New Products Hits & Misses for 06/29/2011

Ratings Criteria

With over 50,000 products in the average supermarket, people don't have the time, or the money, to test every product on the shelves and with 15,000 new products every year consumers need to know what's out there!

So Phil does the testing and the tasting for you and gives the product a rating out of 100 so you know what you can expect when you try something new!

SupermarketGuru does not sell the foods we review, nor receive any compensation from the manufacturers for reviewing or rating them.

Phil taste-tests and judges each product based on the following 8 criteria:

(30 points) Taste: The most important attribute of any food
(20 points) Value: Is it worth it?
(15 points) Health: Based off the nutritional information, is it nutritionally balanced?
(15 points) Ingredients: What's in it, how natural is it?
(5 points) Preparation: When applicable, how accurate or good are the directions *
(5 points) Appearance: Is it appetizing and does it resemble its photo or description
(5 points) Packaging: Is it appropriate for the product and does it have any benefits such as resealability, added freshness, better storage, etc.
(5 Points) Sustainability: Is the packaging biodegradable, is it wasteful, is the company endeavoring to offset their carbon footprint?

* products that do not have any preparation will have the full value of these points included in their total score

Tasty Brand Organic Fruit Gummies Sport Formula

87

This product is a HIT! Here’s a new candy without any artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or high fructose corn syrup. These gummies are actually quite tasty, but they are loaded with sugar. One package contains 46 grams of sugars. While I applaud the idea of a Sports Formula that contains electrolytes, nowhere do they quantify just how much. The other thing that I wish the government would finally recognize is having some kind of standard for expiration dates – it’s confusing enough when we have ‘best by’ and ‘sell by’, now we have ‘tastiest by’. Retails for $2.89 for 2.75 oz.

Tasty Brand Inc
866 LUV TASTY
http://www.tastybrand.com

Scoring Breakdown:

Lipton Iced Tea Pomegranate Blueberry Flavor

87

This product is a HIT! Pomegranate Blueberry Flavor is a hit It’s summer time and that means more flavored iced teas on the supermarket shelves. This 100% natural Pomegranate Blueberry iced tea is actually very tasty. One bottle contains just over 32 grams of sugars and 130 calories. It’s sweetened with a combination of sugar and stevia. I love the fact that they are listing right on the label that the bottle also contains 42 grams of caffeine per bottle. So far so good, but what I don’t like – see these pomegranates and blueberries on the front – there’s no pomegranate or blueberry juice used, just natural flavors. Retails for $1.59 for 20 fl oz.

Lipton
800 657 3001
http://www.liptontea.com

Scoring Breakdown:

Angell Organic Candy Bar Snow (White Chocolate) Flavor

90

This product is a HIT! Here’s a new candy bar that’s 190 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 19 grams of sugars. The taste is lighter than you’d probably expect and the coconut center is extraordinary. The coating is ‘white chocolate’, but as I’m sure you know ‘white chocolate’ is just sugar, milk, and cocoa butter – it really isn't chocolate! Organic and Fair Trade certified, this is definitely worth a try if you are looking for something sweet. And I love their slogan – ‘Eat no Evil’. Retails for $2.49 for a 1.41 oz bar.

Jungell, Inc
N/A
http://www.angellbar.com

Scoring Breakdown:

Talenti Gelato Sea Salt Caramel Flavor

93

This product is a HIT! If you are looking for a new ice cream flavor check out this Sea Salt Caramel with pieces of chocolate gelato. I’m a huge fan of Talenti and this newest flavor lives up to the reputation. No high fructose corn syrup and made with milk without growth hormones the flavor and mouth feel of this gelato is perfect. And to be honest - I love gelato so much more than ice cream - in the manufacturing process the ingredients are super-cooled while stirring to break up ice crystals as they form - resulting in a dense and extremely flavorful product. The caramel is just the right amount and not overpowering or too sweet. And unlike some of the other brands this package still contains a full pint. Retails for $4.99 – 5.99 for 1 pint.

Talenti
N/A
http://www.talentigelato.com

Scoring Breakdown:

Garden of Eatin’ Blue Chips

95

This product is a HIT! So many of the tortilla chips that are on the market now are either too salty, too hard or too oily. These blue corn tortilla chips are perfect and far superior to a lot of the other blue corn chips on the market. With just the right amount of salt these chips are perfect with salsa or guacamole and will not overpower their flavors and instead compliment them. A simple ingredient statement of just organic blue corn, oil and sea salt. Our top score of the week! Retails for $3.49 for 9 oz.

Hain Celestial Group
800 434 4246
http://www.gardenofeatin.com

Scoring Breakdown:

Thank You

We hope you enjoyed this edition of

New Product
Hits and Misses

If you would like Phil to consider your new product for review, please send 4 samples of each flavor you to submit for review, with the suggested retail price and other product information. We regret that we can not review all products submitted. Please send to:

New Product Review
SupermarketGuru.com
3015 Main Street, Suite 320
Santa Monica, CA 90405

Product reviews are conducted by randomly selecting one flavor of a product and taking into consideration the information available on the package itself as it would appear in the retail environment. Information contained in advertisements or on websites is not taken into account for evaluation or ratings.

Email danielle@supermarketguru.com with any questions and whenever possible please be environmentally friendly when packaging your products.