Pudding pricing, part 1 New from Kraft: Jell-O Singles instant pudding mix. The box contains six packets, each of which, mixed with a half-cup of cold milk, produces a serving of pudding.
Mr. Tidbit knows there are households where a four-serving box of instant pudding produces two or three servings more than immediately required (although he lives by himself and has found no difficulty in achieving timely consumption of the other three servings). And he can imagine, dimly, using a single envelope of pudding mix in some remote location (office? car??) where extra servings are inconvenient, but where there is half a cup of milk.
But he is nonetheless bemused at what Kraft charges. At one discount supermarket, where the four-serving box is 89 cents, the box of six Jell-O Singles is $1.86 -- 39 percent more per serving.
Pudding pricing, part 2 Over in the giant prepared-pudding industry, the whipped-contents idea finally made the cross-species jump from yogurt. The pricing arrangement of new Swiss Miss Mousse Delights pudding is similar to that of Yoplait Whips yogurt: The tub has the same volume and the same price as the regular product, but it contains a smaller amount of the product, plus whipped-in air. In this case, 4-ounce tubs contain 2.9 ounces of whipped pudding (so it costs 38 percent more per ounce).
And, in this case, the mousse-like pudding contains gelatin and a fair amount of hydrogenated coconut oil, which is 92 percent saturated fat. Some say the jury is still out on the particular saturated fats in coconut oil. In any case, hydrogenating coconut oil produces almost no trans-fats because that only happens when unsaturated fats are hydrogenated.
Dear friends: Tuesday would have been my son Joe's 37th birthday. He died in a seven-story fall from his college dorm room in Madison, Wis., in 1989. He had taken LSD; he was 18.
Hug your kids.
AL SICHERMAN
