Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal described the difficult position that 100 calorie snack packs find themselves in. According to the WSJ, the problem is that if they taste too good, consumers will eat multiple packs at a sitting, so the companies have to make them taste just good enough to motivate customers to finish the bag. If the product is too bad, consumers might not be likely to purchase it in the future, so companies only have to keep people from spitting out their snacks. This is an industry niche that is not filled with award winning goodies by any means. A taste test done by staff picked out some of the best and worst options in a group of determinedly average candidates. Overall, Vitalicious products were preferred to other brands in taste and had overall fat contents lower than their competition, but here are the rest of the picks:

Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs

• Best: Planters Peanut Butter Cookie Crisps
• Worst: Chips Ahoy! Thin Crisps

Keebler/Sunshine Right Bites

• Best: Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes
• Worst: Mini Cheez-Its

Vitalicious

• Best: VitaCake
• Worst: Muffin tops

OK, I get the concept: you get to have your favorite snacks (Chips Ahoy cookies, Cheese Nips, etc) and only eat 100 calories worth, so you can fit it into your diet. OK, so far, so good. But the packaging is what I don't get.

Each box comes with 6 bags of snacks, each one 100 calories. So what's to stop a person from eating 2 or 3 or 4 bags at one sitting, or in one day? I mean, if you're getting a bunch of Chips Anoy chocolate chip cookies, why not just buy a huge bag, the regular bag, and just eat 100 calories worth? (I haven't checked the math, but I bet that the regular bag of Chips Ahoy is cheaper than these snack packs). If you have the will power, great, but how do these help you with that will power? 

This reminds me of people who set their watches/clocks ahead 10 minutes so they won't be late. What? You don't remember that the watch is 10 minutes ahead? I mean, what's up with that?