NEWS: Put On Your Leg Warmers to Celebrate the Return of Sour Cream and Onion Doritos and Salsa Rio Doritos

/ / Spotted on Shelves / 20 Comments

Limited Edition Doritos on shelf

Update: Click here to read our Limited Edition Doritos (Sour Cream and Onion & Salsa Rio) review

Do you remember the 1980s?

Don’t remember the 1980s because your parents hadn’t met until the 1990s? Well, back then we had Sour Cream and Onion Doritos and Salsa Rio Doritos. I didn’t get to try those flavors because my parents bought generic chips in black and white packages, which is also something you young whippersnappers don’t remember.

Thankfully, Frito-Lay has brought back Sour Cream and Onion Doritos and Salsa Rio Doritos for a limited time. Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp has a review of both flavors, while Junk Food Guy reviewed Salsa Rio Doritos.

I look forward to eating these chips while wearing a Members Only jacket and listening to Duran Duran on a record player.

If you’ve tried them, let us know what you think and where you found them in the comments.

REVIEW: Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips

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Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips

Oh, potato chips. I wish I could quit you, like I’ve stopped downloading freaky foreign internet porn and buying awful movies from the $5 DVD bin at Walmart with laughable titles like Mexican Werewolf In Texas and Hoochie Mama Drama. But you’re so difficult to shake, like a guy with vice grips for hands holding on to the roof of a speeding car while it goes around the Nürburgring in Germany.

I wish there was some kind of 12-step program to help me overcome my potato chip addiction because I have a weak soul that easily gives in to tater temptations. It’s so hard for my tongue to resist the equation: potato + hot oil = delicious. Once I pop, I can’t stop until half the bag is gone or until I get a sore stomach or until the bag is taken away from me using force.

It wouldn’t be so bad if potato chips had less fat. Although folks have tried to make low-fat potato chips using the synthetic oil, Olestra. However, for some reason people didn’t care for its possible anal leakage side effect.

A one ounce serving of Lays classic potato chips has 10 grams of fat, which is 16 percent of our daily value. So if I ate half a bag of Lays potato chips in one sitting, while watching a NCIS marathon on the USA Network, I would have consumed 60 grams of fat or 96 percent of my daily value. Oh, if only there was a way I could eat half a bag of potato chips without the guilt and the need to eat raw vegetables for the rest of the day to compensate for the potato chips.

Oh wait, it looks like Kettle Foods might have something with their Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips.

How did Kettle Brands make these chips have less fat? Don’t know and don’t care, unless it involves Olestra or a deal with the Devil. But it’s not the ingredients since it’s as simple of a list as their regular Sea Salt potato chips — potatoes, safflower and/or sunflower oil, and sea salt. It probably involves something that includes the word “proprietary” in its name.

As a fan of regular Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips, I’m quite familiar with its flavor. Heck, I’m such as fan that just thinking about them makes my mouth water and my hands shake. God, I need a potato chip fix right now. So does this reduced fat version taste just as good as the full fat version, which has 9 grams of fat per serving? Not quite. Does it taste good for a 40% reduced fat potato chip? Most definitely.

(Sidenote: The 40% is determined by comparing these chips with “regular potato chips” (i.e. Lays potato chips) and not their own regular sea salt potato chips.)

The chip’s potato flavor isn’t as robust as the regular version, but it does have the same delightful crunch. It seems Kettle Foods tries to make up for the slight loss of flavor due to the reduction in fat by including 45 milligrams more sodium per serving than the regular stuff, but I don’t think it’s saltier. However, the flavor difference is slight enough that I think if you emptied a bag into a bowl and left it out for your guests, no one would be any the wiser. After all, not everyone’s tongue and gut fat is as familiar with Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips as mine.

The Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips are pretty gosh darn good and I’ll probably end up replacing the regular stuff with it so that I can go on a potato chip bender with less guilt.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 ounce/about 13 chips – 130 calories, 50 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat, 4.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 480 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 0 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips
Price: $4.00 (on sale)
Size: 8 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Pretty damn good for 40% reduced fat potato chips. 40% less fat than “regular potato chips.” Less calories than Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips. Less guilty. No preservatives. Non-GMO ingredients. Gluten free. Potato + hot oil = delicious.
Cons: Flavor isn’t as robust as the regular stuff, but most won’t notice. My potato chip addiction. More sodium than the regular stuff. More expensive than “regular potato chips.” Some of the movies found in the $5 DVD bin at Walmart.

REVIEW: Orange Tangerine MiO Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins

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MiO Orange Tangerine Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins

With it being orange-tangerine flavored, I expected the MiO Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins to have some vitamin C. But the nutrition facts clearly state, “Not a significant source of Fat Cal, Sat Fat, Trans Fat, Cholest, Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, and Iron.”

So what is it a significant source of?

Well, after scanning the words and numbers on the bottle and trying this new MiO flavor, I have to say it’s only a significant source of sucralose and the color orange. While it does have B vitamins, an 8-ounce serving of this MiO provides only 10 percent of your daily value of vitamins B3, B6, and B12. Pfff…Me and my gummy multivitamin laugh at that 10 percent.

Having 10 percent of anything makes me wonder, why bother? A bowl of Cocoa Puffs and most other kids cereals provide 25 percent of your daily value of B vitamins. Or if you want to drown yourself in B vitamins, half a bottle of 5-Hour Energy has 75 percent of your daily value of vitamin B3, 1,000 percent of your daily value of vitamin B6, and over 4,000 percent of your daily value of vitamin B12.

Even if you consumed all 24 servings a bottle of this MiO provides, you still wouldn’t get as much vitamins B6 and B12 as a 5-Hour Energy, but at least your pee might turn orange, allowing you to write your name in the snow using a color other than yellow.

If you’ve never made a beverage using MiO, the instructions read as if you’re playing with a Bop-It. First, you flip it, then tip it, then sip it, and then click it.

MiO Orange Tangerine Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins CloseupThe Orange Tangerine MiO Liquid Water Enhancer smells as if I walked into an orange Tang dust cloud. It also tastes like the stuff that was once consumed by NASA astronauts on some Gemini space missions, except less tangy. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of drinking Tang and want a reference that your grandparents won’t get, it tastes like a much sweeter VitaminWater Essential. And for those of you who have never downed a Tang or VitaminWater, what are you doing reading a blog filled with junk and processed food reviews?

The bottle says it contains “Natural Flavors with Other Natural Flavors,” but it’s artificially sweetastic thanks to it being a significant source of sucralose. Even though it’s artificially sweetastic, I like the orange-tangerine flavored MiO as much as I like the fruit punch version. Although, it almost became undrinkable when I got a little overzealous with the squeezing.

The point of MiO is to encourage us to drink the recommended amount of water and I think the Orange Tangerine MiO Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins can motivate me to do so. It’s a fine addition to the MiO line, even though the pitiful amounts of B vitamins are completely bogus additions.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 tsp – 0 calories, 0 grams of fat, 30 milligrams of sodium, 0 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 10% vitamin B3, 10% vitamin B6, and 10% vitamin B12.)

Item: Orange Tangerine MiO Liquid Water Enhancer with Vitamins
Price: $3.50 (on sale)
Size: 1.62 fluid ounces
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Tastes like Tang, but not as tangy. The pleasure derived from destroying a Bop-It because it’s so frustrating to beat. Astronauts. A significant source of the color orange. Gummy multivitamins. Makes 24 8-ounce servings, if you’re not overzealous with the squeezing.
Cons: Amounts of B vitamins are a joke. Artificially sweetastic. It’s orange flavored but contains no vitamin C. Get cloyingly sweet when one gets overzealous with the squeezing.

