Like the yogurt tablets that I reviewed previously (which I liked, but a commenter amusingly likened to something you'd be given at a dentist's office), these candies are touted as something which are healthy for you. Instead of healthy bacterial cultures and Calcium, they are going to fill with Vitamin C. So, if you have a cold, these are the pony you make your bet on. If you have a stomachache, go for the yogurt tablets.
Like the other tablets, these are similar to a sophisticated version of the kid's snacks in the U.S. called SweeTarts. They are pressed powder and mainly composed of sugar. The first ingredient is sugar followed by grape sugar then lemon juice. These tablets smell a lot like the type of lemon juice that people who rarely cook buy in green glass bottles and keep in the refrigerator for eons. That is, like stale lemon juice.
These are rather grittier and less smooth than their yogurt counterparts. If you suck on one, it starts to degrade more rapidly and fall apart more rapidly. The lemon flavor is very tart and pleasant though it has a bit of a strange aftertaste (it's that stale lemon thing whispering back at me). While it's in your mouth though, it's good. I'd just recommend having a drink handy to wash out that aftertaste.
These are quite nice. I could see buying them again if I was in the mood for lemon or felt under the weather. The lemon bite is nice. They're not too sweet and the texture is good for this type of sweet. I'm not over the moon about them, but I do like them well enough. Like the yogurt tablets, they're a good thing to just buy and toss aside until you have a craving or desire. They'll keep well and for a long time.
Incidentally, this product and the yogurt version have one of those annoying nutritional information inconsistencies that drive me crazy in Japan. For the yogurt tablets, information is given for the entire box but for these tablets, information is given for a third of the box. I think they do this because the entire Calcium level (300 mg) is only impressive if you eat the whole box of yogurt tablets, but you get 333 mg of Vitamin C from eating only 6 of the 18 tablets in the box. It's clearly done differently to present the most positive nutritional profile, but it does obfuscate the calorie information. These are 6 calories each.
It says on the box for these that it is recommended that you eat 6 a day, so I guess that is why the nutritional information is like that, but that drives me mad too!
ReplyDeleteAlthough the thing that annoys me most is when it has the nutritional information for say 100 grams, but it doesn't seem to say how many grams are actually in the bag anywhere! Grrr.
Setting up an arbitrary serving size in order to present the product in the best light really irritates me. Why is the serving size for this 6 but for the other tablets an entire box?
ReplyDeleteAnd it also drives me bonkers when the serving size is 100 grams for something which no one would each 100 grams of. For instance, if you buy a bag of individually wrapped sembei (which is often the case), it tells you the information per 100 grams, but not per cracker! Who is going to eat 100 grams (3.5 oz.) of rice crackers? That'd be a lot of them considering how light they are!
Thanks for commenting! I'm glad someone else noticed this trend and also finds it annoying!