Peeled Skinny

We here at Peeled Snacks are constantly eating snacks, trying the new stuff, revisiting the old stuff, and finding the places where snacks are heading, and HOPING to steer snacks to where they BELONG.  There's plenty of good snacks out there, but occasionally we come upon something head-scratching, something stomach churning, something that just doesn't taste good.  And so we give you....

From the files of "OH MY GOLLY, WHAT ARE YOU EATING?!?!", comes this new entry in the world of "no, please, DON'T eat that": Genero's baked cheese peanuts. 

Some notes about Genero: it's an Argentina based company that has for years made many fine nut products.  They grow mostly peanuts in the Cordoba region of Argentina (a good region for wine), and roast in a variety of ways.  They offer baked peanuts (which are tasty and impossible not to love), but their bread and butter (so to speak) is peanuts baked with a wheat starch shell, rather like a M&M shell, only less colorful.

Most of their products taste great, and I LOVE peanuts, so they've got that going for them (plus I love Argentina, but they can't help that).  But allow me to bring your attention to the specific snack in question, the Cheese peanuts.

Ingredients for product in question: Peanut, Wheat Flour, Starch, Sugar, High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Salt, Flavoring.

That's it.

Where's the CHEESE!?!?

Cheese is written in large, clear words not once but TWICE on the front of the package.  But there's no cheese inside.  What's "Flavoring"?  Does it have any cheese in it?  I have no idea, but frankly, I can't be made to care, because unlike other Genero products that I've tasted, these "Cheese" peanuts taste AW-FUL.  As in, eat one and think about how yummy a handful of dirt might be instead.  As in, I could be eating this, or I could be washing my mouth out with soap.  As in, YUCK!

Okay, maybe it's my problem, as I usually assume that bad-for-you products taste, you know, kinda good (but are actually terrible for you).  Maybe I just don't see the big picture, and maybe Genero is way ahead of the curve, seeing that if they're going to make something awful, it should taste awful.

But however you want to spin it, when a product says "Cheese" on the front of the package (twice!), it really should contain, you know, CHEESE!

Now I return my almost entirely un-eaten bag of Genero's baked Cheese Peanuts to the file.  I think that I'll have a mouth-wash for lunch.  Happy Snacking,

-Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 12:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

May I refer your attention HERE....

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132643

This article presents how much Lays wants you to get to know its farmers, and how much of a REAL product Lays offers, and to do so without troubling you, they're going to bring a model of a REAL potato farm to Times Square.  This continues their "get to know our farmers" world tour of the past year or so.  See, Lays has joined the Real Food revolution, and they want you to be a part of it.

Or, at least, if you're into that, they want to market to you.

No disrespect to Lays intended here- potato chips at least are generally made with few ingredients, and (hopefully) Lays buys most or all of its potatoes in America (and, hence, employs American farmers).  But to me, this sounds like an Onion article where the humor lies in how much a bunch of brand managers don't understand their brand, and REALLY don't understand their core consumers.

The article stems from MediaPost, which is certainly more a B2B rag than a zeitgeist tapping teen-angst mag.  But the article quotes not a farmer committed to getting the word out, not a grocer getting good products in front of people, but rather it goes right behind the green curtain and quotes the Lays brand manager, Linda Bethea, cunningly doling out industry-speak.  That's keeping it Real (tm), people.

But now may I please point you HERE....

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fritolay-angrily-introduces-line-of-healthy-snacks,2082/

That's an ACTUAL onion article that satirizes how the very company in question might give in to the Real Food/Green generation forces, though perhaps a bit more grumpily than Linda Bethea.  Truly, life DOES imitate art.

I heartily doubt that 99% of Lays' customers care about any of this.  They want a good snack.  But clearly Lays wants to be ahead of the curve with the next generation.  I tip my hat to you, Lays team- you're doing a bang-up job copying the companies that in total make up about 5% of your competition. 

Frankly, given Lays' success and distribution, were they to adopt clean growing practices and dial back the additives, that'd be a HUGE win-win for us all: better food for people that need it, a better company that's already building on huge successes.  One can only hope.  Now I gotta go find me some Sproutitos....

-Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 03:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It all started with a very noble effort by the Department of Ed to get New York City's kids to slim down.  Perhaps you've heard of this, where they've kicked sodas out of the schools, and of course trans-fats are no longer served even in the McDonalds of New York City, much less the schools.  But much like the Salem witch trials, what started out as a good idea (slimming kids down, admittedly a better idea than purger the town of witches), has simply gotten out of control....

