Trader Joe's Lightly Breaded Fish Sticks--Reduced Fat

This is the third post in a row featuring new (or at least new to us) items that Nina served me at a recent dinner at her house.

After trying some of these, I suggested that a more accurate product name would be "Vaguely Fish-Flavored Breaded Protein Sticks." They have clearly been run through the full thrashings of the Trader Joe's Blandification Committee.


Will I buy it again? 

No. But that's not saying much, because I never buy fish, except for canned tuna. I didn't mind eating these, but that was mostly because the breading was kinda nice, not because of what was inside.

Trader Joe's Lite Popcorn

This is among the most bland, disappointing varieties of bagged popcorn I've ever tried. It probably has a niche for people who really need serious reductions in their sodium and fat intake, but I would rather go without popcorn than have this. It's improved somewhat by adding salt, but that kind of defeats the purpose of picking it over a conventional popcorn to begin with.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Low Fat Tuscano Marinana Sauce

I went to grab another can of my newly-beloved green-can marinara sauce when I spotted this next to it. It's apparently not new, as I find it archived in old online Fearless Flyers at least as far back as 2012, yet somehow I had never noticed it before.

It's not nearly as good as its shelfmate. It's chunkier, which I don't care for. But more importantly, it's just bland and boring. It has no zing to it.

It is lower in fat than the other one (presumably because of less olive oil), but the trade-off is more sugar and salt:

Note that this one does have added sugar, while the green-can version does not.


Will I buy it again? 

Nope.

Trader Joe's Organic Reduced Sugar Cherry Preserves

This is excellent--as good as any cherry jam/preserves I've ever had. I would never know it's a "reduced sugar" variety without looking at the label.


Will I buy it again? 

I don't use cherry as much as strawberry and raspberry, but once in a while for a little change, sure.

Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt Spinach & Cheese Stuffed Shells With Marinara Sauce

Edible--barely.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Sliced Lite Provolone Cheese

I bought this at the same time as the regular sliced provolone so that I could compare them side by side. I did so over the course of about six evening snacks.

Which is better? It's a close call. The regular has a slightly nicer, softer texture. It definitely has more flavor, but, as an accompanying down side, has a lot more of that bitter edge that I found unpleasant. The light version doesn't have that problem, but its down side is that it possesses so little flavor that I ended up doubling up the slices on my crackers just to get any meaningful cheese taste at all. That more than offsets any dietary advantage of the lower fat content.

The fact is, neither is good enough to join the ranks of my favorites. They're not even serious contenders for that class.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Organic Reduced Sugar Raspberry Preserves

I was wary of this stuff, because sugar is the essence of jam/preserves, so 40% less of it seems like enough of a reduction to render the result, well, icky.

I was wrong. It's almost as good as regular raspberry preserves. If you fed it to me without telling me what was different about it, I think I would notice that it was a little less sweet than I was used to, but I would never guess that the sugar reduction was as high as 40%. It's actually kind of amazing that they can get that much sugar out and still have the product be this good.


Will I buy it again? 

It's not going to become my go-to spread for toast in the morning. But if I really needed to cut calories and/or sugar from my diet, then yeah, this would definitely become my first choice. I hope that day never comes, but if it does, I'll be happy to have this product around.

Trader Joe's Lite Shredded 3 Cheese Blend

This product starts off with one demerit just for spelling "light" as "lite." Disgraceful. Cn I pik u up sum lite cheez at the drive-thru?

I might forgive such editorial wretchedness if the contents were good, but they're not. Cardboard taste, rubber texture. Not quite inedibly bad--I did slowly work my way through the entire bag--but it was borderline.

If you need 50% less fat, I suggest buying some really good shredded cheese--like this one--and using only half as much.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Trader Joe's Creamy Unsalted Peanut Butter

This is the first peanut butter I've bought from Trader Joe's. (I reviewed the no-stir peanut butter first, because it was a brand-new product, but I was already deep into this jar when I did that.) I've heard people rave about some of TJ's peanut butters, but I couldn't remember exactly which ones they said they loved. So I kind of picked one at random.

It was an unfortunate choice.

First, this is one that you have to stir up every time you use it, because the oil separates out. That's annoying. But it wouldn't be a dealbreaker if the peanut butter were amazing. It's not.

I had never had unsalted peanut butter before--really didn't even know that there was such a thing. Closely related to that fact, I had never noticed the role that salt plays in the overall taste of peanut butter. Now I know: it's crucial.

I wouldn't call this stuff inedible. I've had it a few times, and I plan to finish the jar. But I find it unpalatable on its own. I have to put extra honey or jam on a sandwich with it to compensate for the peanut butter being less flavorful than a lifetime of experience has taught me to expect.

If I had a health condition that required me to drastically cut back on my sodium intake, I'm sure I'd be happy to have this product available. But I don't. And the absence of salt is not a minor impingement on the flavor--it's a wholesale change for the worse. I'm not ready to give it up.


