Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Cheddar Cheese Squares Crackers
Oh, Trader Joe’s. The highs can be so high (those lovely Popped Potato Chips), but the lows can be so, so low.
These look like Cheez-its, which are my household’s favored brand of cheese cracker. I should have realized, it’s better to go with something totally new than with a copy of something you already like. The odds are pretty good that if you think something is perfect, any small difference is going to seem like a step down from perfection.
Oh, and it was not a small difference.
These crackers don’t taste like cheese. They taste, bizarrely, like milk. I immediately looked at the ingredients, and the explanation is clear: “Natural flavor (milk).”
Actual milk could never impart such a strong milky taste and still result in a cracker-textured cracker. It would have to be a chemical from a bottle. And don’t let the “natural” fool you – “natural flavors” are still industrial products, made in a factory; the difference from “artificial” is just based on what ingredients they started out with.
I’ve become very sensitive to things made with “flavor” instead of using actual food ingredients to provide flavor. I can often tell before reading the ingredients – I taste it, think, eehhh, and then when I read the label I realize what the problem is.
I actually do like some factory flavorings, but I find that they tend to be the ones that are so distant from the name that they are a new and original thing. That nice purple grape flavor that’s in soda and my chewable vitamins doesn’t take anything like the fruit, but I love it. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for this “natural flavor (milk).”
I got a second opinion on these from the Lord and Master. He can eat a whole box of Cheez-its in one sitting. Also, normally when I make a fuss about the way something tastes, he says “there’s nothing wrong, lady” and snarfs the rest of it up.
He rejected these immediately. He said they weren’t worth the calories, which are words that I have never previously heard pass his lips.
He also reminded me that you can return stuff to TJ’s just because you don’t like it. This is the first time we’ve ever contemplated taking advantage of this – it is a nice offer, but, like, sort of crazy, you know? I mean, that’s just life, sometimes you don’t care for things that other people must think are good or they wouldn’t sell. I don’t expect my money back in that situation.
But we’re still looking at the open box, and we kept the receipt. We’re so appalled by these that we just might do it.
ashley on November 14th, 2008
I found the taste to be pretty bad also. One night, not wanting the box to go to waste, I ate a couple handfuls. I was up sick the ENTIRE night. I will never ever eat these things again!