Read THIS....

Or don't.  In short, it says that the Board of Ed outlawed bake sales at schools in an effort to slim kids down.  They've left in some exceptions, but by and large, as of late late last year, PTAs could no longer fund themselves with brownies any longer.  Now they have to hold, what, auto-parts sales?  Homemade wallet sales?  Or maybe they now hold a draw and the losing family has to auction off a kidney?

Look, nobody wants a fat America.  Not even McDonalds, or so I believe, wants 300 lb. plus patrons (after all, they don't want to have to enlarge all those doors).  But fat kids in schools haven't been enlarged by the bake-sales, that venerable American tradition.  No, they've been enlarged by every OTHER meal that they eat!  The Board of Ed outlawing bake sales to slim down kids is like the feds outlawing gas-powered lawnmowers to prevent future oil-spills: granted, lawnmowers use oil, but that's NOT ADDRESSING THE REAL PROBLEM.

Baked goods shouldn't be eaten every day, right?  But neither should chips, french-fries, sodas, candy, or dozens of other dietary components of the poorest Americans (the ones that attend the public schools where they can no longer sell home-made baked goods).  At least some good comes from a bake sale.  NOTHING good comes from soda or chips- no nutrition, no nourishment, just the illusion of satiation.

But we CAN deal with the REAL problem.  All we have to do is throw out the corn subsidies, and make nourishing food the cheapest food available.  But that would have to be done by congress with the farm bill comes up in 2013, and  then it would have to be signed by the President (whoever that'll be then), so don't count on it.  Instead, we can likely look forward to more desperate, noble, pointless efforts by state and local governments to fight obesity, the ones that grab headlines, but don't shrink wastelines.

Sigh,

-Peeled Skinny, about to go on vacation, hurrah!

Posted by iankusc at 03:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

So Peeled Snacks, in a fit of of genius, attended this year's Candy Show in Chicago.  "What?!?", you cry?  "But, Peeled Snacks ISN'T Candy".  Well THAT, my friend, is up for some serious debate, but luckily this year the planners of the "All Candy Expo" decided that they should rename the show "The Sweets and Snacks Show".  So foo on you.  We went, and we had a BLAST!

Picture, if you will, a very very large room, the size of maybe 2 football fields.  Now start filling that room with candy.   Throw in your candy-bar favorites, M&Ms and Snickers and what have you.  Add the seasonals, like peeps and Valentines Day hearts.  Make sure to add the weird niche candies, like Now & Laters and Mary Janes.  Top it off with gourmet chocolates and European "flavor candies".

And this year, add to it all your potato chips, your cheese curls, and, tucked into the gourmet section, the ONLY purveyor of healthy snacks, PEELED SNACKS!!!!  Hooray!!!!

Peeled Snacks really stood out nicely at the show, and it drummed up some nice business for us.  Frankly, it's a show that we should have done YEARS ago, since I essentially want Peeled Snacks to be an alternative to candy.  I know that we're never going to take down Snickers (don't even want to, really), but we want to give snackers the option of something a little healthier on occasion.

But all that's sweetened is not candy.  I personally don't really eat Candy.  Every year at Halloween I'll pick up a bag of something, but if any's left over after the trick r' treaters are done with it, I stow it away and MAYBE finish the last pieces by Spring (this year it took till April).  So at the show I probably ate 5 or 6 pieces of candy total, and spat at least 2 of those out.  That's mostly because I KNOW what sugar tastes like, and I don't like what it does to me.

But I also know what BRANDING looks, and I LOVE what THAT does to me.  Around our booth we held a competition to see who could find a: the most disgusting candy and b: the worst branding.  For the first column contestants included:

Peeps with goo on their insides

Licorice filled with chocolate

Chocolate sprinkled with Beef Jerkey

But the winner was: Gummies made from Fish Collagen!

So Fish Collagen offers a substantial source of protein, and everybody likes gummies, right?  So let's just put them together and kids will eat healthier candy, right?  Apparently this is big in Japan, but in Chicago it just tasted GROSS, and the branding accentuated the fish.  NO THANKS, too sickening, better luck next time...

As far as the worst branding goes, we have a 2-way tie for:

Toxic Waste Candy:

 and.....

Zombie Blood Energy Drink:

 Nuf said.  I'm glad I make what I make.  And NOT THAT.  Happy Snacking,

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 10:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)