Newman's Own Organics, Take Two

Last month I wrote part one of my review of Newman's Own Organic snacks, and after much eating and sharing of the products, here is part two.

Newman's Own Organics are about "great tasting food that happens to be organic", products we loved as kids, but better. Everything they use in their line is organic, including Palm Fruit Oil, which has no trans fats, is not hydrogenated, and is used in Europe as an alternative to partially hydrogenated oils. If you aren't familiar with hydrogenated oils, they are added to processed foods to prolong their shelf life. They cause a myriad of problems to health, and have been called the "silent killer" because of the damage it does to the body over time.

Let's start with their dried fruits, Apricots, Prunes, Berry Blend, and Cranberry. Right off the bat I noticed that the apricots had a color that was darker than normal, as did the cranberries. We don't usually buy prunes (hoping to put that off for a few more years), but they were plump, shiny, and had almost a creamy taste. Eliza took off with the bag, and called them "big raisins." My favorite of the four was the berry blend, which includes blueberries, cranberries, raisins and cherries. I ended up picking out all of the cherries and blueberries, they had such a great pop of flavor.

We had three last bags of cookies, Chocolate ABC's, Fig Newmans, and Mint Newman O's. The ABC's were a graham type cookie, perfect for a snack when Luke got home from school. You could tell the sugar flavor was natural, I always think of apple juice when I eat organic cookies, and this was similar. It was the same with the Fig Newman's. I'm a sucker for anything chocolate mint, so I saved the mint O's for last, and they could have used just a bit more mint, but that's just me.

When we tackled the pretzels, (Rounds, Minis and Thins) I didn't think there was going to be much of a difference between normal pretzels and the Newman's. But there was. The best way to describe it is a heartier flavor, and for the heck of it, I compared the Newman's ingredients to another brand of pretzels. The N's list organic unbleached wheat and rye flour, brown rice syrup, sunflower oil, malt, yeast and sodium bicarbonate. The other non-organic brand lists wheat flour, vital wheat gluten, salt, corn syrup, vegetable oil (also may contain corn, canola, cottonseed, soybean), sodium bicarbonate and yeast. Hmmmmmmm. That explains it.

I saved the best for last, the signature series chocolate bars. Chocolate bars!! They come in milk, mocha milk, orange, dark, super dark, and dark espresso. Now, I'm all about the antioxidant power of dark chocolate, and Newman's delivered, the bars are made from cocoa beans grown on Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms.

All of the bars had a deep, rich color, with a great snap when you broke it apart. Aside from the orange (I'm just not a fan of fruit flavored chocolate), once a bar was open it was very hard to stay away. The mocha milk was my favorite, it was like a coffee milkshake, and my guinea pig Eliza is still walking around asking for "mokamilk."

As I said in part one, I'm happy with the Newman's Own Organics, you can tell the ingredients are high quality, with a pure, clean taste. And this review was my own, I was not compensated in any way for my thoughts. And they are good thoughts.