The New South Beach Lower Carb? Products

Kraft paid South Beach a lot of money to use the South Beach name to brand products. I haven't seen all of these products in my local stores, but, fear not, an intrepid Low Carb Freedom reader, David, gives us a great report:

Many of the new South Beach products have hit my local Kroger in metro Detroit.  I am very disappointed in the offered products as they are not very low carb. 

• They have two new Kraft, not Post, branded cereals -- a nut crunch with around 18 net carbs and a cinnamon spoon sized shredded wheat at 40 net carbs.


• They have meal replacement bars sporting 17 grams of maltitol. 


• They have brought back the Carbwell Cereal Bars relabeled as Kraft South Beach Diet bars with Peanut butter and Cinnamon Raisin (yeah!!!) returning an the addition of Maple Nut and Chocolate. Cranberry is gone.  The bars have same 9 net carb count.   


• The boxes I saw were all of the above with a list of other products which I did not see. They included personal size pizzas, frozen dinners and a tortilla like sandwich kit. I am not sure of the carb count on these products.  All the South Beach Diet products carry the Kraft logo.


• Today I also found 3 varieties of new Lean Pockets Ultra:  0 trans fats, 6 g fat, and 12 net carbs --includes Supreme Pizza, Ham and Cheese, Mozzarella, and Meatball.  I only tried the Meatball which was quite good.  They all have a soft baked whole grain crust.

Hope this helps.  I am always in search of new low carb products.  It's tough in Detroit.  Both of my local low carb stores have gone out of business so it is back to online low carb shopping.

David

Thanks, David, for letting us know what is going on. I'll be on the lookout for these products in my area as well. If anyone has tried these, please let us know what you think in the comments section!

And, I think David is pointing out a fundamental flaw in the food manufacturer's thinking: Low carb dieters will NOT buy goods with a lot of carbs, even if those carbs are whole wheat. Low carb dieters know that a carb is a carb, and eating too many of them makes them hungry! This leaves a huge opening for companies that stick to a formula that really is low carb and good for you.

Comments

[Susan in VBeach]

The Post Carb Well bars are better than the South Beach bars for one key reason - they have less milk product in the bar. The Post Carb Well bar was the only bar I could use in which the nonfat milk content was low enough not to trigger an immune system problem. The South Beach bars have too much milk or milk derivatives for me to tolerate. So, no more purchases for me.

And, frankly, buying the "South Beach" name was a waste of money. A good thing sells itself - period!

[ann]

27 June 2005 - Nothing like a 'bait & switch' program with $1.00 off coupons redeemable until 8/31/2005 to reel consumers into purchasing 'Post Carbwell cereal bars' and then switching to a 2nd rate product as a replacement! Low Carbs are low carbs. How can we prove to you that 18 carbs is not the same as 9 carbs?
And...Cranberry is gone! Hmmm, what happened? Did you find out that people actually liked AND purchased them?

[Amy]

Hello everyone, my name is Amy and I am a dietitian and I often cook food inline with the South Beach Diet. I recently started a recipe blog that contains only foods that are allowed and encouraged on the South Beach diet. This way you'll be able to lose weight without getting bored of the same salad every night!

The website can be found at http://southbeachrecipe.info

Have a nice day,
Amy

[mary bolt]

I think the cinnamon raisin and the maple nut bars are fantastic. I am happy to see that they are 9 carbs, I was having a hard time figuring out the net. I fond the flavor is much better than the atkins vars