When it comes to nutrition, convenience is both a blessing and a curse. For example, it is convenient to buy mixed field greens already washed and ready to eat. This convenience allows you to easily add more greens to your diet with little effort. However, not all convenience is good. Lets consider a product like Bagel Bites. These are not the healthiest of foods, but there is no reason that you can’t eat Bagel Bites in moderation (once in your lifetime). In this case, convenience makes over consumption far too easy. Lets be honest,…who hasn’t eaten nearly the entire box of Bagel Bites. Remember, the serving is 4 Bagel Bites, not 4 boxes. Trust me, I was shocked too.
As I came to my senses and put the fifth box back in the freezer I began to think about convenience. Yes, these tasty little bites were easy, but was it possible to make my own, healthier, better tasting Bagel Bites and keep convenience? I would call them “Nick Bites.”
To take on this task I enlisted a few friends who I could count on for quality control and taste testing. My mission was to create my own “Nick Bites” to compete with Bagel Bites’ taste and convenience. In addition I had to meet these criteria:
-Contain one grain oz equivalent per serving
-100% whole grain
-Half cup of veg per serving
-Decrease fat by 50% compared to Bagel Bites Supreme
-Could not purchase anything else for the mission
-Had to be made in less than 20 minutes
This truly reminded me of Foods II. My weapons of choice for this mission were Toufayan Bakeries Whole Wheat Pitettes, Di Parma Classico Four Cheese, Kraft Parmesan and Romano Cheese, Fresh Express Baby Spinach, generic salami, gorgonzola cheese, onions, olive oil (to saute the onions), and cherry tomatoes(also sauteed).
We never actually used the Kraft cheese, gorgonzola is just too good
The whole wheat pitas are a very versatile product
The ‘flip” was mastered
We first gathered our ingredients and then chopped and sauteed the onions and the tomatoes separately using 2 tsp oil, which was drained off.
Then we cut eat Pitette in half and began designing our Nick Bites. Some were just cheese and sauce, some had onions, some had spinach, and some had pepperoni. However, the competition bites were made with 1 tbsp sauce, 1 tsp gorgonzola cheese, about one tsp of chopped spinach, and 1 tsp onion on each bite. The bites were then broiled on the top rack till the cheese was melted and the Pitettes became slightly toasted (about 3 min).
5 make a serving, so when cut in half you get ten bites. Plus the air pockets allow for more ingredients to be stuffed in, like onions.
But the real test is taste. Before taste testing, I gathered data by asking my friends if they thought the Nick Bites would taste better than Bagel Bites. Very scientific.
Some friends were skeptical…
Some were apathetic…
Some were just happy to get food…
But in the end Nick Bites got a thumbs up…
I love putting my friends in blog posts because I enjoy food almost as much as I enjoy my friends
One serving of Nick Bites met the grain oz equivalent (10 bites, remember they were cut in half). The sauce, onions, and spinach provided almost one full cup of vegetables which exceeded my goal of a half cup per serving. It took only 19 minutes to make the bites, even with broiling. Decreasing fat by 50% was the only goal that I did not meet. In fact, the fat in Nick Bites was 5.7 grams HIGHER. But when you consider that a serving of Nick Bites is 10 bites, not 4 like Bagel Bites, I still call it a win. I could have also used a low fat cheese. Sure, you could only eat 4 bites, but these things were so good that it was hard to stop at just 4.
In conclusion, I feel that the Nick Bites are a win. They are easy and fast to make, can be made in many different flavors, and simply taste good. While there is still room for improvement, the most important thing this experiment showed is that sometimes we over think convenience. Yes it is easy to heat up some Bagel Bites, but how much harder is it to make healthier Nick Bites.