ZBar may not appeal to kids

Clif ZBar Baked Snack Bars. Peanut Butter, Caramel Apple and Chocolate Brownie. $2.99 to $3.99 per 7.62-ounce box containing six bars.

Bonnie: Thanks, California. I'm loving the new products introduced in response to your Senate Bill 19, designed to guard against childhood obesity by limiting the fat, saturated fat and sugar in foods sold in elementary schools. ZBar is one of those new products. In addition to containing only 2 to 3 grams of fat, no trans fats and no high-fructose corn syrup, ZBars are also all natural and made from 70 percent organic ingredients. Each bar contains 120 to 130 calories, 3 grams fiber, 12 vitamins and minerals and has the texture of a chewy oatmeal cookie; they're tasty and not too sweet.

In other words, Clif ZBars are snack bars you can feel good about giving to your kids.

Carolyn: Do today's sedentary kids really need their own "energy" bar? A bottle of water and a weed-the-garden assignment might work better, but the Clif company is giving them ZBars (slang for "The Bar") anyway.

To up the appeal over traditional energy bars, each is decorated with swirls of icing. They're also not as heavy, and the soy is less prominent than in Clif for grown-ups. But the named flavors still get pretty lost in all the fig and date paste, oat fiber and milled flaxseed.

In short, they're nowhere near as tasty as Quaker Chewy or Kudos, not to mention cookies or McDonald's. As long as we live in a world with these other options, good luck getting kids to eat these instead.

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Munchies Kids Mix Snack Mix. $1.99 per 7.25-ounce bag.

Bonnie: Frito-Lay Munchies for kids is a snack mix designed by and for kids. Kid developers mixed Rold Gold Pretzels and Reduced Fat Smartfood cheese popcorn as the main ingredients for this snack. They also added Cheetos, Cap 'n Crunch cereal, Doritos and a few candy-coated chocolate pieces (I found only two in my sample bag). Nutritionally, this resulting mixture is better than many other snacks your kids could eat, such as a candy bar or full-strength Doritos, Cheetos or Fritos.

If these kids had asked me, I would have suggested they use even lower-fat and lower-sugar additions, such as Cheerios and Baked Doritos, and toss in lots of nuts and raisins, Craisins and/or other dried fruits.

Carolyn: In this nutritionally correct day and age, you've got to admire the chutzpah of the Frito-Lay exec who OK'd this kid-endorsed mix of nutritionally naughty cereal, snack chips and candy, and the even greater gall of their placing an "8 essential vitamins and minerals" boast on the bag.