If you think of Special K as just a cereal, get your mind out of the '80s and catch up on the current plan. The Cracker Chips represent just a fragment of the Special K diet brand's expansion in recent years: Starting with the eponymous cereal, the line has grown to include "craving curbing" cereal bars, protein shakes, and even protein water mixes, leveraging the cereal's lean-and-healthy image and position as a de facto diet staple. In total, the Special K website lists more than 40 products distributed among 9 categories. You can even surf the list by craving if you want, choosing from salty, chocolatey, fruity, or nutty. READ MORE
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on Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Sunflower seeds seem like an unlikely cornerstone upon which to establish a food culture, but they have the capacity to make a big impact. In the Midwest, sunflower oil is being touted as a locavore alternative to olive oil—lacking much of the character and flavor, surely, but picking up points for a high smoke point and its vitamin E content. READ MORE
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on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Was it spicy heat or just salt that was burning my palate after I took my first bite of Taco Bell's newly reintroduced Beefy Crunch Burrito? And did the answer really matter? (The answer was, "A little from Column A and a little from Column B," as it turns out.) Each 500-calorie Beefy Crunch Burrito is packed with Flamin' Hot Fritos (ah, that "Flamin' Hot" is probably the source of the nondescript burn), seasoned beef, smashed-up bits of rice, a very modest amount of reduced-fat sour cream (why reduced fat? is this meant to be a diet burrito?), salty nacho cheese sauce, and 1,060 milligrams of sodium—a bit less than half of your daily allowance, if you're young and healthy. READ MORE
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on Friday, January 27th, 2012
If you're not already aware of (and in awe of) the David Chang/Momofuku Ssam Bar/Noodle Bar/Ko/Milk Bar empire, you're unlikely to like the idea of giving 16 of your hard-earned dollars to Williams-Sonoma for the right to make 9 to 12 fancy cookies. READ MORE
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on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
In their initial press release last November, Circa dessert mixes were billed as "the First Line of Easy-To-Make Gourmet Dessert Mixes." It's an appealing idea, and the boxes are lovely, sporting crisp, elegant food photography, classy fonts, and an awful lot of sexy white space. But as much as I hate to suggest that a press release might be insincere, this particular communication missed the mark. READ MORE
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on Friday, January 20th, 2012
The pretense of Schwan's Bon Appétit brand of frozen meals (no association with the magazine of the same name) hits you in the face like a challenge. There are the upscale themes of the meals themselves (Smoked Apple & Uncured Bacon Chicken, Lemon Butter Chicken with Israeli-style couscous, etc.), there's the parchment bag that encloses each meal, and—most notably—there are the wine recommendations and suggestions for homemade-side-salad pairings on the back of each meal. READ MORE
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on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
When you first open a package of the red variety of Natural Vines licorice, a smell comes flooding out of the package, and it takes you a moment to place it. It's a bit floral, a bit fruity—what precisely is that? Ah yes: strawberry. READ MORE
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on Friday, January 13th, 2012
Supertaster emerges from Cooler Cleanse's Raw Cooler—a three-day raw-, vegan-, organic-food cleanse—with a higher opinion of raw food and a lower opinion of his own GI tract. ... WATCH THE VIDEO
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on Friday, January 6th, 2012
The idea that many modern, industrial food products contain (in addition to salt, preservatives, and flavor-enhancing chemicals) a full daily dose of sadness and regret is not exactly breaking news. But T.G.I. Friday's Sizzling Chicken and Sizzling Steak Fajitas collectively contain enough sorrow to keep a midlevel 19th-century Russian novelist creatively productive for the better part of his career. READ MORE
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on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
I like the newly released line of Neuro Drinks in part because they come in bold, retro-futuristic bottles that scream, "Drink of Tomorrow!" in a very mid-'90s sort of way. And I really like them because they've got the cojones to market themselves as not merely good for you, but the nearest retail equivalent to a panacea, the legendary cure for all ailments. Most "performance enhancing" beverages or so-called functional foods content themselves with one or two puffed-up claims that "have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration." But Neuro Drinks? They're like the Mayo Clinic in a bottle. READ MORE
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on Friday, December 30th, 2011
Game Meat Grub for the Big Game
Sunflower-Seed Milk Substitute
Low-Fat Fish Dishes
Faux Pas: The Chef Was Texting
Open a Beer with a Piece of Paper
Belgian Brewers Are Copying Us!
