This Mama Cooks! Reviews

Get a healthy buzz with POMx Iced Coffees

POM, the pomegranate juice folks, recently introduced a new product, POMx Iced Coffee. It’s an alternative to those nasty tasting energy drinks for people who want an energy boost, but don’t want the excess sugar and artificial ingredients that are in caffeinated sodas, coffee beverages and energy drinks.

Not to worry, POMx Iced Coffee does not taste like pomegranate juice. Instead it comes in two flavors: Café au Lait and Chocolate. Since I’m a tea and chai person, I gave the sample bottles to my java hound husband, Paul, to try. Here’s his review:

I have tried the POMx Chocolate and Café au Lait.  Very tasty.  Nice iced coffee if you like that type of drink, plus you get the anti- oxidants. One issue would be calories - 190 in this bottle. More than beer I think, but probably not more than the coffee with sugar I normally have.

Just so you know Paul claims that if it wasn’t for coffee (and beer) he wouldn’t have been able to get through graduate school. So he likes his coffee. He also likes it heavily doctored. Lately he’s been adding both eggnog AND sugar to his coffee every morning. Needless to say, POMx Iced Coffee is his type of iced coffee in a bottle drink.

POMx Iced Coffee is made with Italian-roasted Arabica coffee beans that are ethically sourced by the Rainforest Alliance, milk from cows not treated with synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), organic cane sugar and POMx.

For you buzz addicts, each bottle of POMx Iced Coffee contains 175mg dose of caffeine and enough POMx to equal the antioxidant power of an 8 oz. daily dose of POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice.

If you’re a coffee drinker who doesn’t like fruit juice, but is concerned about getting enough antioxidants in your diet, POMx Iced Coffee may be for you. To find out more, go to healthybuzz.com.

For the nutritional info details (I forgot to write them down before tossing the empties in the recycling bin) see The Skinny Plate’s POMx Iced Coffee review.

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Disclosure: I received two bottles of each flavor to sample.

Progresso High Fiber soup review

When I went to General Mills Eat and Greet blogger event earlier this year, I had a chance to try out their new Progresso High Fiber soups. These soups have 28% of the recommended Daily Value of fiber per serving (7 grams), no added MSG or artificial flavors. The high fiber soup varieties include Chicken Tuscany, Creamy Tomato Basil, Hearty Vegetable and Noodles, and Homestyle Minestrone.

Now I’m usually an Amy’s or Imagine organic soup consumer, and will occasionally eat Campbell’s noodle soups or tomato chicken rice as well. (Ah, the value of childhood nostalgia.) I also love to make soup, but keep canned soup on hand for convenience’s sake. However, I never buy Progresso, because I was under the impression that they used MSG and all kinds of yucky crap in their soups. (Must have been all those Campbell’s ads.)

There’s no MSG (yay) but the high fiber soups are full of questionable stuff like modified food starch (see my review of Ronzoni Smart Taste for a discussion of that substance), soluable corn fiber, soybean oil, yeast extract, corn syrup solids and soy protein isolates. (You can view the nutrition labels here.) Not exactly ingredients that you’d use to make homemade soup.

It’s really too bad because the High Fiber Creamy Tomato Basil is delicious. It’s a favorite of mine and I always keep a few cans in the house, even though I’m not too thrilled with its ingredients list. Since it’s only 2 Weight Watchers POINTS per serving, how can I resist? It’s one of those products where taste and low POINTS win out over natural goodness, much to my embarrassment.

I wonder if I should rethink this considering there are yummy and healthy alternatives like Amy’s Organic Chunky Tomato Bisque or Imagine’s Organic Creamy Tomato Basil (lower in fat and calories than Progresso’s version). Maybe I should stick to eating vegetables, fruits, and whole grain organic bread for my fiber needs instead, too.

 Related articles by Zemanta

• Win a Progresso Prize Pack & A Soup Review (momblognetwork.com)
• Weighing In: Campbell Soup and Progresso Food Fight (the-f-word.org)

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Disclosure: General Mills provided me with a can of soup,and two soup bowls with spoons through MyBlogSpark. I’ve donated the soup bowls to a fundraiser for a local writers’ association. The Chicken Tuscany soup will be donated to the food bank.

