Orihiro "Standing" Jelly

The latest in my continuing marathon of reviews of my ZenPop box is a "health" drink/snack from Orihiro. Orihiro specializes in food targeted toward women who are calorie-conscious and up on all the latest food fads that are supposed to keep you younger looking and in the pink. These are the women that keep the price of Manuka honey in the stratosphere because someone told them it'll cure every illness known to man and they believe much in the same way Fox Mulder believes in aliens - they want to believe.

People think wasabi KitKats are part of the "weird" Japan food culture. They've got nothing on this squeeze pouch of mutant gelatin snack. I have to say this one caught me by surprise in multiple respects. The first surprise was when I sqeezed the tube to see what popped out and some juice squirted me in the face. This is less a tube of jelly as it is thick gelatin globs floating in some sort of juice.

You have to make sure it is in your mouth when you squeeze it. It'll be a textural Russian roulette which one you get. My main problem was that I wanted to see what it looked like and get a picture for this blog. My loss is your gain since you won't have to actually have the bottle disgorge anything onto your body in order to know what is inside before you suckle on it.

In terms of how this tastes, the peach flavor is actually very pleasant and tastes a lot like nectar drinks. The ingredients list includes real peach juice. The main problem is that it is insanely sweet and you can taste the artificial sweetener all too well. It's made with both Sucralose and acesulfame K. Honestly, for something that is sold by a company with "health" in their URL, this is not especially healthy. It's a chemical cocktail to satisfy your sweet tooth with a low calorie load, but it's even sweeter than conventional sugar-free gelatin.

I wanted to like this, but it was just too fake-tasting for me, and I'm someone who uses Splenda everyday in hot beverages so it's not a sensitivity to sweeteners. I think they really just needed to dial back on the overall sweetness level and this could have been a nice way to satisfy a craving.

Random Picture #196

One of the problems I had before leaving Japan was that there were all sorts of nifty things which I wanted to buy and bring back with me as souvenirs, but I knew I couldn't fit them all in our bags. I also knew that, cute as some of them were, they didn't have much in the way of utility. I could justify buying a yukata, but not a plastic figure. 

It seems that I did not necessarily leave that temptation behind. The above picture is of plastic bento boxes with shelf-stable gelatin ("jelly", as it is called in Japan) desserts inside of them. The price is a bargain considering that the cheapest bento box that you can buy is $1.50 (at Daiso Japan) and is not as cute as these. You get gelatin and a keepsake. Tempted as I was to pick up one of these for posterity, I just could not think of a good use for the box so I reluctantly passed. If I could have found a pragmatic reason, one of those cat face boxes would be in my possession right now.

Zero Calorie Black Sugar Kinako Warabi Mochi

 I lived on a big island (that'd be Japan for those who are incredibly dim or haven't been reading this blog for awhile) for 23 years and am currently taking my ease on a much, much smaller island and will be here for the next 6 weeks or so. These two (groups of) islands have very little in common and I'm dealing with some heavy duty reverse culture shock right now. The only thing they seem to have in common are higher prices than mainland America. In Japan, prices are higher because, well, it's Japan. The island I'm on now has higher prices because all goods must be brought in by ferry and there's an added cost.

One of the things that people do three times a week here is offer a chance to give away or take free items that are no longer of use. There are huge stacks of second-hand clothes, a few very clean-looking toilets, dishes, etc. I guess that, in a place on which there are few shops and it's hard to bring in new things, people are attentive to making the most of what crosses the water and makes it onto this particular island.

It strikes me that this "take it or leave it" approach to used goods would never be popular back in Japan, especially not in Tokyo. One reason for this is that Japanese folks tend to be squeamish about second-hand stuff. I often asked students if they would take something for nothing in various circumstances and they overwhelmingly said "no". For instance, I asked if they'd pick up a gorgeous pair of boots in the right size that were left at the side of the street with a sign that said "free". Even if I said they were guaranteed clean, they'd say they wouldn't take them. I also used to do a lesson in which people would answer a question about whether or not they'd like to win the lottery and get a lot of money and they also say "no" because money had no meaning if they didn't work for it.

I don't know if people were being honest with themselves about not taking something for nothing, but the answer was given often enough for me to believe there is a strong cultural underpinning which says that it's always best to pay for what you get in sweat or cash. Certainly, the relative dearth of zero calorie foods in Japan often made me think that people felt that every ounce of pleasure had to be balanced with an ounce of potential body fat. Now that I'm back in the U.S., I can see all too well that the desire to get something (sweet food) and pay nothing (calorie-free) is much more strongly reflected in the options available in stores.

