The Weather and Everyone's Health

Saturday, February 23, 2008

A trip to the grocery store: untried new products that might appeal to me

Hi.

So I feel like I should post something, just to keep things going here. I was reading through posts from last year recently, looking for one of my Jane Austen posts to share with some friends and I was surprised how many posts had actual content about significant things. Hmm. Interesting.

Well, this post is not going to be one of those.

Ben & Jerry's Banana Split Ice cream: So I saw this at the store and haven't tried it yet. If I understand the concept correctly, it is chocolate ice cream with bananas, strawberries and walnuts. That would be awesome, because usually most ice cream flavors still make me want to add or subtract something from them, usually to add fruit and/or nuts and subtract carmel/toffee etc. nonsense. My favorite flavor is New York Super Fudge Chunk, but I find even that improved with strawberries (preferably fresh). If I am designing a flavor, like at a smush-ins type of place, I start with a chocolate base and add strawberries and walnuts or almonds and if I feel like it, bananas. Because as we all know, chocolate and strawberries are good together, chocolate and bananas are good together, and bananas and strawberries are good together, and everything needs nuts, so this pretty much works out. I don't eat a lot of ice cream because a) it makes me feel sick if I have a lot and b) it's cold c)it's often too sweet and d) there is no perfect flavor for me. But if this "Banana Split" flavor is what I think it is, then things might change. (Update: with a sigh of relief I can share that a quick trip to B&J's website reveals the truth about Banana Split - Banana & Strawberry Ice Creams with walnuts, fudge chunks & fudge swirl. Well, it still sounds pretty good; I would try it.

Gatorade G2: I realize how dumb this sounds. BUT I do often find myself wishing I could drink something with some electrolytes when I'm working out, but of course I wouldn't drink Gatorade because it is leaking sugar out its ears. Often if I feel strongly enough about it I'll have an Emergen-C in water, which is tasty and has electrolytes, minerals and B vitamins. But it's nice to know there's a bottled option. (Also sometimes I worry about having more than one Emergen-C in a day because vitamin C is water soluble and if you have too much then your body flushes it out, right?) At this time I am unable to find adequate nutritional information about G2 on T3H Intarnetz, but the FAQ at the Gatorade main site is pretty funny.

Pepperidge Farm® 9 Grain Natural Whole Grain: So, yesterday I needed to buy a loaf of bread, but I didn't want to go to the grocery store because it's a long way to walk back in the snow. So I stopped at the "Store 24" near the T stop by my house. I didn't have high hopes of finding a whole wheat bread without high fructose corn syrup, but I decided I'd take the least-bad brown bread I could find. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find this bread because not only does it not have high fructose corn syrup or any other really troubling ingredients, it had 3g fiber/slice (100 calories, 3 g fiber, 3g sugar). Not bad! It does have "raisin juice concentrate" and raisins are already pretty concentrated in terms of sugar, but since I don't know about the production method of raisin juice concentrate or the agribusiness of raisins (unlike corn), for now I'll say this is probably an improvement of some sort. The bottom line nutritional info meets my needs, and it tastes pretty good too. Doesn't have an overtly sweet taste like many brown breads, and does have a subtle rye-like taste, which I like.

- posted by k @ 12:37 PM