The Kitchen

As many of our loyal customers know, some of the most popular flavors of our nested fettucine - including Whole Wheat, Spinach, and Garlic Parsley - have been out of stock for a long time. This was caused by our switching the packaging to boxes, in order to protect the pasta better during transit, a process which has taken longer than anticipated. While we still don't we regret the overall decision, we do regret that it's taken so long to choose a box size which would work, and to finish the artwork for that box, and for that I do apologize.

After several false starts and missteps, I'm pleased to report that those two crucial and difficult design stops have been completed. You can see a preview of the new box art here.

While the art shown says it is for Garlic Parsley, in the final box that space will be left blank and a sticker containing the product flavor, ingredient list, and UPC will go in its place. We just put down the Garlic Parsley info as a placeholder. This will help us save money on the boxes, so we can keep our costs and your prices down. Although the boxes are more expensive than bags, we don't plan to raising your price for the final product, and we think you'll be very happy with the condition the pasta will arrive in at your door in the future.

Here's a sneak peek - stay tuned ...

Here's a repost of a classic post from back in 2007. One of the commenters in that thread suggesting bumping it, so here you go - enjoy!:

Today, O loyal readers, I am going to reveal to you an arcane gustatory art. It is the very Philosopher’s Stone of nutrition, a means of transmuting base junk food into healthy and low-calorie foods which still tastes delicious. Prepare yourselves! For I shall now demonstrate for you the ancient mystery - BEHOLD!!!

Figure 1!
(An ordinary SNICKERS bar. Drumroll, please.)


Figure 2!
(The excitement mounts! Remember to breathe!)


Figure 3
(SPLASH!!! Ta-da! Le grande finale!)

Got that? We took an ordinary SNICKERS bar (Figure 1), unwrapped it (Figure 2) … and dropped it in a glass of water (Figure 3). In so doing, we converted a high-calorie food with 280 calories per serving into a low-calorie food with a mere 110 calories per serving¹! WOW!

Right?

Uh, no. Of course not. Adding more water to a food technically lowers the caloric density of the final product. And since the serving size remains the same for every kind of food no matter how much water you throw in there, the calories may seem to get lower as well. But the fact of the matter is, you’re not eating any healthier. You’re just dunking your SNICKERS in the water.

Here’s a practical example of a company using the water-logged SNICKERS approach to con you: SmartOnes. Let’s take for example their brownie dessert. At 200 calories for a hefty 3.2 oz (89g) serving, you may think you’re getting quite the nutritive bargain: why, the same amount of a conventional brownie would be a whopping 360 calories²! We're saving hundreds of calories!

Right?

Uh, no. A careful examination of the Nutrition Facts tells a very different story. Those 89 grams of the SmartOnes brownie contains only 45 grams of actual food³. The rest is … water. Yes, the other 44 grams, almost half of the product, is water. And no, this is not “par for the course”. That other, more conventional, brownie that I mentioned before? Only about 10% water.

So the SmartOnes people are playing the waterlogged SNICKERS game. In fact, once you factor the water out, and let the brownies compete on an even playing field, they’re virtually identical. Both weigh in at 200 calories for the same 45 grams of actual food⁴.

I imagine they think they’re pretty smart – and that we’re pretty stupid. This is nothing but junk food passed off as healthy cuisine to busy customers who don't have time to read the label.

The FDA’s serving sizes are too easily gamed by unscrupulous food manufacturers. A far more useful number would be a “calories per gram on a dry weight basis”. You can calculate this number for yourself – and cut through all the lies and deceptions - using this handy technique:

1. Add up the Total Fat, Total Carbohydrates, and Protein numbers


2. Divide the total calories by the number from step 1


3. Eat healthier, by picking a food where this number is smaller.

I guess that’s the real secret I wanted to tell you about in this post. It’s not such a secret, since it’s just a little bit of math, performed on readily available information. Pass it on.

Here’s the math for all you quants out there:

1. 3 oz water + 2 oz SNICKERS = 5 oz. 5 ounces 140 grams in total weight, and since water doesn’t add any calories, the calories are still the same old 280 you got from the SNICKERS. 280 kcal / 140g = 2 kcal/g. Since for the purposes of this example we assume they're suspending the water in the bar (and selling it very, very quickly...), it would keep the same serving size as the conventional candy bar: 2 ounces (56g in the metric or "Communist" system). 56 x 2 = 112, which would be rounded to 110 on the Nutrition Facts panel.

2. These numbers are courtesy of the ever-handy USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, a great resource which you should totally bookmark. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to bookmark individual searches. Just type in the word “brownie” (no quotes), and then select the last one entitled “Fast foods, brownie” (I didn’t want anyone to say it’s not a fair comparison because the SmartOnes product is already prepared, whereas I was suggesting some recipe that would have you slaving away in the kitchen for an hour; not so! This brownie seems to be common in the omnipresent fast food joint, according to the USDA.

3. 4g Total Fat + 36g Total Carbohydrate + 5g Protein = 45g of actual food. While the serving size is 89g. Huh.

4. Change the serving size of the Fast food brownie to 51 grams and tally up the numbers. 9g Total Fat + 33g Total Carbohydrate + 2g Protein = 45 grams. The reported calories for this serving is 207. These numbers are darn close to the SmartOnes (200 calories in 45g).

