Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal Remains MIA — Here Are Some Alternatives

Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal has been missing from TJ outlets in the Chicago area for two weeks now and I’m becoming more and more convinced it is being discontinued. Store managers have consistently told me it would be in the next day only to not have any that day. This is a food disaster for me since that cereal has been my breakfast go-to for the decade since my first stent went it. I’ve written about how it is relatively low in salt and sugar compared with other breakfast cereals.

*Nutrition information for three alternatives to Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal, which is gone from TJ stores in my area north of Chicago.*

But facing the harsh reality that it may join a long list of low-salt Trader Joe’s products that have been dropped in recent years, I decided to see what alternatives are available on supermarket shelves.

I bought boxes of General Mills Fiber One, Kellogg’s All Bran Original and Kellogg’s All Bran Buds. A friendly woman in the store suggested the Buds to me, saying they are her husband’s favorite. Maybe he enjoys the added salt and added sugars. Buds has 300 mgs of salt and 12 mgs of sugar, highest among the three. Eating a cup of them left me extremely gasey as well, not a pleasant feeling to go through the day with.

Fiber One looks a bit like TJ’s except the strings are darker and a but thicker. It has very little taste but at least the nutrition numbers are;t bad, 140 mgs of salt and no sugar. The original All bRan has the least salt per serving, although the numbers are skewed a but because it and Fiber One considers a serving as two-thirds of a cup while the infamous Buds calls half-a-cup a serving.

All of these cost more than TJs, by the way. I paid $6.99 for Fiber One, $4.99 for All Bran on sale and $4.99 for Buds on sale (each was $1.80 off their regular prices). I’m going to keep an eye out for General Mills coupons for Fiber One.

I’ll be visiting the New York City area shortly, I’m planning to check there to see if TJ has in fact stopped selling the one item that would regularly draw me to its stores.

August 25, 2022 2

Do you know what 2,000 calories look like? I’m guessing no, so read on

Everyone has likely seen it somewhere, either on a food label or on a restaurant nutrition page — portions and everything else to do with our daily nutritional intake are calculated on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet. But I doubt most people realize just how few calories that is compared to what average Americans eat every day.

*The FoodNetwork.com meal plan involves a lot of food in bowls, not sure why. Photo by Polina Tankilevitch:*

So here’s a great piece to read from FoodNework.com, What Does 2,000 Calories Look Like? Use it as a companion piece to something I wrote, Picturing 1,500 calories a day; it’s not much. Generally, women are advised to eat 1,500 calories a day while men get 2,000.

The FoodNetwork.com piece has menus that will put you at the 2,000-calorie mark, whether you eat meat or not, which is handy if you cook for a family with members on different diets.

There’s a lot on these menus I wouldn’t touch, but hopefully you’ll find some items you like and can add to your recipe list.

August 23, 2022 0

Pork Chops? Yes, they can be low-salt, low-fat too

Pork chops are not normally something I cook at home but I when I recently saw some on sale at Whole Foods, I decided to see if I could create a low-salt, low-fat pork chop dish.

The chops themselves had only 3 grams of fat per four-ounces, an acceptable amount. But with meat that lean, you need to add flavor. Most pork chops in stores don’t have nutritional labels. Because these were branded, however, they did, which helped me decide to buy them.

For flavor, I turned to LocalFolks salt-free, low-sugar barbecue sauce, a favorite ingredient of mine.

You can watch how I prepared them in the video below.

If you prefer reading it, simply oil a pan with olive oil, add the pork chops, baste them with the sauce and cook until an internal temp of 145 degrees.

The temperature you cook at will depend on where you’re cooking these, in an oven or on an outdoor grill, so I use internal temp as the indicator they’re done. Normally you would aim for 375 to 400 degrees as a cooking temp.

Warning, never eat pork if it is still red or pink in the middle, that means it still needs more cooking.

August 17, 2022 0

Keeping your food budget down in inflationary times — here’s a great example

I’ve written about how important it is in these inflationary times to plan your weekly grocery shopping trip or trips based on weekly sales. So I loved coming across this rather long piece on BuzzFeed: I Feed My Family Of Five For $120 A Week — Here’s What A Week Of Groceries & Meals Looks Like For Us.

