New bars, old tricks

Nutrition Action Healthletter, Sept, 2004

For years, we've said that some granola, energy, and cereal bars are nothing more than individually wrapped cookies. Now the food industry has the nerve to sell bars with cookie names ... and pretend that they're good for you.

"At last, your sweet tooth and your health kick can peacefully coexist," claims the ad for Strawberry & Yogurt Newtons Bars.

"With luscious fruit, creamy yogurt flavor and moist golden cake, they're a good source of calcium, like cereal bars. Plus, they have a wholesome taste that can only come from Newtons. Can you spot the trick words?

"Wholesome taste" means nothing. "Creamy yogurt flavor" means little or no yogurt. (Each bar has more baking soda than yogurt. What looks like yogurt is largely sugars and partially hydrogenated oil.)

And the "luscious fruit" is mostly a mixture of sugars, strawberries, and dried apples. A single strawberry supplies 10 percent of a day's vitamin C. A Newton Bar has no C. And Nabisco apparently has no shame when it pretends that Strawberry & Yogurt Newton Bars are equal to a cup of yogurt with fresh strawberries.