Trader Joe's Fiberful Ends & Pieces

Price: $2.49
Serving: 1.5oz.
Servings Per Container: About 6
Calories: 120 per serving
Fat: 0%, 1g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 0%, 10mg
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrates: 10%, 28g
Fiber: 48%, 12g
Sugar: 16g
Weight Watchers Points: 2 Per Serving

Trader Joe’s says: Trader Joe's Fiberful Ends & Pieces are completely handmade which results in somewhat uneven sheets of the delicious dried fruit snack. In order to have nice clean edge on the bars, the large sheets must be neatly trimmed. In this bag are cut sheets of delicious, high fiber fruit snacks.

We say: Several months ago Fiberful fruit bars made an appearance at the DC Trader Joe's. Snack Lounge rejoiced in those delicious, semi-filling fruit bars, both for their taste and their promise of regularity.

Then, one humid summer day, in an event that occurs daily in Trader Joe's stores across the country, the bars disappeared. This phenomena, which was been documented with the tragic half-year loss of Chicken Gyoza Potstickers, creates a constant, consumptive fear in the hearts of avid Trader Joe's shoppers.

The bars still aren't available in the DC store, which makes the appearance of this bag of ends and pieces all the more strange. Where are the ends and pieces coming from? Has Trader Joe's been storing them up for months? Are they switching to an 'ends and pieces' only business model? We don't know the answers to these questions. We do know that the ends and pieces cost about one-fifth as much (by weight) as the individual bars.

So, if we're such Fiberful bar lovers and these are even cheaper, why did they get just two stars? It turns out that half of each bad bag is inedible.

Each package contains an assortment of fruit bar chunks. Only some of these are the delightful apricot version. The others are completely unidentifiable. They taste like dried fruit bars, but they don't taste like fruit. Yes, this sounds odd, but imagine that you've just had a piece of the apricot bar. You've enjoyed the mellow, rich, compounded flavor of dried apricots. You didn't notice the 'fiber' part at all. There is peace and harmony in the world.

Then you reach into the bag and pull out another piece. But this time, instead of the fruity flavor you've come to expect, you're greeted with a bland, disappointing, unidentifiable chunk of dried fruit mush. Ick. If Trader Joe's allowed us to select flavors, then these bags would come close to replacing our need for the bars. However, with the sad surprise of detastified fruit, we won't be buying these again.

3 Comments »
Posted on August 30, 2007
Categories: Mixed Fruit, Trader Joe's, Two Points, Two Stars, Dried Fruit

Brothers All Natural Strawberry Crisps

Price: $0.80
Serving: 1 entire bag, .26 oz.
Calories: 30
Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 0%, 0mg
Protein: 1g
Carbs: 2%, 6g
Fiber: 6%, 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 0 points

Brothers International Food Corporation says: We start with luscious fruit, straight from some of the best growing regions in the world. We then send it directly to our state-of-the-art FREEZE DRIED process that gently removes the water from the fresh fruit, and transforms it into a delicious, delightfully light, and flavorful CRISP. As always, we simply use fruit, nothing artificial, definitely no added sugar…just fruit, THE BEST FRUIT.

We say: These berries were one of the many food items we foisted on our colleagues this year. They were also our first experience with freeze dried food. Somehow, we managed to resist the freeze dried ice cream during childhood trips to OMSI and the Pacific Science Center. In the gift shop was generally more enamored of the hand boilers.

Sure, we considered consuming the entire .26 ounces of fruit along, but then we would have missed seeing Chad, Kate, and Josh realize that they’d just consumed strawberry-flavored styrofoam. We kid. These are not made of styrofoam, they just taste the way styrofoam would taste if it was made very sour and produced in the color of dried blood. We do not kid about the dried blood part.

Brothers All Natural’s freeze dried fruits aren’t just a flavor explosion, they’re also a textural experience. Each little berry will suck all of the saliva out of your mouth and into the product, thus making it possible for you to experience desert-like thirst and an uncomfortably full mouth at the same time.

Only after exhorting my colleagues to consume these berries did we realize that they were from China. Holy crap, we’re eating freeze-dried strawberries from China? Isn’t that a little ridiculous? I mean, I can see purchasing other things from China, like silk, catfish, and toothpaste, but strawberries? From now on, I’m not willing to go any further than Chile to get my red, sour, styrofoamy fruit.

[This review was cross-posted at HeatEatReview.com]

4 Comments »
Posted on August 29, 2007
Categories: Zero Points, Strawberry, Brothers All Natural, Two Stars, Freeze Dried Fruit