Are You A Smart Snacker?

What's the best just-for-one snack? Ask any time-starved, health conscious mom and she'll tell you, Cheerios. Just put two handfuls of the little loops into a zip lock bag and presto, you have an instant treat. Taking a cue from resourceful moms who needed convenient and portable bites, marketers started making smarter packaging and alas, 2007 was the year of the 100 calorie snack pack.

Forgive me us sounding "self" absorbed, but as we began to review the bevy of single-serve products, I could not help but wonder why the aptly named Hostess was not pushing new smarter snack cakes at single me. Wasn't this the year we became one of the Nation's largest families?

We get that busy moms need convenient, healthy treats so that they can keep energy levels high and teach their kids how to eat sensibly through example. We are, after all, a snack food society, consuming as much as 4.3 billion pounds of snack foods a year. And now we are in the midst of a national obesity epidemic which is placing our youth in crisis. We can even somehow come to terms with the fact that this has led to the propagation of child food porn that has Dora and SpongeBob shouting out to us from the dairy aisles to entice our Nation's children.

While portion primers may seem to make sense for individuals within the single consumer segment, frequently the offerings are good old junk food in disguise with a premium on the price if you do the math.

In fact according to a survey by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, these 100-calorie packs cost, on average, about two-and-a-half times as much per ounce as similar products in larger packages. A comparison of 30 varieties of 100-calorie packs found that the premium charged for those snacks ranges from a modest 16 percent to a whopping 279 percent.

It probably would be hard for most of us to resist a beautiful celebrity single if their face were begging for the grab at the take-out counter, but it won't save you any money. Plus, at the end of the day, a Twinkie is still a Twinkie and isn't nutrition what matters most?