Eating Up the Ritz

The first time I ate a Ritz Crackerfuls cheese and cracker was when I was volunteering at the library and I was starving but didn’t have time to take a break – someone offered me a cracker. A cracker as in ONE cracker?I thought – are you kidding me? But they are literally packaged as individual ginormous cracker and cheese sandwiches. And I have to admit it was heavenly; the holy grail of crackers, all fancy schmancy with little scalloped edges around the crackers (ok – technically it’s crackers since it’s a sandwich) gently enveloped in a cardboard sleeve within it’s wrapper.

But I figure anything that tastes this good must be bad for me so I thought I’d check the labels. I found FOUR kinds of crackers when I hit the grocery store shelves: Four Cheese, 2 kinds of Cheddar & Bacon (OMG hold me back) and Multi-Grain Garlic Herb (a ray of hope?).

Ritz Promises

The Wheat Thing
The first thing I noticed was the word “Crackerfuls” – which I thought was very creative – has one of those wheat looking graphics coming up out of the “K” which is a notorious trick for getting you to think something is healthy; the Four Cheese and the Cheddar & Bacon flavors are made primarily with non-whole grains – white bread but not as white because they didn’t use bleach flour (a plus!). The only one made with whole grains as the 1st ingredient is the Multigrain one and even then the other grains (barley, millet, rye) were so los on the list of ingredients that they came AFTER the partially hydrogenated oil!

Zero Trans Fat – NOT
Don’t forget that they can say 0 trans fat per serving if the level is low enough; clearly ALL the crackers have partially hydrogenated oil in them – trans fat in spite of their 0 trans fat claims. Sometimes it’s just a matter of tweaking the recipe and the serving size to get the numbers low enough that you don’t have to put on the nutrition label.

Resistance is Futile
All the crackers use “resistant corn maltodextrin” which is a corn sugar that has been chemically processed to resist digestion so it can act like a fiber. There was so fiber in the processed what that they had to MANUFACTURE extra fiber to add in just to make it look good.

Where’s the Cheese?
3 of the boxes say “made with real cheese” – if this follows the same rules as bread then the product only has to have a certain percentage of cheese to use the “made with ” label. Unless it says 100% cheese, it’s not. Interestingly the only on e that does NOT say Made with Real Cheese is the Multigrain garlic and herb one – which is interesting since it gives the impression of being more healthy. It’s made with cream cheese which may not officially count as a cheese. And just to give you an idea of how MUCH cheese there is – there is more SUGAR than cheese in each of them.

Dueling Bacon & Cheese
It looks to me like I happened to grab an old box and a newly redesigned box which is a lot more fun because you can see exactly what changes they may have made. The old box says “Cheddar Cheese & Bacon” and the new box says “Cheddar & Bacon” – maybe there wasn’t enough real cheese to keep the word “cheese”? And why do they taste so fabulous? It could be the extra sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) and the rendered bacon fat?

Not very Grainful
The cheddar & bacon (whether it’s cheese or not) and the Four cheese crackers claim (I just heard my old English teacher’s voice in my ear saying “who is doing the claiming?) that they have 6 grams of whole grain per serving. Which by the way is INCREDIBLY low – check out our previous post about whole grain - The Fantastical World of Wheat – 14 Things You Should Know about Whole Wheat / Whole Grain. There is an asterisk which leads you to tiny print on the side of the box at the bottom that says that nutritionists recommend at least 16 grams of whole grain per serving or at least 48 grams per day. That would take a LOT of crackers. So why mention it? It SOUNDS good and they’re counting on you not actually reading the fine print.

Excellent Source of Fiber
Only the Multigrain Garlic Herb crackers had this claim on the box – I can certainly TASTE that it was fiber-y; this one wasn’t nearly as yummy going down but it does have 5 grams of fiber per serving compared to the 3 grams in the other flavors.

For Your Viewing Pleasure