All Bran Crackers: These aren't as basic as lo-fat triscuits, but do they look ok for an occasional alternative? They're a lot smaller so a serving size is 18 crackers. They're small and crispy enough, they're almost satisfactory as a substitute for chips except they're a little sweet. I've highlighted ingredients I know aren't SB. How do you tell on something like this whether there's enough Whole Wheat vs. the later white wheat? It doesn't appear on the Whole Grain Institute's website, but neither does All-Bran cereal.
I would add the molasses, corn meal & rice flour to the questionable list personally. I'm interested to see what others think but I would guess these have too much sweetener and too much processed grain.
The cornmeal and rice flour are listed after the leavening, doesn't seem like there would be too much. Makes you wonder why they add it at all. But nevermind if you're trying to avoid it entirely.
The enriched flour put me off. I'd stick with trisquits. Have you tried the new little triangle ones? Yummy and you can have a few more per serving than the regular ones.
WebRover, ingredients are listed in order of how much is included in the item. The ingredients used the most (i.e. the first three) are listed first. Therefore, in this product, "whole wheat flour" is the biggest ingredient and "enriched flour" is the third biggest. It's hard to know how much white flour there is, though. It could be very small. It could be a lot. For instance, this could be something like (totally made up numbers, here): 4 cups of WW flour, 1 cup of soybean oil, 1/4 cup of enriched flour. Or it could be something like 2 cups of WW flour, 1.9 cups of soybean oil, and 1.8 cups of enriched flour. No clue.
With things like this, I'd use two things to judge:
How many other "questionable" ingredients are there? How high on the list are they? How bad are they? (like, I try to avoid any trans fats at any cost, but don't worry about cornstarch as much--each person's view on what these are could be different)
If you think they are worth it, try them and see how your body reacts. That really is the final judge.
I would think you could also look at the nutritional info and use the same guidelines for choosing a bread, in this sticky: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59303
You will be able to tell by the fiber content how much whole grain flour is used. And I would check the sugar grams to make sure it's not too much.
Thanks for all the comments. I hadn't thought about using the fiber to get an idea what the proportions of whole wheat to white wheat are.
1/4 cup (30 grams) of ww flour has 3.75 grams of fiber
1/4 cup (31.25 grams) of all purpose white flour has .75 grams fiber
18 crackers (31.4 grams) of All-bran garlic herb crackers have 5 grams fiber.
Hmmmmm.
Oat fiber is one of the ingredients - couldn't find how much fiber is in it. 100%?? 30 grams has 30 grams fiber??
(Wheat germ 30 grams has 4 grams fiber.
Cornstarch 30 grams has .3 grams fiber
what gluten 30 grams has .2 grams fiber
Wheat bran (not that I think this far down the list there's much impact) 30 grams has 12.8 grams fiber)
So manipulating WW flour at .125 grams fiber per gram of flour
oil at 0 grams of fiber per gram of oil
All purpose flour at .024 grams of fiber per gram of flour
Oat fiber at (guessing) 1 gram of fiber per gram of Oat fiber
I can come up with a combination that meets the nutritional value of the crackers for nearly equal amounts of ww flour, oil and white flour. I can come up with another combination for 6 times as much ww flour as white flour.
Bottom line is - with triscuits, I know what I'm getting and I should stick with them. Fortunately I really like triscuits. Was just looking for a psychologically larger serving.
The triangular shaped triscuits that I found were not the plain ones and they had almost as many ingredients as the Fiber One crackers.
All Bran Crackers - SB ok?
