Seeing The Lite
Cajun Style Rice & Beans entrée with brown rice pilaf, beans and sauce is part of the new Simply Balanced line under the Archer Farms brand at Target.
Retailers come to the aid of consumers trying to shape up by changing their lifestyles and eating habits by offering healthier store brand products and even lifestyle lines.
It’s well known that much of the United States population could stand to lose a few pounds. Actually, according to the CDC, a whopping 66% of American adults are either overweight or obese.
Losing those extra pounds is difficult, and often requires a total lifestyle change, including changes in diet. Luckily, there are many small ways to lower the calories, fat, cholesterol and sugar in our foods to make ourselves healthier and more fit.
Some retailers have come out with what might be called lifestyle store brands to encourage healthier eating. The latest is Target, Minneapolis, MN, with a line called Simply Balanced under the Archer Farms brand. Cajun Style Rice & Beans with a brown rice pilaf is one of the first entries.
Store brands of the same sort include Eating Right at Safeway, Pleasanton, CA (now being licensed to other retailers); President’s Choice Blue Menu at Loblaws, Toronto, ON; and Fit & Active at Aldi, Batavia, IL. Their offerings are as varied as Mixed Berry nutrition bars, 3-Rice Bayou Blend and Low-Fat Granola Cereal. In Canada, Montreal, QC-based Metro offers a Life Smart (Mieux Etre) liner of high fiber, no-salt-added canned vegetables under its Irresistibles brand.
Mother’s advice, of course, was: eat your vegetables. Pre-packaged greens make it easy to eat healthy at lunch time. Giant Eagle, Pittsburgh, PA, offers pre-made salad kits in its Farmer’s Market line that contain everything needed to made a delicious, nutritious meal in crowd pleasing varieties like Old World Italian salad and Balsamic salad. Trader Joe’s, Monrovia, CA, and Whole Foods, Austin, TX, also offer salad kits to go, but their offerings are a bit more savory.
Trader Joe’s has a Bistro Salads line packaged in the refrigerated section in deli containers. Convenient 9-12-oz. packages selling for $4.99 featuring delicious spins on common greens, like their Cranberry Walnut Salad with white meat chicken. Whole Foods also had a variety of yummy salads in ready to eat kits for $5.99 featuring delicious combinations like their Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce. With all of these options, the only excuse for not eating a healthier lunch would be not having a fork.
While salads are a great way to eat healthier, salad dressings can be full of fat and calories. Enter the low-fat and reduced calorie dressings. Aldi offers the biggest savings in dressings. Although they only offer Lite Italian and Lite Ranch in its Fit & Active Line, at 99 cents for 16-oz., their dressings cost a full 50% less than those found at Giant Eagle. The latter, however, offers a wider variety of flavors including Lite Vidalia Onion and Lite Deluxe French Style. And for those wanting lite organic options, Whole Foods sells 16-oz. bottles of their 365 Organic Lite salad dressings for $3.99.
Another way to cut back on calories and sugar is to look for products containing artificial sweeteners. Diet sodas are very popular, and there are huge savings to be found in private labels. The biggest savings were found at Kroger, Cincinnati, OH, where Big K soda sells in 12-packs for just $1.99. Walmart, Bentonville, AK, Sam’s Choice diet soda 12-packs are $2.58 and Giant Eagle’s brand is $2.99. Giant Eagle has something new in this category: Giant Eagle Naturally Flavored Diet Soda. Six 16.9-oz. bottles sell for $1.99 and are packaged in sleek beige and white.
Target’s Market Pantry Sugar Free Drink Mix, packaged to blend in next to Crystal Light, comes in Iced Tea, Raspberry Iced Tea, Lemonade and Raspberry Lemonade flavors, and is available in both canisters and convenient on-the-go sticks designed for use in water bottles.
Many available mixes, such as Meijer’s Free and Light, are simply low in calories. But Meijer, Grand Rapids, MI, also offers another line of mixes that touts nutritional benefits. These vitamin-enhanced drink mixes come in nine flavors and are marketed in three categories: Sport, Fitness, and Energy. Walmart also offers vitamin enhanced water mixes in their Great Value line in on-the-go packages.
