Kellogg's All Bran Shortbread (Caramel and Chocolate)

There are entire sections in markets and convenience stores with tiny packages of "healthy" snacks. I usually ignore these sections because they are mainly full of dried out cookie, cracker, and cake items fortified with vitamins, minerals, and artificial flavors. It's not so much the fact that the flavors often taste like esters cooked up in a chemical lab that puts me off as the tiny, tiny portions for a relatively big price.


These cookies are brought to us by Kellogg's, which is well-known in the United States, but not so much in Japan. The Japanese don't go much for breakfast cereals because they want something with greater substance for their morning meal. They have learned what we have not (about cereal) in terms of its longevity in satiating hunger. That is, that you eat it and feel hungry two or three hours later. Most of the Japanese folks I speak with about breakfast have rice or toast with soup of some kind. There are Kellogg's cereals in Japan including variations of Special K and some sugary kid's stuff, but you don't see much compared to American cereal aisles. There are several healthy cookies stocked near the cereal, and the "All Bran" brand has been parked in these sections for quite awhile. Their main selling point is, of course, fiber.

Each package contains two foil packets with three tiny cookies in each. When I say "tiny", I mean it. They are 3 cm. (1.2 in.) by 2.3 cm (.9 in.). The nutrition information says that there are about 150 calories if you eat both packets (30 grams/1 oz.) and they are fortified with 7 vitamins and calcium. There's quite a bit of sugar in these on balance with the fiber. The sugar content for the chocolate version is 14.6 grams compared to 4.3 grams of dietary fiber.


The advertising for these sells them as "moist" cookies. They are crumbly and dry, but infused with enough fat to make them less brittle than you'd expect given their texture. Both varieties have the same texture, but drastically different flavors. The caramel smells strongly of artificial caramel and tastes overwhelmingly of it. The first bite is especially unpleasant due to the strength of the faux caramel. There is coconut in with the caramel, but that isn't enough to salvage the flavor. This was so bad that I couldn't eat more than one tiny cookie.


The chocolate cookie smells pleasantly of cocoa. The chocolate taste is a bit weak for my tastes, but that is saved by the presence of coconut. It's not bad, but does have a strange artificial finishing flavor. It wouldn't really satisfy a cookie craving, but it might do in a pinch for a quick breakfast on the go with some tea or coffee. This one is definitely more palatable than the caramel one.

The main point of these types of foods is that they want to fool you into thinking they're good for you. It's true that they are probably "better" for you than eating, say, an Oreo cookie, but they're probably worse for you than something like a homemade oatmeal cookie because they're full of chemicals and vegetable oil. From a purely sensory based point of view, I can't recommend these, but if you have really bad eating habits and want to eat vitamin enhanced junk food, I could condone the chocolate ones in a pinch.

Chinsukou (ちんすこう) Cookies

a packet of 6 chinsukou cookies (three two-packs)

My husband and I have received this particular brand of cookie twice as souvenir gifts from Japanese folks. The first time, we received a large box of them and this time a somewhat smaller packet. In both cases, the cookies were wrapped inside of their larger packaging in two-packs. We did our best to savor these wonderful cookies and make them last awhile. They are little white sweet blocks of cookie heaven.

a big box of these delectable biscuits

There are a wide variety of confectioners who make these types of biscuits. These ones were made by Nanpudo and can be ordered on their site, though they are generally purchased as a souvenir from Okinawa (as they are a specialty of that area). Several of the makers of chinsukou have ships as part of their logo or the cookie packaging. This is a common icon because the word chinsukou is related to the Yangtze River in China. It's not exactly clear, but there is a relationship between sinking snow and salt and the Yangtze which have something to do with the story behind these cookies. Fortunately, the cookies taste nothing of snow, salt or the Yangtze river.


These cookies is that they are a good example of how some similar food concepts develop independently of one another. These are mainly made of lard, flour, and sugar and are very much like a shortbread cookie you might buy in the U.K. These are a bit more sugary than conventional shortbread and this particular variety also has a wonderful vanilla flavor which is pronounced but not overwhelming. In fact, the taste is likened to vanilla ice cream by the marketers who sell these cookies.

When you sniff the cookies, they smell like fresh Christmas sugar cookies. The smell is very familiar and not at all foreign to those of us who grew up outside of Japan. They are dense, but crumbly. They have coarse bits of sugar in them which add to both the texture and taste. They start off mildly sweet and floury and get a bit sweeter (in a good way) as you nibble away.

As I've mentioned before when writing about snacks sold mainly as souvenirs, there is no calorie information, but I'm guessing these are very evil on that front given the main ingredients. That being said, the cookies are very small and the two-packs encourage portion control.

If you're in Okinawa and are looking for a souvenir to take back home, by all means buy these. I can't imagine anyone would find these anything but a delight unless they had some crazy aversion to nutritionally suspect food. Pick yourself up a box (or two) to have with tea or coffee as well if you have the self-control not to eat yourself sick. They are just that good.