As a vegetarian and organic food advocate, I'm always on the lookout for new brands to try. While I certainly agree that the best meals are those that are homemade, sometimes I'm just not up to the task of cutting and chopping (due to my disability). Therefore, it's nice to be able to open a can or pop a frozen dinner into the oven or microwave.
There are several companies that specialize in organic and/or natural foods that represent my favorite brands. I drink gallons of Eden Foods Soy Milk (EdenSoy Extra Vanilla). I almost exclusively use Muir Glen Organic's tomatoes in the many soups I make. When it comes to salsa, no other brand than Emerald Valley Kitchen Organic Foods will do.
And when I speak of canned soups or frozen dinners, I can think of no better company than Amy's Kitchen. This latter company markets a host of nutritious AND delicious foods.
With this in mind, I decided to try the new Organics brand being sold at my local Safeway. Since it's the brand of the supermarket chain itself, I was a bit wary. Big mainstream corporations don't have a great track record when trying to imitate the work of innovative artisans.
For my culinary experiment, I purchased a package of Organic Black Bean Enchiladas for a retail price of $2.99 -- a savings over the retail price of Amy's Black Bean Enchiladas which ranges from $3.69 - $4.00 here in Aberdeen.
The nutritional information provided on the box looked promising: 12 grams/fat (but no saturated or trans fat); 42 grams/carbohydrates; 23 grams/protein; 6 grams/fiber; and 0 grams/cholesterol.
My first bite was zesty. The enchiladas were encased in a hot sauce of tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. However, the more bites I took, the more I didn't like it. The tortillas were grainy, the tofu was dry and the vegetables were hard. My wife agreed with this assessment. We both came to realize that the hot sauce was so spicy simply to coverup for the fact that the overall meal wasn't that palatable. In other words, the purpose of the sauce was to mask the blandness of the product.
From my standpoint, the problem is that capitalism and natural foods aren't a good mix. The big food conglomerates tend to want to cut as many corners as possible and to cut down on costs to maximize profits. Consequently, the use of inferior ingredients and mass production produces an inferior product.
Most, if not all, of the organic food companies highlighted above use the finest ingredients and prepare their foods in small batches. Both of these variables increase production costs, but a better product is produced.
Needless to say, I don't think I'll be buying any more foods of the Organics label. I'll stick with Amy's. Yes, they do cost more, but, as Patrick Henry might have said, Give me flavorful quality or Give me Death!
There are several companies that specialize in organic and/or natural foods that represent my favorite brands. I drink gallons of Eden Foods Soy Milk (EdenSoy Extra Vanilla). I almost exclusively use Muir Glen Organic's tomatoes in the many soups I make. When it comes to salsa, no other brand than Emerald Valley Kitchen Organic Foods will do.
And when I speak of canned soups or frozen dinners, I can think of no better company than Amy's Kitchen. This latter company markets a host of nutritious AND delicious foods.
With this in mind, I decided to try the new Organics brand being sold at my local Safeway. Since it's the brand of the supermarket chain itself, I was a bit wary. Big mainstream corporations don't have a great track record when trying to imitate the work of innovative artisans.
For my culinary experiment, I purchased a package of Organic Black Bean Enchiladas for a retail price of $2.99 -- a savings over the retail price of Amy's Black Bean Enchiladas which ranges from $3.69 - $4.00 here in Aberdeen.
The nutritional information provided on the box looked promising: 12 grams/fat (but no saturated or trans fat); 42 grams/carbohydrates; 23 grams/protein; 6 grams/fiber; and 0 grams/cholesterol.
My first bite was zesty. The enchiladas were encased in a hot sauce of tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. However, the more bites I took, the more I didn't like it. The tortillas were grainy, the tofu was dry and the vegetables were hard. My wife agreed with this assessment. We both came to realize that the hot sauce was so spicy simply to coverup for the fact that the overall meal wasn't that palatable. In other words, the purpose of the sauce was to mask the blandness of the product.
From my standpoint, the problem is that capitalism and natural foods aren't a good mix. The big food conglomerates tend to want to cut as many corners as possible and to cut down on costs to maximize profits. Consequently, the use of inferior ingredients and mass production produces an inferior product.
Most, if not all, of the organic food companies highlighted above use the finest ingredients and prepare their foods in small batches. Both of these variables increase production costs, but a better product is produced.
Needless to say, I don't think I'll be buying any more foods of the Organics label. I'll stick with Amy's. Yes, they do cost more, but, as Patrick Henry might have said, Give me flavorful quality or Give me Death!
Yeah, I like Amy's, and it's an easy brand to find even in the regular stores these days. Muir Glen has done a great job of pushing into the big stores, too.
ReplyDeleteI was pleased to see Dole getting into the organic market with organic bananas - they were much better quality than the regular bananas and tasted so much better. None of that off taste that the regular bananas sometimes get.
But we do have to be careful as the big players get into this area. Like your experience, they sometimes just aren't up to the great standards of the smaller companies.
The other thing you often discover with these type of products is firstly how much sugar they add and secondly, how much they also bulk out the product with things like dried milk powder.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as someone who has to avoid both sugar and cows milk for health reasons, believe me I have become very aware of this. Would you believe that there are some brands of sausage roll that have sugar in them (and I apologise for offending all you vegetarians out there - I like meat, so sue me)? I mean, why - a sausage roll does not require sugar! At all! In any way!!
If a product says it's low in fat, it's usually high in sugar; no artificial addititives/preservatives = high in sugar. I have become very, possibly creepily so, familiar with the small print on the back of packaging. Oh, and by the way, any that ends in the letters "ose" is a sugar.
Honestly, it's enough to make you spit nails.
Word. Amy's rocks. It's one of the few organic food makers that has not been bought out by one of the bigs. The food's a little pricy, but they make their own organic tofu to use in their products. Most soy products contain a lot of gmo and chemically-grown soybeans these days.
ReplyDeleteAnd Emerald Valley Kitchen salsa... yes! Substitute brands have languished in my refrigerator. It's the best thing to to keep me going until those first tomatoes of summer can be chopped into homemade salsa.