Trader Joe's Tropical Carrot Juice Blend

In a previous post, it was established that I have a fear of carrot juice. I've never been a fan of the original V-8 or any other vegetable juice. I like vegetable soup, salty and served hot, but cold vegetable juice seems to violate the natural beverage laws that I've come to accept. Fruit/vegetable hybrid drinks, such as V-8 Splash, can be hit or miss with me, depending on which ingredients they throw into the mix.

I'm assuming that the juices used in making this beverage are a bunch of tropical fruits with some carrots tossed in. Judging by the name, it's either that, or they've used some mysterious, elusive "tropical carrots," which are apparently sweet, fruit-like, and delicious.

But either way, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of this juice. To me, it doesn't taste carrot-ish at all. I find most juice blends that sneak some carrot into the mix to be moderately palatable. However, I can still taste carrot in most of them. They usually find some clever way to dress up the carrot-taste with citrus fruits, but you can still detect that hint of vegetabliness. Not so with this juice. The carrot flavor is barely detectable, and it blends beautifully with the fruit juices. It's very tasty for a carrot/fruit juice blend.

So really, this is a genre of beverages that generally scores very low in my book, but this tropical carrot juice is a really solid effort on the part of TJ's. I would buy it again. I'll give it 4 stars out of 5. Sonia, although not as vehemently opposed to vegetable juices as I am, thought it unnatural for a carrot juice blend to taste so sweet. She found the flavor a bit strange, yet not undrinkable. She gives it a 3.

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.

Trader Joe's Fiberful Handmade Dried Fruit Bars

This entry kind of goes as a companion to my post on Monday about Trader Joe's Organic 100% Natural Fruit Wraps. We'll be doing some comparing and contrasting since they're such similar products, sold in the same little section of TJ's.

The biggest difference between these two types of dried fruit bars is that these Fiberful ones are indeed full o' fiber, as the name so blatantly and appropriately declares. Six grams in one bar. That's not too shabby for such a thin, flat piece of snack food. And I'll be brutally honest, you can immediately detect the presence of fiber in the bars when you start chewing—there's definitely a gritty, almost dirt-like texture to these babies. Their fruit flavor wasn't bad. It was actually pretty similar to that of the other fruit wraps. But the problem was I simply couldn't enjoy the flavor while chomping through layers of sawdust and cardboard.

Here again, I find myself playing the bad guy. I know from just the small amount of online research I did that these bars are fairly well-loved by the general populace. And if you bought these fiber-rich snacks for the purpose of getting some extra roughage in your diet and you consider the incredible amount of fiber they've crammed into them, their texture is acceptable.

However, if you're not buying them expressly for the fiber, I would highly recommend you stick to the aforementioned Organic 100% Natural Fruit Wraps. Their texture beats that of these Fiberful bars hands down. I'd only recommend purchasing these if you're, ya' know...looking to, ah, give your digestive tract a little help...

And at this point, I would leap dutifully into a paragraph or two of potty jokes and bathroom humor, if not for the fact that I've learned my lesson the hard way that fart jokes do not generally go over well in mixed company. Furthermore, a food blog is the last place on earth we'd want to hear such filthy musings. So, for once, I shall listen to my better judgment and conclude this post here.

Sonia wasn't terribly impressed with these bars either. A 3 out of 5 from her.

I just can't give these a great score when I know there's a much better alternative right on the same shelf at TJ's. A 2.5 from me.

Bottom line: 5.5 out of 10.