*Pre-planning your shopping can save you significant dollars, as seen on this receipt of mine.*

The author is a mother of three form Colorado. She mentions that her weekly budget has gone from $100 to $120, a 20% increase. And she reiterates my point, writing, “I start by looking at my local grocery store’s weekly sales so I know what items will get me the most bang for my buck. This first step has become more important than ever to my planning and budgeting lately.”

There’s a lot more to read, take a look and let me know what you thought of it in the comments here.

August 11, 2022 1

Pandemic Food causality — Trader Joe’s High-Fiber Cereal?

Healthier foods — that is those low in salt, fat and sugar, have been disappearing off store shelves during the pandemic, as I wrote here. By now though, you’d think we’ve seen the last of disappearing healthier foods. Not quite.

*Fiber One has more fat, calories and salt than TJ’s High-Fiber Cereal, but today it was my only choice, at $6.99 a box, more expensive than TJ’s as well.*

I went to two different Trader Joe’s in the northern suburbs of Chicago today only to find they had no Trader Joe’s High-Fiber cereal. At both, I was told it was not available at this time. That’s been a code in the past for times Trader Joe’s was dropping, like its salt-free marinara sauce.

The manager at the second store I visited, in Glenview, Il., told me it would be back in a day or two. I wondered where he would put it since the cereal section of the store has shrunk and been moved to the very back. There were no empty spaces for high-fiber cereal there.

I was forced to go to a mainstream supermarket and buy General Mills Fiber One, which has twice the fat and almost twice the salt per serving as does Trader Joe’s. It claims to have more fiber but getting that at the cost of more salt is not a trade I wanted to make.

We’ll see if this is just another case of a store ending sales of a lower-volume, healthier item and blaming the pandemic for it.

August 10, 2022 2

July 4th’s gone, but Labor Day is jsuta round the corner — here are some Labor Day side dish ideas

You can tell I’ve been holding onto this piece for a few months, 4th of July Sides from CookingLight.com. It’s early August as I write this and Labor Day is looming at the next big family cookout day, so why not take a look at some of these for that meal?

A simple approach, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil and wonderful olive oil. — *A simple side dish, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil and wonderful olive oil*.

As always, be careful about salt, fat and sugar content. Just because a dish makes it into a magazine that’s talking about “light” cooking, whatever that is, does not mean it is watching salt, fat or sugar content.

A recipe like Creamy Black Pepper Coleslaw has fat and salt in it. Not a lot you might say. But think of it as one part of your larger meal, the salt and fat can add up fast at a traditional American cookout.

I’m more likely to make sides with things I’ve grown during the summer, like tomatoes and green beans. Check out these side dishes I’ve written about in the past.

August 4, 2022 0

Don’t open that freezer door — not for these four foods you that should never freeze

Freezing foods we buy on sale can be an economical way to stock up on deals, especially during these inflationary times. I’ve posted about that, just click here to read it. But not every food can be frozen. Just take a look at 4 Foods You Should Never Put in the Freezer from Myrecipes.com.

I’ll end the suspense for you, the four are whole eggs, soft cheeses, raw vegetables and milk/yogurt (ok, that’s really five but whose counting? Not Myrecipes.com apparently).

“To be clear, it (freezing) doesn’t make the milk or yogurt unsafe, but generally it will separate into thick chunky pieces suspended in watery stuff and is super unappetizing,” the article states.

When it comes to veggies, “if you freeze a raw vegetable, the process will expand the water in its cell structure and burst the cells. The result: soggy, thawed produce that will feel like its overcooked. For better results, blanch your vegetables for about a minute in boiling water and then shock in an ice bath to stop the cooking,” the piece advises.

That said, the same site did say it’s ok to freeze tomatoes, I blogged about that but have not tried it yet. I suppose maybe it knows tomatoes are actually fruit?

August 2, 2022 0

Month: August 2022