No Sugar Added; Value is Another Matter

Over the past few years I’ve become much more familiar with various sugar-free products than I ever wanted to, due to medical conditions that need not concern us here. Some of these have been amazingly bad – to the point where I’d rather just do without the category of food, or eat very small amounts of it, than endure any more of the sugar-free version. Some of them have been surprisingly good – to the point where, if you didn’t know better, you’d actually think it was the real thing. But the vast majority are simply passable, in the sense that you’d never mistake them for the real thing (or enjoy them as much as the real thing), but you can eat them with a reasonable amount of satisfaction. A common complaint about these products, however, is how much more they tend to cost than the sugar-laden regular versions, either in absolute terms, or in cost per unit of weight and/or volume…

In some cases, the price increase is understandable. Artificial sweeteners are generally more expensive than sugar, and in the case of protein-based fillers (such as nut meats, for example) the additives can be much more expensive than simply using the traditional ingredients. In others, it’s just a matter of charging what the market will bear, in that there are going to be some consumers for whom the sugar-free and reduced-carbohydrate options are the only choice that doesn’t involve eliminating those foods from their diet. But where the whole matter becomes baffling is when you encounter a more expensive version of a food that is both hideously expensive and inferior in quality not only to the sugared equivalent, but to other sugar-free products in the same category…

A case in point would be the sugar-free chocolate introduced about five years ago by one of the super-premium chocolate retailers. I won’t name them, since I’m not really the litigious type, but you’ve probably encountered their regular products before, and you may have wondered how they manage to get people to pay such an enormous markup on products that are not that much better than the average chocolate candy. On seeing the new, sugar-free candy bars in their store at the mall near our house in California, I decided to purchase one and see if it would live up to expectations. Much to my dismay, it didn’t. In fact, this overpriced product (at $4 USD for 1 ounce of alleged chocolate, it’s the most expensive candy of its type) was not only worse than any sugared candy I’d ever tasted, but also worse than any sugar-free product with which I am familiar. This would be bad enough in a discounted product, but at those prices I felt it was an outrage – especially when compared to the best products in the category…

The best sugar-free chocolate on the market today, if I am not partial, is the hand-dipped items marketed by the See’s Candy Company in the Western United States. See’s products aren’t exactly cheap (the sugar-free versions range from $1.20 to about $1.40 an ounce), but at less than a third of their super-premium competitor, they’re still much more affordable – and much, much better. For everyday value, however, you’re not going to beat the Russell Stover products, which range from about 60 cents to about 80 cents per ounce, and are nearly as good as the Sees products. The interesting thing is that the Russell Stover products with sugar are unremarkable in my opinion (they’re about standard for mass-produced American chocolates), but the sugar-free selections are some of the best value for the money currently available. What I can’t fathom is why the super-premium company mentioned above can’t match their quality despite charging five to seven times more…

Now, I admit that candy is a matter of taste, and that some people out there would almost certainly disagree with me regarding the relative quality of these products. I question, however, how many of them would actually find the more expensive products to be 700% better than the humble but tasty Russell Stover equivalent. Sometimes the super-premium price does not reflect the overall product value, and sometimes it’s more about brand name than actual quality. I’m not suggesting that you take my word for it – I’m suggesting that you comparison shop for yourself. Especially if you find yourself in the market for sugar-free chocolate candy…