NEWS: General Mills Releases Dulce de Leche Cheerios and Peanut Butter Multi Grain Cheerios For Those of You Who Are Sick of the Other 11 Cheerios Varieties

/ / Spotted on Shelves / 11 Comments

Update: Click here to read our Dulce de Leche Cheerios and Peanut Butter Multi Grain Cheerios review

There are two new Cheerios varieties, which brings the total number of Cheerios flavors to a baker’s dozen. The new Cheerios varieties are Dulce de Leche Cheerios and Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter.

These new Cheerios flavors follow Cinnamon Burst Cheerios, which was released at the beginning of this year. Grub Grade’s Adam Nettina reviewed the two flavors over at his new blog.

Of course, these new flavors are going to make choosing a Cheerios variety to purchase much harder. Usually, I just open the biggest regular Cheerios box, pull out the bag of cereal in it, put the huge Cheerios box over my head, ask a fellow shopper to hand me a box of each variety, throw them all in the air, and whichever one I catch is the flavor I buy. But I don’t know if I could hold all 13 flavors.

THE YEAR IN REVIEWS: The Top 10 Most Popular Impulsive Buy Reviews in 2011

/ / Announcement, General / 5 Comments

I know. The year isn’t over yet, but the likelihood of this list changing sometime during the last days of 2011 is pretty much nil. So here’s a list of the top 10 most popular Impulsive Buy reviews posted in 2011. This list is based on traffic numbers from Google Analytics. So here they are in a particular order:

10. MiO Liquid Water Enhancer

MiO is a great water enhancer, but it also makes a great white t-shirt enhancer.

9. Wendy’s Berry Almond Chicken Salad

According to the internets, Wendy’s is positioned to overtake Burger King and claim second-place in fast food chain marketshare sometime next year. That’s nice, but perhaps they could speed up the process by building a few more Wendy’s locations here on this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I’ve got three Burger King locations within a three mile radius, while Wendy’s closest location is six miles away.

8. Domino’s Artisan Pizzas

Domino’s has been busy during the second half of 2011. First, they released these fancy Artisan Pizzas and then late last month they introduced their Stuffed Cheesy Breads. They’re trying really hard to make people forget how crappy their pizzas used to be. I still think bringing back the Noid will help.

7. Subway Oven Crisp Chicken Sub

This sandwich will probably show up again as a $5 Featured Footlong. My psychic powers tell me it will come back in May 2012. (Note to people from Subway Corporate who may or may not read this: Please bring the Subway Oven Crisp Chicken Sub in May 2012 so I don’t look like a total boob.)

6. McDonald’s McCafe Frozen Strawberry Lemonade

I remember the brain freeze this gave me. And for some reason, it also gave me the urge to buy a lava lamp.

5. McDonald’s Rolo McFlurry

I hope McDonald’s releases more McFlurrys using Hershey’s least popular candies with names that are fun to say. I’m looking forward to either the Whatchamacallit or Thingamajig McFlurry.

4. Burger King California Whopper

Every year, Burger King should release several Whopper varieties commemorating states, just like the US Mint did with quarters.

3. Ben & Jerry’s Red Velvet Cake and Clusterfluff

Clusterfluff is one of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream names ever. Sadly, according to my sources, they had to change it to What A Cluster. I really hope, in 2012, Ben & Jerry’s makes a flavor honoring Samuel L. Jackson called, I Have Had It With These Motherfudging Cakes On This Motherfudging Plane!

2. McDonald’s “New” Chicken McNuggets Sauces

Still order Hot Mustard with my McNuggets. I’ve also started ordering a McChicken without mayo and paying an extra 25 cents for Hot Mustard container to replace the mayo.

1. McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie

This is the second straight year a blended McDonald’s product has ended up at the top of our year in review list. Man, I remember when McDonald’s used to be known only for their burgers, French fries, and that purple blob Grimace. Times are changin’.

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