Trader Joe's Coconut Strips

Special note: This is Day 7, the last day of Coconut Week. I hope you have enjoyed it. I actually have products on hand--some of them already tested, some not--to do a second Coconut Week, so you can expect it later, maybe in two or three months. 



If I were more of a rebel than I am, I would go through every Trader Joe's store and, in the name of honesty, use a Sharpie to scribble out the word "lightly" in "lightly sweetened" on the labels of all of the bags of TJ's Coconut Strips. If this is what passes for "lightly sweetened," I wouldn't want to run into anything that was "heavily sweetened."

In other words, these are really, really sweet. They are too sweet. But I admit to loving them--not in spite of being too sweet, but because of it. With every bite of one of these strips, I think, "Oh, that is SO good. But it's SO much sugar! But it's SO good!"

I really don't know how they make these things, but just on the basis of how they taste, I imagine that it involves taking strips of coconut meat, soaking them in large vats of a rich sugar solution, then maybe using a hypodermic needle to inject extra sugar into each one, just to be sure.

Even though I think that's approximately what they do, and even though I know how evil that is, I can't stop snarfing them down once I start. This is one of the few snacks for which I have to set out in advance a fixed amount I'm going to eat, then put the bag away. Otherwise, my self-control goes out the window in the face of delicious sweetened coconut.

I like them much better than TJ's coconut chips, even though I know that they're much worse for my teeth, my metabolism, and my waistline.

Will I buy it again? 

I am powerless not to.


Nina's View

Too sweet. I like the coconut chips much better.