As a very early riser, I do most of my writing, candy reviewing included, at the crack of dawn. While I’m not averse to a little candy first thing in the morning, it’s sometimes a nice change to be reviewing a candy that actually tastes like breakfast.

These Fruits & Yogourt gummies are a new addition to Dare’s popular Realfruit Gummies brand – gummies with natural fruit flavors and colors. We’ve previously reviewed them in fruit-snack form as part of our Back-to-School Fruit-Snack Roundup. As far as candy goes, they’re about as guilt-free of a choice as you can get – and pretty darn tasty too, since they actually contain juice and puree from the fruits they’re flavored like, not just a lot of nutrition-light “filler” juices like apple and pear.

So the originals are pretty tasty, but I’m usually wary of candies with “yogurt” in their name. Usually, it’s nothing more than an attempt to make a product look healthier than something coated in chocolate, when said “yogurt coating” is actually just an unholy amalgamation of hydrogenated oil and yogurt flavor – so it’s not only nutritionally equivalent to chocolate, it’s nutritionally equivalent to very BAD chocolate, without even the scant health benefits of the real thing.

That’s not the case here, though – the ingredients list “yogurt powder,” which is made up of modified milk ingredients and bacterial culture – nothing wrong with that, especially since they’re also fat-free. From the moment you open the bag, they really do smell like fruit-flavored yogurt.

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Back-to-school season is here once more. Yes, it’s the season for pencils, books, teachers’ dirty looks… and school lunches. Whether homemade or bought, lunch is the highlight of every student’s (and working adult’s) day, and keeping those lunches fresh, interesting and tasty can be a real challenge.

Fortunately, there’s an easy shortcut that many parents (and Candy Addicts) are already aware of: even the most boring of bologna sandwiches and pallid of PBJs can be made more exciting by adding a side of candy.

Not just any candy though, but a special lunchbox-sanctioned candy, packed into tiny single-serving pouches and transformed with a token amount of fruit juice into something viewed as a nutritionally acceptable complement to your carrot sticks and ham-and-cheese-on-white. A small source of candy joy in an otherwise boring day, for kids and adults alike. I’m talking, of course, about the fruit snack.

But not all fruit snacks are created equal, and that’s where we come in. Aided by my Assistant Taster (otherwise known as my sister Angela), I taste-tested four popular options to determine which brand will give you the most bang for your buck, considering such factors as nutrition, taste and fun. Will a store-brand snack stand up to pricier treats licensed with cartoon characters or jazzed up with gimmicks like liquid centers? And just how much fruit is actually in these things, anyway? Read on to find out.

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