Will I buy it again? 

No way. The double-whammy of having the tedium of stirring up the jar, plus the absence of salt, make this a one-time experiment I won't repeat.

Trader Joe's Light Vanilla Ice Cream

This is not great ice cream. But then again, you wouldn't expect it to be, when you read that it has 80% less fat than TJ's premium vanilla ice cream. The flavor is decent, but the texture is missing all that richness. It reminds me of the "ice milk" that was kind of a big thing back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Still, if you put some sort of good topping on it, it's certainly passable. I suppose there may come a day when a cardiologist tells me that I have to drastically cut back on my total fat intake, in which case a product like this will probably seem like the best I can allow myself, and I'll be happy to have it.

In the meantime, I want better.


Will I buy it again? 

Not until after my first heart attack.

Trader Joe's Low Calorie Pink Lemonade

Did not like. The stevia used to replace some (though not all) of the sugar gives it a strange taste that I found off-putting.


Will I buy it again? 

No.

Nina's View

What a shame that Bob is so entirely mistaken about this. Okay, maybe mistaken is too strong a word. His opinion is—how shall I say?—misguided. This is a lemonade with enough actual sugar in it to have a nice flavor, a little stevia to kick up the sweetness, and a refreshing lemon tang to quench your thirst.

If I bought this sort of thing, I would buy it. I might have it on hand for a party. I recommend giving it a try.

Trader Joe's Fat Free Balsamic Vinaigrette

Having recently discovering that I like Trader Joe's regular balsamic vinaigrette, I decided to try their fat-free version.

I was pleasantly surprised. If I taste the two dressings alone, on a fingertip, I can definitely tell which is which. This one is somewhat sweeter in taste and (obviously) less oily in mouthfeel. But when dribbled onto a salad, the difference mostly vanishes. I think this one is a little less flavorful overall, less fruity, but it's not a difference that I notice unless I'm actively paying attention. I'm just about as happy with either one.

Will I buy it again? 

I already have. I think I'll keep alternating between them for a while. If I eventually develop enough acuity of taste to really notice something lacking in the fat-free variety, maybe I'll abandon it. But for now, since the difference doesn't catch my attention, it seems an easy way to eliminate a little bit of unnecessary fat in my diet.

Addendum 

In the several months since I wrote the above, I have gone through three bottles of both this the regular version. In the rotation with them are my beloved raspberry vinaigrette, plus whatever non-TJ's salad dressing I'm auditioning. I continue to like both TJ's balsamics very much, and approximately equally.

Trader Joe's Low Calorie Cranberry Juice Cocktail

Cranberry juice, all by itself, is pretty stern stuff. The tartness is more than most people like. So juice manufacturers rarely sell it straight; they make it into cran-apple, cran-grape, cran-raspberry, and other similar blends. Or, less overtly, they quietly mix in some blend of sugar or apple or grape juice as sweeteners, and sell it as "cranberry juice cocktail."

Trader Joe's here has an interesting twist on the latter formula. They've taken cranberry juice (from concentrate, reconstituted with water), and added fructose (the principal form of sugar found in most fruits) and stevia.

The result produces a somewhat unusual and unexpected mix of experiences. The cranberry flavor seems both full and natural. But it lacks almost all of the tartness usually expected with straight cranberry juice. The sweeteners have been added to a level that they dampen the tartness almost into oblivion, yet don't make the result taste flagrantly sweetened.

Part of the dampening effect is probably due to nothing more complicated than dilution. The label says that this blend is 34% juice. I don't think that means that the cranberry juice concentrate has been reconstituted with roughly 2:1 water. I think it means that nearly two-thirds of the contents is water above and beyond what was needed to reconstitute the concentrate.

I found the overall result a bit disconcerting and distracting. When I'm drinking a more typical cranberry blend, I understand that the cranberry tartness has been eradicated by either the sugar or the other fruit juices, so it makes sense. But here, it tastes like only cranberries, yet without the expected tartness AND without the obvious sugar to explain its absence. It's kind of as if you bit into a lemon, and found all the expected lemon flavor, but it was somehow magically not sour. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar--maybe even disorienting.

I've finished off this large bottle of the stuff, and still remain kind of conflicted about it. It's nice to have cranberry juice all by itself instead of a cran-X blend, without having it sugared up to within an inch of its life. But at the same time, it felt like, I dunno, sort of cheating somehow, like something was missing--specifically the tartness. Without it, cranberry juice feels incomplete. I guess I'm an oddball in that I kind of like the put-hair-on-your-chest tartness of straight-up cranberry. If I'm going to have cranberry juice unmixed with some other fruit juice, well then, give it to me pure, raw, strong, and bold. I can handle it.

Will I buy it again? 

I'm not sure.

