Trader Joe's Complete Body Cleanse

I love Trader Joe's so much that it's frankly embarrassing. I recognize, in my more lucid moments, that it's irrational and even bizarre to feel actual affection for what is, after all, a grocery store. But I cannot deny that I feel such affection every time I'm there, or when I see that name on one of my favorite products as I open it. It gives me a little Pavlovian jolt of pleasure. Whether I have conned myself into this one-sided love affair, or have been manipulated into it by the wily marketing folks at TJ's headquarters, I cannot say; the end result is the same either way.

But once in a while I find that TJ's has done or is doing something that I find vile and reprehensible--and this is one of those occasions.

About ten days ago, I saw a #TraderJoes tweet about a TJ's "cleanse," pointing to this newly posted YouTube video:



(Please note that my condemnation is not of the nice woman who made this video. I don't blame her for latching onto a common but incorrect view of how the body works. I squarely blame Trader Joe's for exploiting people's false beliefs.)

I had never heard of this product before or noticed it on the shelves. But as you can see from the three photos above, I easily found it in the Asheville store.

The first thing to note from the lists of ingredients of the three products is that the main constituents are basically the same for all three--namely, fiber, fiber, and more fiber, with a little glycerol thrown in. What varies between them are the minor components, which are just selections of plant extracts.

Here's the model that many people have of how the body works: You ingest various "toxins" along with your food. Some of these are "filtered" out by the liver. Others stay in the digestive tract and accumulate in the colon until flushed out by fiber or a purgative.

Trader Joe's labeling explicitly encourages this idea:

WHY CLEANSE? Support the body's ability to decrease toxins from external sources. Toxins may come from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, artificial hormones used in raising livestock and processed foods.

Side note: Trader Joe's sells tons and tons of processed foods. I guess we have to assume from this label that all of that cookie butter and soy chorizo and mac 'n' cheese is filling us all with unnamed "toxins," right?

Continuing:

WHY FIBER? Fiber's key role in Complete Body Cleanse is to absorb and eliminate toxins. Toxins bind to the fiber and are carried out of the body. Without fiber, toxins may be re-absorbed and you cannot thoroughly detoxify. 

This is bullshit. Trader Joe's is lying to you.

Let's talk about the liver first. Now, to be fair, TJ's labeling does not say anything specific about the liver's role in all of this. But the fact that they include a "liver capsule" strongly suggests that they want you to buy into the concept of the liver as a filter, which, like all filters, needs occasional cleaning to get rid of the gunk it has filtered out.

But that's not how the liver works. It is not a mechanical filter that gets clogged up with the stuff it has removed, like the air filter in your car or the lint filter in your dryer. It is a biochemical machine that actively destroys harmful compounds, breaking them down into smaller molecules that can be eliminated by the kidneys. There is nothing left behind to be cleaned out. What's more, it absolutely does not need the "support" of "milk thistle seed extract," "artichoke leaf extract," "dandelion root extract," or "licorice root and rhizome extract" to be able to do this.

As for fiber and the colon: By all means, get lots of fiber into you, both by dietary choices and by supplementation. Eat lots of leafy and cruciferous vegetables. Buy and use Metamucil, Citrucel, or whatever store brand you like. Fiber promotes bowel regularity and softens stools, thus reducing problems like constipation and hemorrhoids. It may even help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of colon cancer. I'm a big fan of fiber. Yay, FIBER! Go, FIBER!

But to get these benefits, you need to have a high intake of fiber consistently, for years and years. A big jolt of it now and then via a 14-day "cleanse," as Trader Joe's is expressly promoting here, does no good at all.

With the rare exceptions of some disease states, matter does not accumulate in your colon; it passes through. You can definitely affect the rate at which it passes through, but overall the input to the colon and the output from the colon must be equal.

If you buy and use TJ's Complete Body Cleanse, you will poop more for two weeks, and then you will go back to your previously scheduled pooping. You will not have had any permanent weight loss. Your liver and colon will not be any healthier or happier. The amount of "toxins" in your body will not be any different. Nothing else will have changed.

Oh, that's not quite true. Two other things will have changed: you will be $12.99 poorer, and Trader Joe's will be $12.99 richer.

This is the first and likely last time that I will write a review of a Trader Joe's product without having tried it. There's a sound reason for that: this stuff is a scam, and I refuse to be scammed, even--maybe especially--by a company that I love.

