What's 10 calories?
Six of the many carbonated beverages made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group — Dr Pepper, 7UP, A&W (the root beer, not the cream soda), Sunkist, Canada Dry and RC — are now available in versions with 10 calories per 12-ounce serving. That's in addition to the diet versions, which have no calories, and the regular versions — which have from 140 calories (7Up and Canada Dry) to Sunkist's 190.
The company says these 10-calorie products, all labeled with TEN spelled out in capital letters, are intended to offer "the great taste of regular soda with less calories." The new versions get their fewer calories by starting with the diet versions, which are sweetened with aspartame and acesulfame potassium, and adding a little high-fructose corn syrup.
Mr. Tidbit's extremely unscientific analysis, having sampled all three A&W root beers, is that A&W TEN might be just a little sweeter than Diet A&W, but it still has diet-soda aftertaste.
At least all three versions carry the same price.
Waffles and topping
New from Kellogg's Eggo empire (which turns out almost as many new versions as Kraft's Oreo dominion) are Eggo Drizzlers, which seem to be regular Eggo waffles plus topping packets (blueberry or strawberry).
For the same price as regular Eggo waffles (10 in a 12.3-ounce box), the 10.7-ounce box of Drizzlers contains just six waffles (which on Mr. Tidbit's postal scale weigh the same as regular Eggos) and three little (1.1-ounce each) packets of topping. Mr. Tidbit's first thought was that Drizzlers seemed like a way to charge too much for waffles.
At one store, regular Eggos and Drizzlers both cost $2.99. So a serving of two of the six Drizzlers waffles and one of the three topping packets costs $1.
If you bought the Eggos in the regular 10-waffle package, plus a 12-ounce bottle of Smucker's blueberry syrup ($2.99 at that store), that serving would cost 87 cents (60 cents for two waffles and 27 cents for 1.1 ounces of syrup). Mr. Tidbit must admit that the 13-cent premium isn't as much as he expected.