Shortly before I left Japan, I found this gelatin at a Lawson convenience store (228 yen/$2.77) and jumped on it for two reasons. First of all, I am American and would prefer not to pay for my pleasure, at least not in increased fat cells. Certainly, I paid a fair bit in cash for a single serving (about a cup)of calorie-free gelatin dessert. Warabi mochi, incidentally, is a traditional Japanese dessert which consists of gelatin-like soft blobs with little flavor themselves that are served with toasted soybean flour (kinako) and molasses honey (brown/black sugar syrup). The real deal is addictively delicious and chock full of sugar. The chance to have my warabi mochi without the sugar was too good to pass up.

Of course, the Japanese are right about having to pay for things in order to have them be worthwhile. There was no way a zero calorie gelatin dessert was going to live up to the real deal, but hope does spring eternal. There were two major problems with this and the first was that the texture was nowhere near the gentle, soft blobs of delight of warabi mochi. It was like weird stretchy gelatin dessert. Imagine trying to spoon some Jell-O to your mouth and having it fight by by resisting. The second problem was that this was super sweet with an unpleasantly intense brown sugar flavor. To me, it seemed like eating brown sugar out of the bag with a spoon. The nutty soy notes of kinako were entirely absent, despite the name of the product.

This wasn't exactly the most vile thing I've ever eaten, but it wasn't great. I've actually consumed plenty of Japanese zero calorie gelatin desserts and they were all pretty similar to what I can get in America save the fact that many had nata de coco in them (which I loved). This was different and therefore a more interesting experience, but not necessarily a better one. 

Random Picture #72

Click for a bigger picture. Note that many of these are yogurt and fruit combos, though all of them have so much sugar in them that they can hardly be considered healthy for such inclusions.

Displays of gelatin (what is called "jelly") in Japan are being beefed up because of the hotter than hell summer and weaker than a new-born kitten air conditioning. At first, I thought this might be all about fooling people into thinking tossing one of these tubs in the refrigerator and gulping down a slithery bit of gelatin coolness would make them forget that they'd sweated an embarrassing huge web spot on their shirts, but I'm starting to believe otherwise. The shops themselves aren't exactly showering us with cool relief which means that their chocolate stores have a good chance of melting in 82 degree F./28 degree C. settings. It's far safer to stock jellies than to stock other sorts of sweets in the summer.

Tarami White Jelly

I keep talking about summer in my reviews, but with people melting onto the pavement and sweating in the intense humidity of the rainy season, and the various food companies pandering to all of us, how can I ignore the fact that the heat drives snack product introductions. That means less chocolate, more lighter, fruitier options, and especially more things that go down smooth and easy from the refrigerator case. That leads me to "jellies" (or, as we call them in the U.S., gelatin). There has been an explosion in the number of individually packaged gelatin options and most of them are pretty mundane fruit options. This "white jelly" caught my eye, because I don't know what "white" tastes like. That phrase could really be taken the wrong way...

I found this for 178 yen ($2.28) at Family Mart for 290 grams (10 oz.). That's on the expensive side, but it is a pretty large portion size. This is zero calorie jelly and I'm guessing the large amount is to fill a belly that wants to be full without any risk of weight gain. There are more and more of these products in Japan all of the time as the quest for an alien body image has spread here from the West to the East.

The company that makes this, Tarami, specializes in making a wide variety of gelatin desserts. Their main business is doing the kind with sugar based on fruit and real fruit flavors. Their zero calorie lines are split into two sizes with the smaller ones being fruit flavors and the bigger ones adding more esoteric varieties like cola and "white" to the line up. Their web site shows farms and lots of orange trees, but somehow I doubt their 400 or so employees are working the farms to fortify their gelatin desserts.

As for what "white" tastes like? It tastes like a sweet, slightly fruity Asian fruit cocktail and is somewhat yogurt-like. It's both a little tart and sour, but the flavor is on the mild side with no overwhelming sweetness. Since I'm accustomed to artificial sweeteners, this didn't bother me. In fact, I'm nearly immune to the chemical cocktails (Acesulfame K, Sucralose, Aspartame) that are used to formulate diet foods.

The part where this shines is in the texture. It's a cool, soft and slick jelly with chewy bits of nata de coco in the bottom. The textural variation that comes from the nata de coco is quite welcome and lends the illusion that you're eating something with a bit of substance. I should note that many Japanese gelatins like this include blocks of konnyaku jelly or nata de coco.