This item goes straight into my Bottom Ten, and I'm not even going to ask the question with which I traditionally conclude.

Trader Joe's White Bean & Basil Hummus

For the sake of truth-in-labeling, Trader Joe's ought to call this product "Basil & Basil. And Oil. With Maybe Some Hummus. And a White Bean or Two."

This is oiliest hummus I've ever had, from any manufacturer. It's the only one that has a visible layer of oil floating on the top--you can see it in the side view of the tub above. I suppose I could live with that, after stirring it in, but then the flavor is basil, basil, and more basil. (Trying to come up with a Fawlty Towers joke here, but failing.)

The net result of these two characteristics is gross, inedible hummus, and automatic inclusion in my Bottom Ten list. This will become the sixth item I return for a refund.

Will I buy it again? 

Only after I have my stroke and forget having had it before.

Trader Joe's Mediterranean Hummus

I have a problem. I've tried so many different kinds of hummus lately, both Trader Joe's offerings and others, that they're running together in my brain. I remember which ones I liked or didn't like, but little about why, or what set each one apart.

That's the case here. I remember stirring this stuff up, so as to distribute all the little extras (seen in the top photo) evenly throughout the hummus, and then trying it and liking it--but nothing about what it was that I liked about it.

Oh well--guess I'll just have to get myself some more!

Will I buy it again? 

I have to, don't you see?

Update 

I did buy it again. I do still like it, though it's not my favorite hummus. I have developed a preference for the products of an Asheville company, with a denser, stiffer, more whipped texture. This is pretty oily. It doesn't have quite enough bite for me, in terms of lemon/tanginess.

Nina's View

Not my favorite version of hummus. I like olive oil, but I do not care for olives themselves. I keep thinking maybe some day I'll change my mind about this, but we are four or five decades into the testing process and it seems unlikely.

Update [from Nina]: 

So we DID have a second edition of this recently and either 1) the add-ins have changed or 2) my sampling was skewed or 3) I am insane. I categorically reject the third alternative. 

This second time I detected no untoward olivyness. In fact, no flavoring predominated whatsoever. It just seemed to me to be a pretty much ideal basic hummus. Very edible. I would buy and serve this without hesitation, and I would expect it to be well-received by most.  

We may have to have a tie-breaker sample. 

Roundup

This is my weekly compilation of news and other links related to Trader Joe's.


Trader Joe's boosts your home's value more than Whole Foods 

The 5 things you miss when you move to a city without a Trader Joe's 

The 39 Trader Joe's items you need in your life 

10 recipes with cookie butter as a main ingredient 

14 Trader Joe's party staples for busy hosts 

Best new Trader Joe's products for August 

Trader Joe's versus Whole Foods: Where you should actually be shopping 

What do you use cookie butter for? 

7 healthy Trader Joe's copycat recipes 

Episode 6 of the "Let's Talk TJ's" podcast 

7 delicious Latin-inspired treats you can buy at Trader Joe's 



Best tweets of the week:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Here's this week's YouTube video from "Trader Joe":





And finally, here are this week's cute cats in Trader Joe's grocery bags:

Trader Joe's Sprouted Flourless Whole Wheat Berry Bread

There's a lot that I don't understand about this bread. How can it be "flourless"? What are "wheat berries"? Why are they sprouted? Why does it need dates and raisins?

But I do understand one thing about it: It's delicious. It's easily my favorite wheat bread from Trader Joe's so far, and maybe my overall favorite TJ's bread. (I find wheat breads and white bread so different that it's hard to make a comparison between them--the old apples and oranges thing.) It's moderately dense, so that it feels substantial, without veering into the kind of bread density that makes it feel like it's an oppressive chore to eat. It's flavorful. It has nice little slightly chewy bits. It works well as both toast and sandwich bread. It's high in protein and fiber.

Highly recommended.

Will I buy it again? 

Certainly. In fact, I'm adding it to my Top Ten list. It's that good.

Trader Joe's Popcorn In A Pickle

Trader Joe's rolls out new products all the time. Most of these are not particularly exciting. Over the last couple of weeks, for example, there has been a new cheese, a blend of olive oil and lemon juice, an organic version of a previously available non-organic bagged salad, a medley of fresh fruit chunks, and two new varieties of seed blends. Ho-hum. I'm sure they all have their place, but nobody spots the 126th kind of cheese on the shelf and fires up his or her social media outlets to gush over the find. (You can see all the things in the "What's New" section of TJ's web site.)