Furthermore, I suspect that the Fast food brownie numbers are even better than the USDA reported. It appears that the USDA did not test for fiber on this product, or at least did not put it in the entry for some reason. If they had, that fiber would have been deducted from the total calories (if you don’t explicitly single out the fiber, it will just be counted together with the carbohydrates, and receive the same calorie count as sugar, even though it is completely indigestible and calorie free). And I know there’s a lot of fiber, too. These are brownies. The principal flavor of a brownies is cocoa. And cocoa is 1/3 fiber. Take that, Mr. SmartyOnes.

I recently received an e-mail from someone asking how to perform the fiber/carb/calorie calculations once they have the lab analyses that we post on our website.

Before we get into that in detail, I need to discuss the two different ways that you can get the number for your Nutrition Facts panel: ingredient calculation and laboratory analysis.

Ingredient calculation is how the vast majority of prepared foods are calculated. To do this you need three things:

• a list of all the ingredients that are going into your product;
• the relative proportions of each ingredient; and
• the nutrient values of each ingredient

The first two items in the list should be familiar to anyone who has ever done baking or cooking. In other words, it means something like "2 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of salt, etc". The last item is a bit technical, but still not too complicated. For almost every standard ingredient (like flour, sugar, or salt), a scientist at one point performed a lab analysis on it and worked out exactly how much of each nutrient you will find in a given measure (say 100g, or 1 cup, or whatever). The USDA has a free public database with a lot of these values, or you could buy one from various companies who sell it, usually with software to help in the calculations.

Once you have these values it's a simple matter to multiply each nutrient for each ingredient by the relative quantity that ingredient appears at in the recipe, then divide by the serving size. Voila, you have your Nutrition Facts label. (Simple but boring, but that's why we have computers :)

The other route to go is laboratory analysis. In this case the final product is sent to the lab, and nutrient values are determined on that actual final product. This is guaranteed to give you a more precise value, and also addresses the possibility that the ingredient nutrient values might be altered due to the processing the ingredients are subjected to at the food manufacturing facility.

Laboratory analysis is obviously more expensive, but it's better. Initially we sent all our products out for a full lab analysis, but after we found that the usual fat/protein/carb values were in line with ingredient calculations, we began relying on those values for future products. The only thing we keep on testing in each new product is the fiber. This is because we are particularly concerned about how the resistant starch's fiber content stands up to the rigors of the factory. We typically put in an excess of fiber to compensate, then check our work on the lab analysis. Not everyone does this, which is why I would take some of our competitor's numbers with a grain of salt...

Anyway, let's get on to the calculations. For some products, like our pasta, we can actually look at the full fiber/carb/protein/fat spectrum on the lab analysis. The analysis is performed in percentages, so you need to multiply that by the pasta serving size (2 oz, or 56g) to get the numbers you see on the Nutrition Facts panel. Remember that anything above .5 is rounded up, less than .5 is rounded down. Let's do it:

As you can see, we actually did better in the fiber nutrient (21g!) on this run than we had hoped. Once you have the fiber number you can subtract it from the carbs to get your Net Carbs (in this case 42g Carbs - 21g Fiber = 21g Net Carbs). You can also subtract 4 calories for each gram of fiber to get the calories you see on our label.

Now let's move on to the crackers. For the crackers we relied on the ingredient calculation to get the fat, protein, and carb values, and just tested the fiber to make sure we were where we thought we should be. You can double-check the fiber against the value on our Nutrition Facts label to se if it makes sense. The cracker lab analysis shows a value of 38.9% fiber. For a 32g serving, that works out to 12.448g of fiber. That's exactly right for the 12g Fiber we list on our 80-calorie / 32g packs.

Adding up the protein (5g * 4 kcal = 20 kcal), carbs (22g * 4 kcal = 88 kcal), and fat (2g * 9 kcal = 18 kcal) values from the 32g packs you see that we would have 126 kcal if there was no fiber in there. After taking out the 48 kcal (12g * 4 kcal) for the fiber, though, we are left with 78 kcal (rounded up to 80 kcal on the packaging).

We're starting to stock some of our products at a second warehouse in Las Vegas, which should cut down our shipping times to the West Coast significantly. Areas like Southern California will see their transit times drop from 1 week to 1 day! Many other areas out West will also see considerably faster shipping times.

The first items to arrive there are the Cheese flavor crackers from our most recent production, specifically the the 100-Count 50-Calorie packs and the 80-Calorie Cheese flavor packs. Due to a shipping snafu the Nacho and Mixed flavors are not yet avaialble there, but they should be after the next production.

Additionally we're going to soon have some pasta at that location. I don't want to give too much away, but they are going to be new shapes ...

It was recently brought to my attention that the menu's on our site weren't working in IE8. We had tested it in early versions of IE, and in Firefox, and they worked fine, but surprisingly IE8 broke Microsoft's own ASP.NET Menu Control (unless it's in Compatability Mode, but that's basically the same as earlier versions of IE and very kludgy).

Fortunately, I found that Microsoft was aware of the issue and had even issued a patch for it. Unfortunately, our webhosting provider hadn't applied it at the time. I contacted them and we went back and forth for a bit (first they denied the menu's were broken; then they said they were broken, but it was clearly our fault; and finally they patched it, but insisted it was still broken on our site!). After some testing on different computers, it looks to me like it's working just fine. Please let me know if you run into any problems.