Another calorie cutting strategy is to replace granulated sugar with sweeteners. The mainstream grocers, Kroger, Meijer and Walmart all have privately branded sweeteners available at enormous savings. At Kroger, for example, three separate sweeteners are packaged to blend in seamlessly alongside Splenda, Equal and Sweet and Low. Apriva, Kroger’s Splenda substitute, sold in 200-count boxes on sale for $5.99 alongside 200 packets of Splenda for $9.19. By comparison, 250 packets of Meijer’s Sugar Substitute was $2.69, alongside the same quantity of Sweet and Low for $4.79.
In recent years much has been made of the role milk may play in trimming one’s waist. Whether it’s 2%, 1% or fat free, private label milks are widely available. Giant Eagle and Target’s Market Pantry sell a gallon of milk for under $2.00. Whole Foods’ 365 line offers all varieties, and Kroger, Meijer and Wal-Mart even offer their own store brand of soymilk.
Yogurt is another popular offering in the lite category. A relatively inexpensive snack, 6-oz. yogurt cups ranged in price from just 37 cents for Aldi’s Fit & Active non-fat yogurt to 60 cents for Giant Eagle’s store brand. Aldi also offers a convenient four-pack of yogurt smoothies for $2.69. And for truly portable yogurt, the Fit and Active line also includes strawberry and vanilla yogurt-covered raisins at $1.49 for an 8-oz. bag.
In all cases, yogurt was considerably less expensive than the national brands. For example, 6-oz. cups of Kroger’s lite yogurt were 41 cents next to Weight Watcher’s yogurt for 99 cents. Some noteworthy offerings were Aldi’s Fit & Active yogurt smoothies, and Kroger’s Carb Master Yogurt, boasting only 80 calories and 3 carbs per cup. Target’s Archer Farms line offered interesting low-fat flavors such as Cherry Pomegranate and Honey Almond, while Trader Joe’s offered soy yogurt and “European Style Mocha Yogurt” for 99 cents.
While cutting calories and sugar may do the trick for some, many Americans need to go a step further to cut cholesterol, and that means making changes to their egg and butter intake. For those watching their cholesterol, private label egg substitutes are available at considerable savings. At Kroger, for example, 16-oz. cartons of Kroger’s Break Free 100% Liquid Egg Whites come in three flavors and sell for just $2.09. Both fat-free and cholesterol-free, this private label product bears the American Heart Association Logo and costs $1.40 less than Egg Beaters. Trader Joe’s sells 16 oz. of cage-free egg whites for $2.99, and Giant Eagle’s “EggCeptionals” are just $2.59 compared to original Egg Beaters on sale for 2 for $6.00.
Last but not least, those who simply can’t give up the “real thing” when it comes to snacks, can find solace in pre-packed portion-controlled pouches. Enter Target, Trader Joe’s and Wal-Mart to the rescue. Wal-Mart’s Great Value 110 calorie cookie packs make it possible to enjoy mini (and they are very mini) chocolate striped shortbread cookies for $2.22, while Target offers 100 calorie packs of chocolate wafers for $1.84 alongside the Oreo variety for $2.04.
At Trader Joe’s its their popular low fat vanilla, chocolate and ginger “Cat Cookies for People” in 16-oz. tubs for $2.49 in addition to their own brand of the 100 calorie pack available in chocolate graham and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Aldi’s Fit & Active line offers similar snack packs for just $1.99.
Even chocolate lovers can find calorie-counting comfort at Trader Joe’s. In their private line of candy, TJ’s packaging boasts 100 calorie 70% dark chocolate bars are “perfectly portioned to satisfy your calorie controlled chocolate cravings.” And, these sweet treats are packed with as many flavanol antioxidants as a 1/2 cup of berries.
Chocolate lovers can also take solace in Kroger’s Devil’s Food Royale Cookies. Packaged to look like Snackwells’ variety, these low-fat private brand treats have only one half gram of fat per serving.
So whether consumers are trying to cut calories, substitute sugars, or control portions, private labels provide a wide variety of products to meet a range of weight loss plans.
