Trader Joe's and More is Definitely Less

Ann Arbor has just become home to the largest Trader Joe's store. Or so claims one of the Ann Arbor TJ's crew, and since they're fresh out of new employee orientation (or whatever it's called in TJ land), I don't have any reason to doubt them.

Trader Joe's moved into Whole Foods' old location, and Whole Foods moved into a new mega box store built just for them with lots of "designer atmosphere". (But that's a different rant.)

Anyway, Trader Joe's has a lot of cool foods. My husband is particularly fond of their wasabi peanuts, and we both love their chocolate-coated peanut butter stuffed pretzel bits. (Mmmm....) And their tasty ginger cookies have chunks of candied ginger in them. They have a fabulous frozen food selection with some really interesting items, and their prices are pretty darn good.

This brings me to "More & Less." Since weekday breakfast usually consists of a bowl of cereal before running out of the door, I'm always on the lookout for health food cereals that taste reasonably good. I grabbed two promising boxes of Trader Joe's cereal for a taste test.

The candidates:
- Essentials
- More & Less

"Essentials" bills itself as "a nutritious blend of flakes, twigs & clusters." I'm not sure how I feel about eating twigs for breakfast, but I give it a go. The scent as I opened the box calls forth strong childhood memories of... playdoh! Fortunately, that's the worse thing I can say about it. The flavor is okay with a strong cinnamon component -- Hey! It's a health cereal, after all, so "okay" is high praise. I can definitely eat this mixed half and half with, say, Kashi's Heart to Heart (my current favorite health cereal). The carbs and sugar are a bit high (37g total carbs, 9g sugar), but the protein and fiber are good (10g total fiber, 8g protein).

Next up: "Apple Cinnamon More & Less." It has an impressive set of "stats": 12g of carbs, of which 5g are fiber, 2g of sugar, and 13g of protein. Upon opening the box I was greeted with a waft of artificial Christmas candel scent. I can't decide if this is better or worse than playdoh, but the real test is in the taste. Suffice to say, chewing a handful of this cereal is like eating sawdust. The faint apple overtones actually made it worse. I don't know why. Maybe because apples are supposed to enhance the taste of other foods, and it's tragic when they don't? This cereal is sufficiently bad tasting that it would be animal cruelty to throw it out in the yard for the birds. The less I eat the more happy I'll be.

I'll definitely be shopping at Trader Joe's again (chocolate peanut butter pretzel goodness!), but I'll take a pass on the house brand cereals.

Comments

[Elay]

thanks for the review of the cereals. I love TJ, but I'll make sure not to eat the cereal (not that I usually eat cereal anyway).

blog looks good, so keep it up :-)

[Kitchen Chick]

I've had such good things from TJ, that the cereals were something of a shock. But I knew I was in for a "special treat" when my husband said to me, "Have you tried those Trader Joe's cereals yet?"

I've been consider a food blog off and on for more than a year, and finally decided to give it a try. Thanks for the encouragement!

[Ron]

Apple Cinnamon More & Less..Since I'm on a die the less I eat the better so the taste of Apple Cinnamon More & Less works for me.

[John]

are you kidding me? essentials is so good. i have like 6 boxes on my fridge. how dare you speak such words of god's cereal. ima have a huge ass bowl right now just cuz you said that.

[Joe]

Enjoy, man. To each their own.

In fact, I'd give you ours except that it's been almost a year and we pitched it.

[laurie]

Have you tried the Organic Morning Lite? I think it's fairly new. I totally agree with you about the More & Less; it's pretty awful stuff. But return it to TJ's; they have a no questions asked, no-hassle return policy. Anyway, the OML is excellent. It's a bit on the sweet side for a natural-type cereal, but not overly so. It has a bit of a coffee undertaste which I really enjoy. The only downside is that it's not as protein-rich as the others, so if you're like me when you eat "ordinary cereal" (ravenous after like an hour), it is loaded with fiber. So just augment this with some other form of protein and you'll be good to go.

[Joe]

Huh. You know, it never occurred to me to see if they had a return policy like that.

I'll check out the Organic Morning Lite, thanks!