Steaz Organic Iced Teaz now at Target

Steaz Organic Iced Teaz are a cool drink in more ways than one. First, Steaz is an organic fair trade tea company that believes in social responsibility and sustainability. Their iced teas are USDA Certified Organic and Fair Trade Certified, and come in 16 oz. fully recyclable aluminum cans. Also, Steaz Organic Iced Teaz are sweetened with 10g of pure cane sugar and are brewed without preservatives or additives. 

So far so good from a health and green perspective, both of which are important to me. However, the really big news is that Steaz Organic Iced Teaz are coming to a Target near you! (They’re already available at stores like Whole Foods, Henry’s, Wild Oats and Natural Grocers – and similar stores all over the US.)

To celebrate the Steaz Organic Iced Teaz’s launch at Target stores nationwide, they’ve issued a printable Buy One Get One coupon.

The flavors available at Target are Green Tea with Blueberry Pomegranate Acai,  Green Tea with Peach, and White Tea with Lime and Pomegranate. (They also make Green Tea with Mint, Unsweetened Green Tea with Lemon, and Black Tea with Lemon.)

I’ve had a chance to sample their “Target flavors.”  My favorite was the Blueberry Pomegranate Acai – nothing like getting some superfruit goodness along with healthy green tea. However, the Lime with Pomegranate is delicious, too with a flavor profile that’s kind of unique. (Lime in green tea – weird, but kind of good.) My only complaint is that the teas were a bit too sweet, which covered up the juice flavors. Then again, I rarely sweeten my green tea, so it’s more of a personal preference than a critique.

So when you’re at Target next, look for the cans of Steaz Organic Iced Teaz that feature photographs of fair trade farmers from Sri Lanka, China and Africa where Steaz sources its tea. Through Steaz’s partnership with TransFair USA and the Fair Trade certification model, they make sure that the tea farmers and their workers receive fair prices for their products. Their packaging truly symbolizes their message that people benefit when consumers are conscious of the impact they can have in the lives of others.

It's tea you can believe in. Check it out at Target and don’t forget your BOGO coupon.

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Disclosure: I was sent two cans of each of the “Target flavors” to try by Steaz’s publicist.

Ronzoni Smart Taste review

Ronzoni Smart Taste is the first white pasta to be enriched with fiber and calcium. This pasta has three times the fiber of regular pasta, and calcium equal to an eight-ounce glass of milk. It’s also lower in calories and fat than traditional pasta.

Ronzoni Smart Taste comes in five varieties: elbows, rotini, spaghetti, thin spaghetti and penne rigati. We tried the spaghetti.

Ingredients

I was a little concerned that to get the added fiber, they’d have to add all kinds of weird stuff to the pasta. The ingredients are semolina (wheat), durum flour (wheat), modified wheat starch, calcium phosphate, niacin, iron (ferrous sulfate), thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid. So lots of wheat and some vitamins, but what the heck is “modified wheat starch?

According to Food Product Design, modified wheat starch, “adds much-needed fiber to a wide variety of foods, while also partially replacing fat and lowering caloric content. This type IV resistant starch contains 75% or greater dietary fiber on a dry basis…It also contributes a smooth, creamy texture to help replace fat.”

According to About.com, a resistant starch, “actually goes all the way through the small intestine without being digested at all. In this way, it is more like fiber, and in some cases is classified and labeled as fiber.”

It’s not something your grandma would cook with for sure, so if that’s your “not to be crossed line of too processed to eat” then Ronzoni Smart Taste is not for you.

A Sunsweet Prune in every lunchbox

Sunsweet prunes are not only good for you and delicious, but they’re easier to include as a daily part of your healthy food routine with their new Sunsweet Ones pack. The prunes come individually wrapped in a cute container, sort of like those truffles that Lindt chocolate makes.

Even though I’m not into wasteful packaging, in this case I’ll make an exception for Sunsweet Ones. Not only do they make it easier for you to pop a few prunes into a lunch box, your purse or a jacket pocket while hiking or skiing. Plus, the individual wrapping keeps the prunes super fresh and sweet. There’s nothing worse than reaching into a box and pulling out a dried out, squished, solid mass of dried fruit.

The 7 ounce canister retails for about $2.35 and would make a cute and slightly jokey (but nutritionally sound) stocking stuffer, too. I liked keeping it at my desk for a quick blast of sweetness when I got hungry or tired and needed a little pick me up.

Here's Dave Grotto, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Quaker Oats Living Proof blogger event, explaining the nutritional value of prunes.

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Disclosure: This post was written as part of a program for Family Review Network and Sunsweet Ones, who provided the product for review. I was not compensated in any way except for the complimentary product.