Saturday, March 11, 2017

Exotic/Disgusting Foods and Beverages Forum--Israeli Snacks

     I'm heading to the Middle East for this post.  Wegman's grocery came through yet again.  Today I'll be talking about two products from Osem--Bamba peanut snacks and Petit Beuree biscuits.  And then two products from Unilever--the Klik La-Hit and the Klik Choko-kid candy bars.
     I'd never heard of Osem or Unilever, which shows how little I know about European and Middle Eastern companies.  Because both are absolutely huge.  Osem started in 1942, as a consolidation of several noodle factories, accomplished by a group known as the Amazing Seven.  "Osem" means "plenty" in a Yom Kippur prayer.  Osem started off making pastries, baked goods, sauces, ketchup, and soup.  Then, in 1995 they partnered up with the immense international company Nestle.  Nestle now owns a majority of the company.  Through this merger, Osem now also manufactures pet food, pickles, canned foods, and jams.  And probably many other things--I grew exhausted reading through their website!
     Unilever began in 1929, as the Dutch margarine company Unie and the British soupmaking Lever Brothers combined, and merged their name as if they were a Hollywood acting couple in a tabloid.  It was a natural marriage, since both companies depended heavily on palm oil.  Unilever grew into the mammoth outfit that they are today.  It has offices and factories on every continent save Antarctica, and they're presumably negotiating with the few scientists on that icy world to eventually open some there, too.  Included in the Unilever umbrella are Dove, Lipton, Lux, Sunsilk, and Hellmann's to name just a few of its brands.  Unilever's main competitors are Proctor & Gamble and.....Nestle.
     But enough about business, let's get to the food.  The Klik La-Hit candy bar is a crispy bar filled with nougat, coated with milk chocolate.  The one I had was good sized, being about 5 inches by 1 inch (or about 12.5 cm. by 2.5 cm.).  Its texture was rather like a Kit Kat bar, and the filling was certainly distinct.  It was good.  Not spectacular, but tasty.  I've found it's difficult to truly mess up a chocolate candy bar, and this was no exception.  The Klik Choco-kid bar was a bit smaller, about 4 inches by 1 inch (about 10.5 cm. by 2.5 cm.), and strange looking.  To use a particularly unappetizing comparison, it looked somewhat like a turd.  It was composed of about 20 roundish shapes pressed into each other.  Its color was brownish, with a white coating.  This bar was milk chocolate around an milk cream filling.  And the taste was really top notch.  The milk cream filling really made it stand out.  An excellent example of a chocolate candy bar.
     The Osem Petit Beurre biscuits were pretty big, about 2.5 by 2 inches (about 6.5 cm. by 5.5 cm.) roughly rectangular shaped.  It had regular protuberances around its edges, like it was a badge or something, and was yellowish-brown in color.  The company and product name were etched on the front of the cookie.  The flavor was not as sweet as most American cookies.  But it was still okay.  I should explain, in the U.S, a "biscuit" is like a dense roll, a dinner side, often buttered or covered with gravy.  And a "cookie" is the sweet dessert baked good, such as an Oreo, vanilla wafer, chocolate chip, etc.  Apparently in much of Europe a biscuit is their name for cookies.  Cultural differences, like football/soccer all over again.  Moving on, the Osem Bamba is a peanut snack, which looks like a yellowish-brown cheese curl, or cheese doodle.  When the Bamba was first developed, in 1964, it was very similar to a cheese curl, since it was also cheese-flavored.  However, in 1966 they were switched to be peanut flavored.  And they flourished.  To a ridiculous degree.  I read that Bambas are the most popular snack in Israel, as an astounding 90% or households buy them regularly.  They're reportedly healthier than most snacks, jam-packed with vitamins.  (I noticed an irregularity, here, as the nutrition information on the label for mine listed 0% Vitamin A, C, calcium, and iron.  Don't know what the deal is.)  A recent British study suggests that snacks like Bamba might explain why Israeli children suffer from less peanut allergies than American kids do.  Supposedly the Israeli tots eat lots of peanuts when young, unlike Americans, and as a result they don't develop that allergy.  (I want to stress that this study isn't completely substantiated, or the situation may not be this cause-and-effect, so don't feed your toddlers tons of peanuts based on this!)  I thought the texture of the Bambas was just like a cheese curl.  The taste was a little weird at first--kind of like a salty snack, but the peanut flavor made it seem a little sweetish, too.  It really grew on me, though.  I finished the bag eagerly, and really enjoyed it.  I also found the product's character logo to be amusing--it's a baby, lifting a huge barbell with one hand while the other is giving a "thumbs up."
     All in all, then, the Israeli snacks I tried were pretty impressive.  Even the weaker ones were solid, and the stronger ones were quite tasty.  I'd advise grabbing them if you can.  And given how ubiquitous their manufacturers are, you probably can locate them fairly easily.




























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