Awake to Butterfinger If you're a careless candy purchaser, you might want to check twice when you pick up a king-size Butterfinger bar. There's a "limited edition" caffeinated version -- Butterfinger BUZZ. The label says the two-piece bar has "as much caffeine as the leading energy drink" -- 80 milligrams, the amount of caffeine in an 8.3-ounce can of Red Bull.
In fact, that's the amount of caffeine in the whole two-piece bar. If you eat just one piece, the 40 milligrams of caffeine you get is about the amount in a typical 12-ounce cola drink. Everything else on the nutrition label outlines the content of just one piece. If you eat the whole two-piece bar, to get the full Red Bull effect, you must double those figures. The results would be: 460 calories, 18 grams of fat and 48 grams of sugar -- about a quarter of a cup!
Cakesterettes Meet Oreo Mini Cakesters, the new 100-calorie-pack (of course) version of Nabisco's Oreo Cakesters (which are soft, cakey sandwich cookies). Each little 100-calorie pack of Mini Cakesters contains three of the teeny items. The box contains five of those packs, for a total of 4.05 ounces; it costs $3.29. The box of regular Cakesters holds six packs of two 1-ounce Cakesters, totaling 12 ounces; at one store it costs $3.25. So Mini Cakesters cost a staggering three times as much per ounce!
South tiny Beach Mr. Tidbit thought Kraft's line of South Beach Living foods, as a vestige of the low-carbohydrate trend, wouldn't be subject to newer grocery bandwagons. Wrong. Now there are South Beach Living Fiber Fit itty-bitty chocolate cookies in 100-calorie pouches. Surprisingly, the box of six pouches (totaling 5.1 ounces) costs $3.59 -- a little less per ounce than the 100-calorie pouches in Kraft's Nabisco line.
Do you remember the following from the crest of the low-carb movement (so to speak)? The cookies contain polydextrose, a "sugar alcohol," excess consumption of which "may have a laxative effect."
AL SICHERMAN
