Flash in the Pan

A story in The Scientists discusses a devastating banana disease that virtually wiped out the Gros Michel - "by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish" - that seems to be coming back. The only difference is that this time, the Cavendish doesn't seem immune from the new strain of what is called Panama disease:

Panama disease is so virulent that a single clump of dirt tracked in on a tire tread or a shoe can spark a country-wide outbreak. It isn't hard to imagine that a stray banana box from the Philippines, loaded into a Dole shipping container could be left unloaded at Long Beach, California, and continue on to Guatemala, where it could infect that nation's crop and tear through Latin America.

The big fruit companies seem to be living in denial and aren't publicly addressing the problem. Scientists are looking at genetic engineering as a solution. Great, from blight to GMO.

Labels: farming, fruit, news

Noble Juice shipped a selection of their products for testing. It arrived the other day and already we've gone through all but one of the bottles. The juices were uniformly good, some advertised as "natural" (as opposed to unnatural juice?) and others as organic. I thought the tangerine guava mango combination was particularly good and interesting: sweet with a faint hint of contrasting bitterness that only heightened the taste. The blood orange was also a treat, again with that complexity of taste. But then, I liked the orange tangerine as well.

An added benefit is that the company is shifting to a biodegradable bottle made out of corn. The products are also available through a wide number of grocery chains, so finding it shouldn't be too hard. It only gets tough when the juice gets home and is suddenly unprotected from the familial hordes.

Labels: fruit, juice, product, review

OK, so the name sounds like something Roald Dahl threw out when writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But don't let the self-conscious cuteness of FruitaBü throw you. These organic fruit snacks have a strong and clean fruit flavor, though some tend a little to the sour. But they're aimed at kids, and those same kids often like incredibly sour candies that twist my lips into a knot when I even think of them. Also, all the sugars come from fruit, so there is no high fructose corn syrup that goes into these.

There are two versions. The fruit Twirls are like a ribbon of soft fruit leather spiralled up. The fruit Sploooshers are packets of some kind of gelatinous mass that I'm sure is a heretofore unknown physical state of matter. I found the texture mildly off-putting, as did my teenage daughter, though, as I did, she liked the Twirls. But, being the dutiful young woman she is, she brought samples with her to school to test on her friends. They pretty much said, "Bring more," and they preferred the Sploooshers.

So give them a shot. Chances are that you won't go wrong, and at least you're keeping the corn content out and available for ethanol for the car.

Labels: fruit, opinion, product, review, snacks

I received some samples of snacks from a PR firm working for Welch's. The first, Welch's Dried Fruit, are mixes of chopped fruit pieces. I liked the flavors - particularly the ones with bits of pineapple - but didn't like a couple of thing. One is that they add sugar to the fruit, to tone the tartness that consumers might find objectionable. The other is that you need to read the warning label about bits of nuts appearing in the snack bags. I took a nibble of some and almost chomped down on a fragment. Because the fruit is also chopped, that may make them harder to spot - especially for the younger set, at suggested by the packaging and marketing slant. A set of 9 single servings (0.9 or 1.5 ounces each) runs $3.99 suggested retail price, or you can get a 6 ounce bag.

I also received a 5.5 ounce pouch of Welch's Dried Cherries, suggested retail price of $3.99. The fruit wasn't dried as much as you might normally expect, leaving it a little softened. These I liked quite a bit, although they also add sugar to them, as well.

The company does say that a quarter pound of either product will equal one serving of fruit. Check the bag before you depend on that, because I think that 4 ounces will end up being more calories than you might realize.

Labels: dried, fruit, opinion, review, Welch's

Nectarine juice blends seemed unusual enough that I wanted to give them a shot, so in came the PR-arranged samples of Sun Shower nectarine juice and juice blends from NBI Juiceworks. And, overall, I liked the taste, but I would take strong exception with the way they position the drinks.

More on that in a minute, but let's jump into the taste test of three varieties: one straight nectarine, a nectarine-mango mix, and nectarines blended with berries. The combination juices got the highest ratings from our in-house panel of adults and expert-drinking teenagers. Flavors were good and there was just the right mouth feel of viscosity. The plain nectarine also had a good taste, but was definitely on the tart side - not unpleasantly so, though it might kick in a mild shock if you were expecting something else.

Now for the grousing. First, I get really tired of 12-ounce versions of drinks, obviously bottled for consumption by one person, as having, in this case, 1.5 servings. The press materials may brag "Only 93 calories per 8 ounce serving," but the bottle has 139.5 calories.

My greater irritation lies with the technically-correct claim that the products are 100% juice - because, if you round and ignore minute amounts of other things, they are. But as the company claims "100% Juice - No added sugar or preservatives" in the press materials, it neglects to add, "Oh, but we do add sucralose to sweeten things, because the nectarines can be sour."

Sucralose is the common name for the product Splenda, and is an artificial sweetener about 600 percent sweeter than sugar. On the company's own web site, it addresses the question of "Why sucralose?" The answer? Nectarines vary in sweetness:

By adding sucralose, NBI JuiceWorks™ is able to balance the sweetness of our juices (called the acid/brix ratio) to ensure each bottle has the consistent great taste consumers expect.

Read that as, "If people tasted what these fruit were like on their own, their mouths would turn inside out and that would be bad for business. And because we want to say 100 percent juice, we can't add sugar or honey, because the amounts would become some percentage of the final mix and the calorie content would go up." That is, their marketing of the juice would suffer, because on the bottle itself it makes very visible the words "no added sugar or preservatives" and squeezes the sucralose mention into the government-mandated label. If it did mention the substance, people might wonder why it still has almost 140 calories per 12-ounce bottle.

There were other things I disliked in the web site's attempt to spin the sucralose. Approved by the FDA to be used in juice? Well, of course it was, otherwise this company couldn't use it. Excellent safety profile? Just what does that mean? I'm not knocking the use of sucralose or other artificial sweeteners - I even had nice things to say about Zsweet. But, frankly, I was very disappointed. Personally, I'd rather pay the price in calories for the real sweetener and not let the manufacturer try to let me think I'm getting away with something for nothing. Particularly when the company is trying to create an impression of concern for health.

Labels: berries, fruit, juice, mango, NBI Juiceworks, nectarine, sucralose, Sun Shower

Clif Bars sent samples of their new Organic Fruit & Nut Bar line. Each one offers "2 full servings of fruit and nuts," which does leave some question of interpretation. Do you get two servings of each? Two servings combined? There's no wheat, soy, or dairy, for the vegan or ingredient-sensitive, no processed sugars or artificial sweeteners or trans fats for everyone, and 5 to 7 grams of fiber. A bar is 150 to 170 calories, still lower than eating a candy bar, though the price is $1.49, not so cheap for 1.6 ounces (or a suggested price of $14.90 a pound).

As for the taste ... eh. I preferred the cranberry, apricot, and almond to the dark chocolate raspberry because the latter's taste just didn't come up to the standard depth you can fine in a good piece of chocolate. However, it's certainly a better nutritional choice than candy, and not so expensive as to discourage a bit of experimentation.

Labels: bars, chocolate, Clif, fiber, fruit, nuts