04/04/08 The right snacks

Something old and something new can be matched up to create something just right. I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be back in one minute to tell you what that something is. The something old is the fact that kids like and want snacks. The after school snack is a perfect example. I know I was always ready for that one and could come up with some pretty ingenious ideas. But parents have a way of overruling ingenious for nutritious. The Beef Innovation Group (BIG) know about this flaw in parents and have created some new nutritious snacks for kids, utilizing beef. Beef check-off dollars were used to research, create, test and introduce to markets four new convenient, kid-tested, parent-approved beef snacks. The Beef Snackwich is a self-contained bun stuffed with a beef and sauce filling. Steak and Egg Breakfast Bites contain steak, egg, and cheese in a potato crumb coating and the Breakfast Pancake Flip features beef sausage, egg and cheese wrapped in a pancake. The fourth new snack is the Standing Beef Sandwich. This speedy satisfier is a hollowed out bun, turned upright and stuffed with beef and other ingredients. More than 100 snack ideas were analyzed to finally choose these four after over 200 young consumers from age two to eighteen picked them in a taste test. I don't know about anyone else, but I think those are beef check-off dollars well spent. I know I don't have time to putter around the kitchen coming up with new convenient snacks and take the time to introduce them to consumers. I'm Jeff Keane. Angus Beef Bulletin February 2008