Mr. Tidbit has been ranting recently about refrigerated juices that trumpet the fact that they have half the calories of regular juices -- but that's because they are half water and they don't cost any less. Not really in the same category but a little over the top are Welch's three new Healthy Start refrigerated 100 percent juice products (Concord grape, white grape orange mango or blueberry pomegranate).
All three cartons prominently (and correctly) carry these claims: "with calcium" and "2x vitamin C & antioxidant power of the leading OJ." The calcium is just 10 percent of the recommended daily amount (RDA), which Mr. Tidbit would say is hardly worth talking about. But there is indeed 260 percent of the RDA of vitamin C. (It comes largely from added ascorbic acid, which is also available as an inexpensive vitamin C supplement.)
So what's Mr. Tidbit's complaint? Just that at the store where he found 59-ounce cartons of Healthy Start and larger 64-ounce cartons of Welch's other refrigerated 100 percent juices with calcium (also just 10 percent of the RDA), the Healthy Choice version cost $3.79 and the regular juice -- 8 percent more of it -- was $2.99. For 64 ounces of each, you'd pay $1.12 more, for at most a quarter's worth of vitamin C.
But smooooth Not content with having recently given us Butterfinger Crisp, Baby Ruth Crisp and Crunch Crisp -- the wafer-filled versions of those candy bars -- Nestlé now offers us little bags of Butterfinger Snackerz. There are nine Snackerz in a 1.28-ounce bag, about 60 percent of the weight of a regular Butterfinger bar.
The bag describes Snackerz as "crispy chocolatey bite-size treats with a smooth Butterfinger candy-flavored center then topped with a peanut buttery drizzle."
The operative word in that description is "smooth." One of Mr. Tidbit's little friends -- who, it should be understood, enjoyed the Snackerz considerably -- attempted to define the difference between a Butterfinger bar and Butterfinger Snackerz by pointing out that Snackerz "lack that signature ground-into-your-teeth quality of a regular Butterfinger bar."
Exactly.
AL SICHERMAN
