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Taco Bell's Bowlz are boring, short on meat
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 25, 2007 by Bonnie Tandy Leblang
Taco Bell Home Originals Bowlz. Salsa Chicken, Santa Fe Style Beef, and Fiesta Steak. $2.79 per 9-ounce shelf-stable meal.
Bonnie: I'm no fan of shelf-stable meals. But I've gotta say I've sampled much worse in my 20-plus years as a food tester than Taco Bell Original Bowlz. Sure, the contents are mushy and almost indistinguishable, but refried beans and rice are mushy and are the mainstay of all three of these meals. And each one does have a tolerable Southwest flavor. Additives and high sodium aside, the nutritionals aren't bad: a reasonable 360 calories and 7 grams of fat at the most (in the Santa Fe Beef).
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My main problem is the meat, or lack thereof. My Salsa Chicken bowl contained only a single small chunk of chicken; the Fiesta Steak, only a quarter-ounce of beef. (Yes, I weighed the teeny portion on my food scale.) The Santa Fe Style Beef contained what looked like a fairly substantial amount of ground beef. The ingredient panel clarified why. It contains beef "crumbles" -- that's ground beef combined with 20 or so other ingredients.
Taco Bell would be better off removing the minuscule amount of meat in the other two and marketing them as vegetarian dishes.
Carolyn: I like these even less than Bonnie did. Maybe that's because I eat both Taco Bell restaurant meals and supermarket single- serve meals regularly and know how good they can be. These are essentially big boring bowls of beans.
It's unconscionable -- really, almost tantamount to fraud -- that chicken and steak are in the names of two of these. The only one with more than a spoonful of meat (the Santa Fe Style Beef) is, unfortunately, also the dullest-tasting.
Last I looked, you could buy a can of refried beans and enough store-brand rice to feed six people for half the cost of one of these single-serve Bowlz, and your eating experience would be essentially the same. And if all this wasn't bad enough, you just know that because of this product at least some kids are going to start spelling bowls with a "z."
Wish-Bone Light! Vinaigrette Dressing. Balsamic & Basil, Raspberry Walnut, and Asian With Sesame & Ginger. $3.69 per 16- ounce bottle.
Bonnie: I don't care for most bottled dressings. I'd prefer not to top my salad with high-fructose corn syrup, xanthan gum and a blend of preservatives, especially when you can easily whisk together salad dressing ingredients. I also don't like paying a lot of money for water, light salad dressing's main ingredient.
I like the flavor combinations of these new dressings, but not Wish-Bone's execution of them. I prefer whisking together some extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice -- and so might you. There's no need for water in this do-it-yourself, full-flavored vinaigrette. Just use a bit less of it on your salad.
Carolyn: Salad dressing is one of those foods, like sausage, that contains so many calories and so much fat that a slight reduction in either is hardly noticeable. Wish-Bone's new light Balsamic & Basil Vinaigrette Dressing is also aided by a delicious and uncomplicated combination of compatible ingredients -- namely balsamic vinegar, oil and basil, whose individual flavors come through loud and clear.
The Asian With Sesame & Ginger is one of few sesame-flavored dressings from a mainstream food company and is most welcome, but its wateriness means using more (which pretty much defeats its light purpose). And the main thing that distinguishes this Raspberry Walnut dressing from the others out there is its greater oiliness (although, not so much that I didn't like it).
In short, thanks to these vinaigrettes' many flavor distractions, these are light oil-and-vinegar dressings for people who usually don't like oil-and-vinegar or light dressings.
Kellogg's Smart Start Healthy Heart Bars. Cinnamon, and Strawberry Vanilla. $3.39 to $3.79 per 8.47-ounce box containing six bars.
Bonnie: You might think anything with a name like Kellogg's Smart Start Healthy Heart Bars would be a healthy snack choice. And these packages do feature the American Heart Association's (AHA) heart check symbol, which means they meet the AHA standard criteria for being low in fat (3 grams or less), saturated fat (1 gram or less), cholesterol (20 milligrams or less), and sodium (480 milligrams or less). And they contain 10 percent or more of the vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, protein and dietary fiber recommended for healthy people over age 2.
But I would recommend Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Fruit & Nut bars over these Smart Start bars. The only heart-healthy criteria those don't meet is in having 3 or fewer grams of fat, and Nutri-Grain's extra half a gram of fat could easily come from their nuts. Furthermore, Nutri-Grain Fruit & Nut bars don't contain the high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oil, preservatives TBHQ and BHT, or artificial flavors found in Smart Start Healthy Heart Bars, and they also taste better.
Carolyn: I've come to expect the unexpected from Kellogg's Smart Start, that line of cereals with lots of health claims but no single taste or texture identity. And these Smart Start Healthy Heart Bars are nothing like their Frosted Flake-like namesake cereal. Instead, they have the puffed rice consistency of Smart Start Antioxidant Cereal and an oatmeal taste.
