I was recently given the opportunity to taste the new Ritz Crackerfuls Multi-Grain Sharp Cheddar.  They sent me an entire box to try, and I broke them in half and passed them around.

Now, you know I’m not a huge Kraft foods fan.  So many of their foods have unnecessary additives, such as Yellow #5 in their blue box macaroni and cheese.

These looked a bit healthier, however.  The front of the box advertises “Excellent source of fiber” and a glance on the side of the box lists 5 grams per serving.  That’s pretty good!

The filling is made from actual cheese, and there aren’t any food dyes.  There is some partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and the ingredient list is a mile long.  I wouldn’t classify this as “real food” but it is certainly a better option than, say, Handi-Snaks.

The cracker tastes like Wheat Thins but has the texture of a gritty Ritz cracker.  The grittiness – I’m guessing that’s the ‘whole grains’ – was a big turn off.

A bigger turn off was that somehow they managed to make real semi-soft cheese taste like powdered cheese.  In fact, Miss A pulled her Crackerful apart and the cheese fell out in little crumbles.  She tried to smear it into the couch, but it just brushed right off.

Weird.

Overall, I’d buy these if we had to.  Like, if we were stuck eating out of a vending machine, because they are better than the other stuff.  But they aren’t really that tasty, the texture is a little off (especially if you’ve gotten used to actual cheese and crackers), and it’s definitely a highly processed food.

Blogging with integrity: I am a member of the One2One Network, and was sent a box of these crackers to review.