Once in a while, though, a TJ's product comes along that is so crazy that people seeing it in the stores immediately whip out their phones, and send pictures of it to Twitter and Facebook, with comments about how they can't wait to try it. I monitor the #TraderJoes hashtag on Twitter and participate in a Facebook group of TJ's fans, which together operate as my own personal Distant Early Warning Line for new products.

And boy oh boy did that DEW line light up starting on August 2 when, apparently, the first TJ's outlets started stocking this pickle-flavored popcorn. I had never heard of it, and Google turned up absolutely nothing about it anywhere on the web, not even in the "What's New" section of TJ's own web site. (For some reason, it's still not there.) I went to my local store in Asheville that same day, hoping to be one of the first to try it, only to be bitterly disappointed: not only did they not have it, they had never heard of it, and it wasn't even listed in their computer as an item that they could order. Over the next ten days, I saw dozens of tweets from people gushing about it. These came from Connecticut, New York, Minnesota, D.C., Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona--everywhere, it seemed, except North Carolina. And repeated trips to my store kept turning up no pickle-flavored popcorn anywhere. I felt sure that my state was being left out of the rollout specifically to punish me, probably for too many negative reviews of TJ's products.

But it's finally here, and Nina and I tried it Wednesday night. It's a freaky experience. It plays tricks with your brain and the expectations you have built up over a lifetime of dealing with food. You snip open a bag of popcorn, and immediately get a strong scent of ... NOT popcorn, but pickles. Then you pop a few kernels in your mouth, and you have the expected texture of popcorn, but all the flavor of a pickle.

Mind you, this is not some "popcorn with a hint of pickle." No. It's full-bore dill pickle. Your brain is all, "WTF, dude? I'm tasting pickle, but chewing on popcorn. Isn't that one of the classic signs of having a stroke or something?" It's a seriously confusing sensory rush, what with the signals crossing and all.

And I suppose that that's reason enough to buy and eat it once--for the sheer novelty of it. Like the Key Lime Tea Cookies a few days ago, or the Fireworks chocolate bar before that, it's a sensory experience sufficiently unlike any other available from a grocery store that you should probably give it a whirl.

But for long-term, repeat snacking? I don't think so. I loves me a good dill pickle, but, dammit, I want the crunch and the wetness to go along with the flavor. Conversely, when I eat popcorn, I want it to at least retain some meaningful flavor of popcorn--which this doesn't, because of how overpowering the dill is. It thwarts what I'm wanting from both possible snack choices simultaneously.

The stuff isn't bad. But it's never going to make me want more and more of it, the way that, for example, the TJ's Popcorn with Herbs and Spices does. (No link; review still pending.)

Will I buy it again? 

No. I'm delighted to have another unusual but not unpleasant sensory experience added to my lifetime experience, but I feel no eagerness to repeat it.

Nina's View

Bob has this right. I feel only journalistically obligated to report that my burps were dill-flavored for hours after eating this snack. 

You're welcome.

Trader Joe's Fig Bites Made With Turkish Figs

I didn't plan for this to be a "new product week" on the blog, but Trader Joe's has had another spurt of releasing interesting new stuff, and I'm trying to keep up with it.

Trader Joe's has a long list of product that are quite obviously copycat versions of other well-known national-brand items. Sometimes TJ's improves on the original--see, e.g., the cherry-pomegranate toaster pastries, a.k.a. Trader Joe's Pop Tarts. Sometimes they fail miserably--see, e.g., Joe-Joe's cookies, a.k.a. Trader Joe's Oreos.

The latest item in this tradition is Fig Bites, which, if honesty were the foremost consideration, would be called Trader Joe's Fig Newtons. (Yes, I'm aware that Nabisco has officially renamed Fig Newtons. I refuse to grant legitimacy to such sacrilege.)

If you want to see how these compare visually to Fig Newtons, there's a nice side-by-side photo in this review. 

How do they taste compared to the original? Not as good. I wouldn't call them a dismal failure, but they are a disappointment. The problem is simple and obvious: they badly overshot on the cake-to-filling ratio. Instead of the pleasing balance of the two given by the original, with these I get the sense of cake, cake, cake, little big of figgy fruitiness, cake, cake, cake. You can see it in that previously linked photo, and the taste experience accords with that. It's all wrong.

Will I buy it again? 

No. In fact, I've eaten one quarter of the package, and I think the rest are going back to the store for a refund.