The best, worst of new grocery products in 2004
By Bonnie Leblang and Carolyn Wyman - Supermarket Sampler
Low carb. The U.S. supermarket scene in 2004 can be summed up in those two dreaded words. Not since the fear of fat in the early to mid-’90s has a single food trend so completely dominated new product introductions or so depressed the two of us — Bonnie, because of her aversion to fad diets, and both of us because of the typically poor to ghastly taste of low-carb products.
Not surprisingly, low-carb foods also dominated our list of worst new products of 2004.
That Double Forks Down list makes our best-of-the-year product picks and the winner of our Golden Shopping Cart Award for the best new product of the year all the more beloved and dear, as we both look forward to a low-carbfree, or at least a low-carb-reduced, New Year.
Double forks down
1. Total Protein. General Mills won the race in getting a low-carb cereal to market, but nobody should be in a rush to buy something that tastes this much like stale Wheaties.
2. Ben & Jerry’s Carb Karma. The first spit-worthy Ben & Jerry’s.
3. Hershey’s 1 Gram Sugar Carb Bars. Hershey’s forgot that people eat chocolate because it tastes good. And these don’t. Carolyn was particularly appalled by the soy crisp variety.
4. Orville Redenbacher’s Cinnabon Gourmet Popping Corn. Popcorn with the fat and frosting of a mall Minibon. Even Carolyn had a hard time thinking of an eating occasion for this weirdest of Redenbacher flavors.
5. Smucker’s Magic Shell Turtle Delight Topping. Twice the calories of Ben & Jerry’s Fudge Sauce with half the flavor. Virtually any ice cream with caramel, chocolate and nut mix-ins would be infinitely more delightful.
6. V8 Invigor8 Energy Drinks. Expensive fruit juice rip-off of vegetable V8 with none of V8’s cancer-preventing lycopene, half its potassium and iron, plus a chemical taste.
7. Mott’s Magic Mix-Ins Apple Sauce. Applesauce accompanied by popping candy sprinkles to up its flavor, color and already sickening sweetness. And we wonder why kids are getting fatter and fatter.
8. Dannon Light ‘n Fit Carb Control. Although this does contains live active cultures (to correct some erroneous info we learned from Dannon’s 800 line and previously published), you’re paying mostly for water. And it tasted horrid.
Bonnie’s best picks
1. Earthbound Apple Slices. Slices of crisp apples packed in individual bags to make eating fruit on-the-go easy and appealing.
2. Santa Cruz Organic Lemon Juice. This additive-free, not-from-concentrate product is as close to fresh lemon juice as you can get without squeezing your own.
3. Late July Saltine, Cheddar Cheese and Classic Rich Snack Crackers. The founders of Cape Cod potato chips have come up with more winners: good-tasting snack crackers that are all natural, organic and low in fat.
4. DiGiorno Thin Crispy Crust Grilled Chicken, Spinach & Tomato Pizza. Crispy thin-crusted pizza with a topping that’s both tasty and nutritious (as long as you don’t eat too many slices).
5. Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs. Snacks that double as a teaching tool about calorie content. The Oreo is my favorite because it’s only the chocolate wafer, which I’ve always liked better than the creme.
6. Swanson Organic Broth. These organic, lower-sodium and good-tasting broths have earned a permanent place in my pantry.
7. Nature Path Flax Plus. Chock-full of the whole grains and fiber that make breakfast cereals worth eating. Tasty too.
8. Kellogg 1/3 Less Sugar Cereal. These less-sugar versions of Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops are a small but meaningful step toward helping solve America’s mammoth obesity problem. In other words, they’re GRRRreat!
9. Sunrich Naturals Frozen Edamame. Fresh soybeans taken out of their pods, bagged and frozen so they’re now as easy to enjoy as frozen peas.
Carolyn’s best picks
1. Ready Pac Bistro to Go Salads. Even salad-haters should like these single-serve bowls of fresh salad greens with interesting mix-ins.
2. Diet Coke With Lime. Lime comes on strong in this, the best of the new flavored colas.
3. Freschetta Brick Oven Roasted Portobella Mushrooms and Spinach Frozen Pizza. The single most interestingtasting and best-chewing frozen pizza widely available in supermarkets (providing you like garlic).
4. Keebler Sandies Fruit Delights Shortbread Cookies. Despite the name, these taste more like delicious little strawberry or apple pies. Like pie, they’re very crumbly and therefore not ideal for dashboard dining.
5. Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange Drink Mix. Tang-maker Kraft has out-Tanged itself with a new powder that almost matches OJ’s texture but is cheaper and has fewer calories.
6. Popsicle Jell-O Pudding Pops. Glad tidings to Good Humor for the good sense to revive this delicious old favorite.
7. Jennie-O Turkey Store Oven Ready Turkey. This new convenience turkey cooks in its own oven-roaster bag without thawing, thereby turning a former biannual holiday ordeal into a viable weeknight poultry alternative.
8. Kellogg’s French Toast Pop-Tarts. A hybrid breakfast food with more than a passing resemblance to Canadian maple sugar and Southern pecan pie. In other words, a great new excuse to eat pie for breakfast.
9. Birds Eye Voila! Chicken & Sausage Tuscano. A restaurant-quality dish featuring big pieces of peppers, mushrooms, chicken and fennel-accented sausage in a delicious, medium-spicy red sauce. It’s pasta-less because it was designed with low-carb dieters in mind. But I’d gladly boil water for one of the best frozen dinners I’ve ever eaten (and this is the voice of experience speaking).
Golden Shopping Cart Award
And now for the winner of our joint Golden Shopping Cart Award for the one product that was tasty, healthy and innovative: Uncle Ben’s Original Long Grain and Original Brown Ready Rice.
Bonnie: Forget Minute Rice. With new Ready Rice you merely massage the package to separate the grains, tear a corner of the pouch to vent, microwave for 90 seconds and the rice is ready to eat. That’s compared to 20 minutes for regular white rice or 40 for brown. Each package of Ready Rice contains only rice and a smidgeon of oil. I especially recommend the Original Brown variety. That’s not only for its greater time savings but also because it’s a harbinger of what I predict will be the product trend of 2005: convenience foods made from whole grains. I believe this in part because eating more whole grains is one of the proposed recommendations of the Federal Dietary Guidelines due out in January.
Carolyn: Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice is probably the most genuinely innovative and exciting new product we’ve reviewed in the past few years. It cooks faster than any other convenience rice product, mimics regular rice’s flavor and consistency, and doesn’t require fooling around with water and oil, or cleaning a pan. In terms of innovation, I’d place it right up there with microwave popcorn and ready-to-drink OJ.
Ready Rice does have one big downside: It’s about 15 times more expensive per cooked serving than generic rice (although I’m sure prices will go down just as they did with such equally amazing inventions as electronic calculators and computers). Another time this price differential might have made me hesitate to nominate this product. But in a year when we’ve suffered through so many low-carb foods, it feels wonderful to give our highest honor to a high-carb one.
http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php...od&c=13,1042409
The best, worst of new grocery products in 2004
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