Food Fiction Fun

AnnPT77

Label comparison: Indulgent cookie, vs. vague-aura-of-healthfulness breakfast biscuits. Two cookies, pretty close in calories to one packet of 4 biscuits (260 vs. 230 calories).





Compare the nutrition. Heh. I know which one I'd eat (if either), for my personal best balance of tastiness & nutrition. YMMV.

tulips_and_tea

Two cookies for me, please! Good post. This is why I always take the time to read labels when shopping.

L1zardQueen

It’s a no brainer!

Diatonic12

ROFL. My mother eats those breakfast biscuits all of the time. Hi-larious.

amusedmonkey

Being someone who thinks of nutrition in terms of 100 grams, I couldn't resist. 419 calories for the first cookies and 460 for the "healthy" one.

happytree923

Does anyone actually think those biscuit things are a satisfying breakfast? I tried them and felt like a sailor digging into some hardtack.

Aplant77

I tried those biscuits before and they were not good. Those cookies look pretty tasty though!

AnnPT77

happytree923 wrote: »

Does anyone actually think those biscuit things are a satisfying breakfast? I tried them and felt like a sailor digging into some hardtack.

Hardtack is better, especially if i can have Jarlsberg and mustard with it.

apullum

Would not eat either one, because if it’s not chocolate, it’s not worth it.

AnnPT77

apullum wrote: »

Would not eat either one, because if it’s not chocolate, it’s not worth it.

Justifiable! But I do like oatmeal raisin cookies. I admit, in PF, I prefer the Sausalito (milk chocolate chunks and macadamias).

It was irresistible to me as a comparison that the Belvita and PF oatmeal raisin cookies were next to each other on the shelf at my Kroger.

In MBA school, I thought the marketing classes were the most fun, hands down, even though I was a management major (truth in advertising: no degree ).

FL_Hiker

happytree923 wrote: »

Does anyone actually think those biscuit things are a satisfying breakfast? I tried them and felt like a sailor digging into some hardtack.

I actually eat them every morning, they keep me plenty full until lunch time! Check out my diary lol. They're also pretty tasty to me... enjoy them with a cup of milk.

L1zardQueen

I was at the grocery store today and saw these two items together, I chuckled. Thanks, Ann!

panda4153

I personally love the Belvita Breakfast Biscuits. I eat them as a snack, or if I am busy as part of my lunch with a protein shake.

CherylG1983

More posts like this! Definitely buying these cookies next grocery run.

VUA21

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Label comparison: Indulgent cookie, vs. vague-aura-of-healthfulness breakfast biscuits. Two cookies, pretty close in calories to one packet of 4 biscuits (260 vs. 230 calories).





Compare the nutrition. Heh. I know which one I'd eat (if either), for my personal best balance of tastiness & nutrition. YMMV.

Raisin Bran v Cookie Crisp is another fun one. Turns out the Cookie Crisp is the lower calorie option (by a lot!).

whitpauly

This is fun! Anyone find any others?

AnnPT77

whitpauly wrote: »

This is fun! Anyone find any others?

I'm sure there are some excellent granola bar vs. candy bar possibilities.

As the OP, I want to shift gears and clarify where I was coming from in posting this. If someone enjoys Belvita or oatmeal raisin cookies, and those fit into an overall way of eating that gives them the right number of calories and good overall nutrition, I'm all for it. No criticism intended!

Personally, I rarely eat either - can't remember when I last had a PF oatmeal cookie (though I like them), and I've tried the Belvita but didn't personally find them appealing taste-wise. Both, with respect to how I like to eat, have a splurge level of calories for the level of nutrition. Either one (based on calories/nutrition) would be a "rarely" food at most.

They each have around 10-12% of my daily calorie goal, but only 4% of my protein goal, and pretty trivial micronutrients. The cookies possibly have hydrogenated oil (trans fats - but presumably less than 0.5g per cookie because the label says zero): That's a serious minus. Still, if forced to choose between just these two, with their similar nutrition, I'd pick the cookies as tastier to me personally.

The main reason I posted it was that the calories and nutrition are surprisingly similar, given how very differently the two are marketed. That's the part I find funny. Usually, I personally find most manufactured multi-ingredient foods to have too little nutrition for their caloric cost, and to be not that tasty. But that's purely a personal tastes and preferences thing - I completely respect that other people have different dietary needs and taste preferences.

If there's any takeaway here - and it ain't rocket surgery - it's that how something is marketed may have only the loosest possible relationship to what it actually is/contains, and that it's important to read labels. Calories are a precious and limited resource (if I want to stay thin!), so I want to spend them thoughtfully.

leonadixon

Now I want oatmeal cookies!

estherdragonbat

I can offer mini blueberry scones...

shaumom

A fun one I've seen was a bag of pretzels, and a bag of 'lite' pretzels of the same brand. The pretzels were the same calories per serving, same ingredients, and I couldn't figure out why one bag was 'lite.' Then I realized that the 'lite' bag simply had fewer pretzels over all, so you got less calories over all. And the best part - the company was charing MORE for the bag with fewer pretzels. :-P


Another thing I've seen is versions of products that seem to be made specifically to be sold in cheaper stores.

One example is Ancient Harvest quinoa. I have found it for sale at a health food store, but also found it at a walmart one time. Same size box, but Walmart's was $2 cheaper, so I was all set to grab that thing.

Until I looked more closely and realized that even though the box sizes looked the same at first glance, the actual AMOUNT of quinoa in the box was different. Walmart's box had 4 oz less than the health food stores. If I hadn't been doing a project with my kids on budgeting so we were recording the price and size of all our food for a week right then, I never would have realized.