Nina's View

This is a perfectly good cranberry-ish juice. Bob's right, it is less tart that your typical cranberry juice cocktail. But it's also substantially less sweet and has a lower calorie load. To me, this is an acceptable trade-off. I consider this quite drinkable as is, but less useful as a mixer.

Trader Joe's Reduced Fat Cheese Puffs

Shortest possible review: Ick.

Slightly longer review: They taste like stale cardboard coated with vaguely cheese-flavored sawdust.

Will I buy it again? 

Only if I'm lobotomized and therefore lose both my sense of taste and the memory of how nasty these things are. Gimme back my Cheetos Puffs!

Nina's View

This was a surprise. I expected to dislike these.

1. I am not a huge fan of cheese puffs to begin with. They are basically cheesy, salty, styrofoam-textured squiggles. I'm down with the cheesy and salty portions of the program, but the styrofoam texture has always left me kind of cold. The official brand name version of these additionally has a kind of rancidy cheese flavor which tends to pile up at the back of my throat.

2. I tend to approach any product labeled "reduced fat" with skepticism. Especially one whose whole livelihood (as it were) depends on mouthfeel. Mouthfeel is 97.3% carried by fat (that's a scientific fact I just made up). Reduce the fat, enfeeble the mouthfeel. (Another aphorism I just invented.)

The key to liking these—or at least not hating them—I found, was to not eat them in temporal proximity to anything else. Ok, maybe a glass of water, but that's it. Because their flavor is modest. They are demurely cheesy, and humbly salty. They have the classic styrofoam crunch. While I did not find them compulsively, addictively edible as I do some other snack items (*cough*CapeCodpotatochips*cough*), I did find them palatable, especially as they did not have the rancid, chemical, back-of-the-tongue paste thing going on.

Would I actually buy them myself? Nope.

Would I eat them if I were in the mood for a snack item and nothing I liked better were available? Mebbe.

Trader Joe's kettle-cooked potato chips

This is becoming an unplanned "new product" week on the blog. Trader Joe's has released a spate of interesting new items recently, and it's hard to keep up.

The first image above is a brand-new Trader Joe's product: Organic Potato Chips Kettle Style. (See here for TJ's own description.) It becomes the third kettle-cooked potato chip in the TJ's lineup. Nina and I have previously reviewed the Kettle Cooked Olive Oil Potato Chips, both of us finding them tasty but needing added salt. Finally, there's the Reduced Guilt Kettle Cooked Potato Chips, which is not a new item, but it's one we have not tried before. I figured that as long as we would be trying the new one, we might as well sample all three side by side and compare them. So we did.

I thought the new one was the standout. Big chips, flavorful, cooked just right, just the right saltiness, crunchy without being brittle. Outstanding in every way. I think they're the best potato chips TJ's sells, and among the very best I've ever had from any manufacturer.

TJ's web site carries this warning:

Organically grown potatoes are only available in limited quantities. Do the math, and you’ll realize the same must hold true for these chips. The bottom line is, there will be times you won’t find Organic Kettle Style Potato Chips on our shelves. 

We don’t want to start an ‘organic chip panic,’ nevertheless, we will advise hoarding while you can—especially for those with high levels of chip compulsion. You know who you are.

I'm well aware that this might be nothing more than marketing hype to sell more product. But I loved them enough that I decided to act as if the warning might be true--and I bought three more bags before I had even finished the first one.

As my final demonstration of endorsement, I'm adding this item to my Top Ten list. It earns this distinction in my book not for being an innovative, unique product, but rather for being a simple, common type of product executed perfectly.

The olive oil chips remain a top contender, though they still need salt added to the bag, as I described in an update to our original review.

As for the reduced-guilt chips, well, that's a whole nuther story, as they say. They are, in fact, quite bad. Flavorless. Overcooked. Dry. Brittle. Just not good. One will allegedly ingest 33% less fat with these. I say pick one of the good ones, and eat 33% fewer of them. You'll be much happier that way.

Will I buy it again? 

I'll buy the new organic ones every chance I get. If they really do go through periods of being unavailable, I'll buy the olive oil ones, add some salt, and be nearly as happy with them. I'll have no more of the reduced-guilt variety.

Nina's View

I concur with Bob about most of this, except: this current sample of Olive Oil chips was salted just right for my taste. I found the Organic ones too salty, and didn't like that they tend to clump together. Therefore I prefer the Olive Oil ones. 

Trader Joe's Organic Reduced Guilt White Corn Tortilla Chips

I didn't much care for these. They're dry, brittle, relatively tasteless. I wouldn't go so far as to compare them to cardboard, but they do not compare favorably to many of TJ's other tortilla chip offerings. If you really have to squeeze every gram of fat out of your diet, then these may well be close enough to "normal" to rank among the better choices available. (Caveat: I have not tried many reduced-fat chips, so I'm just speculating there.) But for me, I'll take my chances with the regular versions for the improved taste and texture.

Will I buy it again? 

No.