I liked this just fine, but I wasn't mad about it. The truth is that I can make more flavorful zero calorie jelly myself using plain gelatin, packets of artificial sweetener and whatever flavoring agent I want (coffee, tea, lemon, lime, etc.). That doesn't mean I couldn't see myself buying this again and it was perfectly pleasant. However, I'd only purchase it under the most unique circumstances because the size is bigger than I need and the price higher than I'd prefer to pay. Chances are, I'll never sample it again.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Kan-etsu Mikan Gelatin Dessert

When I first searched for this company as part of my research, I came across a company with exactly the same name and a Japanese domain name which did construction. For a moment, I wondered if this was some mutant food product created from industrial chemicals that usually go into building houses. Perhaps the construction company wanted to diversify their business model by branching out into calorie-free desserts. Fortunately, I came across the food making Kan-etsu, which has a non-Japanese domain name (.com, not .co.jp)

I found this at Peacock supermarket while I was searching for cheese for my husband's sandwiches for lunch. I had been driven to Japanese cheese because it seems all or most of the Costcos in Japan have been shut down since the quake. More than a month after the quake, the Tamasakai branch that we usually go to was barred and denying us access to the Colby Jack cheese and cheap Starbucks espresso beans that we so desperately need. In desperation, I bought 8 small (18 gram/.63 oz.) plastic-wrapped slices for a whopping 278 yen ($3.42), and this 100-gram pack of gelatin for a mere 98 yen ($1.21). There were 4 flavors on offer - coffee, grape, mikan (Japanese tangerine), and grapefruit. The retail price is 148 yen ($1.82), so this was a "bargain".

The first bite has a nice hit of orange (mikan) flavor followed by unpleasant bitterness. I assume this is related to the aspartame and Sucralose that sweetens it. After two or three bites, the bitterness goes away and the sweetness amplifies. Unfortunately, the orange flavor also mellows with future bites. The gelatin, which is made with Japanese agar agar rather than animal products, is shelf stable (doesn't require refrigeration), but quite soft at any temperature.

This is a fairly large serving of gelatin, and though it claims it is zero calories, it's actually 5 calories for the whole 100 grams (3.5 oz.). That probably comes form the orange flavoring which is from fruit juice concentrate. It also has added antioxidants. The whole point of this is to fill a craving for dessert or to fill a grumbling belly when you don't want to eat something more fattening. To that end, it does work, though I believe the sugar-free Jell-O gelatin, which I haven't had for about 4 years but can still recall, tastes a bit better. Both this gelatin and Jell-O brand (sugar-free) have an aftertaste from the artificial sweeteners, but the latter has a more citric acid zest to it which makes it taste more like orange.

If you're trying to reduce your calories, and desperate to quiet a grumbling belly, this will do you. I wouldn't expect too much from it though and I don't think I'd buy it again. There are better calorie-free gelatin/jelly options out there that will fill the bill as well or better.

Morinaga Rare Cheese Dessert

There are two words that should serve as red flags to anyone seeking a snack treat. One of those words is "drink". If you find something which is called "orange drink" or "grape drink", you know that qualitatively you're going to be getting something which is closer to a lollipop in flavor and nutrition than the fruit the drink is based on. The other word is "dessert".

You'd think I would have seen this red flag, but I must have been colorblind and seen green instead when I picked up this box of "rare cheese dessert" at Yutakaraya for 189 yen ($2.22). I think that I was paying more attention to the 79 calories per serving rather than the product name. I was thinking "low-calorie cheesecake," rather than cheesecake-like substance. Silly, silly flower girl. Incidentally, "rare cheese" is what the Japanese use to describe New-York-style (unbaked) cheesecake.

Each tub contains what can best be described as cream-cheese-flavored gelatin. It's not quite as firm as American Jell-o, but it's also not the least bit creamy. The flavor is right on though. It does have all of the taste of the filling of cheesecake, but there is something which seems very "wrong" about it. Until you eat something with all of the flavor and none of the texture of cheesecake, you don't realize how integral the velvety, fatty goodness is to the experience. This tastes good, but ultimately doesn't satisfy. It is like semi-liquid sweetened cream cheese.

I don't mean to regard this product unfairly by giving it an "indifferent" rating. Morinaga did a very good job of approximating the flavor of cheesecake filling without the fat, calories, and crust. This was likely no small feat. However, I'm not sure the world really needs cream cheese gelatin, and I'm certain I won't buy this again.