A toast to pita
There’s a new member of the Nabisco Wheat Thins family: Toasted Pita, little baked-cracker triangles in at least two flavors (original and garlic herb). Mr. Tidbit had to say “at least” because the Wheat Thins website, which lists just a few of its many varieties, only mentions Toasted Pitas on this site’s Twitter feed, which you really can’t ignore.
When Keebler introduced its triangular Town House Pitas almost two years ago, Mr. Tidbit noted that the 9.5-ounce box had the same price as the 16-ounce box of the original Town House crackers, so the pitas cost 68 percent more per ounce. This same phenomenon — what he has decided to call “the triangularity premium” — also is apparent in the Wheat Thins Toasted Pita, although the effect is not as pronounced. At one store, the 9-ounce box of regular Wheat Thins was $2.54 (28 cents an ounce), and the 8-ounce bag of new Wheat Thins Toasted Pitas was $2.89 (36 cents an ounce — 29 percent more).
For your edification, and because Mr. Tidbit, as usual, sidetracked himself searching for the Toasted Pitas, here’s how many kinds of Wheat Thins he found: regular Wheat Thins (15 flavors); Popped (3), Flatbread (2), Toasted Chips (4), Crunch Stix (2), Fiber Selects (1), plus the two Toasted Pitas, for a grand total of 29.
Salt and caramel
Two more salt-and-caramel items just caught Mr. Tidbit’s eye: the Salted Caramel flavor of the new line of Sweet & Salty pretzel pieces from Snyder’s of Hanover, and the Salted Caramel Chocolate flavor of Kellogg’s new Special K Snack Bars.
Those are the last new salted caramel products Mr. Tidbit will mention. Except, when it happens, he will certainly note the appearance of caramel-flavored sea salt.
But a quick review of Mr. Tidbit’s rant about the Special K brand is in order: Over the years, as more and more Special K products have appeared, that name has meant less and less about nutrition. A serving of the original cereal has 35 percent or more of the daily value of nine vitamins and minerals (including 100 percent for three of the vitamins), and 10 and 15 percent of the daily value of two others.
One of the new Special K Snack Bars has 2 percent of the daily value of one mineral.
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