. Chew on some Glee Gum instead, it's all-natural and made from sustainably harvested chicle. And look at this guy on the package...you know he's happy because he's not chewing on a bunch of chemicals. :) They even have kits for you to make your own gum...how cool is that?
Lastly, we have the drinks. First up is Activate Drinks. These look really cool, with the flavor/vitamin powder in the lid. The ingredient list is way too small for me to read very clearly on the website, but, as far as I can tell, they look like they're good to go. Naturally sweetened with Stevia, no preservatives or artificial colors/flavors. Looks like a win!Next up is Sparkling ICE Naturally Flavored Mountain Spring Water. Ooo...sounds nice and the bottles are pretty, and "naturally-flavored" sounds like it could be a win but wait...hiding in the ingredient list is sucralose, a.k.a Splenda. Booo! Instead, try HINT water, it's all-natural and sugar-free.
Lastly, we have Crystal Light Pure. It's another Kraft food, so I cringe to think what might be in it but...they surprise me and this is actually supposedly all-natural! Hard to confirm when they don't show an ingredient list, but for now I'll take their word for it. Yay! Another win!
If you find any great supermarket finds, let me know. I'm going to keep my eye out as well!
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