Now you can dip your toe into FiberGourmet without commiting to buy a whole case. Go here to buy just one box of our pasta - or crackers! - and have it delivered right to your door (by USPS), for just $5.99!

FiberGourmet is competing in Walmart's Get On The Shelf contest. You can vote for us once each day until April 3rd at: http://www.getontheshelf.com/product/3625/FiberGourmet. To vote, you either need a Facebook account or a cell phone (simply text 3625 to 383838).

If we can get into Wal-Mart, you can save on shipping and take advantage of Wal-Mart's low pricing to get FiberGourmet at the best possible price. Please vote every day!

UPDATE: Sorry, looks like we didn't make it to the second round

Cut calories to lose weight — type of diet doesn't matter.

More than 800 overweight adults in Boston and Baton Rouge, La., were assigned to one of four diets that reduced calories through different combinations of fat, carbohydrates and protein.

Each plan cut about 750 calories from a normal diet, but no one ate fewer than 1,200 calories a day.

While the diets were not named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which emphasizes low carbohydrates; Dean Ornish, which is low fat; or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. All participants also received group or individual counseling.

After two years, every diet group had lost — and regained — about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned.

...

The lesson, researchers say, is people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how.

• More wheat-y flavor on Original crackers
• Stronger flavor for Everything and Cinnamon & Sugar crackers
• BYOB for all shapes of pasta
• BYOB for crackers (except nacho)

Medium Term:

• Ordering a single box of crackers for sampling
• Cheese, nacho, and sour-cream and onion flavored crackers

Long Term:

• Chocolate crackers
• More pasta shapes

So we're going to go back to the drawing board and try to make cheese-flavored crackers after all. They can't be quite like our old cheese crackers because the new plant can't laminate the crackers, only sheet them. It's also difficult to do the 2-stage fermentation. However, we hope to find some cheese flavors which can substitute for the latter, and maybe people won't miss the former? Experimentation is in order. But this time we're going to just do a single 600-lb batch, bulk pack it with no printed packaging, and sell it online to gauge feedback before we do a full-scale production. So, stay tuned again!

The everything was excellent with 2% of the mix put inside the dough instead of on top where it wasn't sticking so well. It already had a lot more flavor, and didn't negatively impact the sheeting of the dough or texture of the final product. We're actually so confident that we're bumping the mix inside the dough up to 3% for the next production. This ones a real winner.

The cinnamon & sugar had a similar change, with some cinnamon and sugar moving inside the dough, as well. It had a major impact! You could really see how the cinnamon flavor was altering the flavor and color even before baking. Smelled wonderful coming out of the oven, and the new flavor impact is powerful. I can actually smell the cinnamon coming out of the samples I brought in my carry-on right now. Another home run, we think.

The only one where the change was more subtle was the Original. Here we were constrained by the ingredients on the labeling, which didn't allow us to re-introduce the onion powder, which had added some pungent notes that people liked. However, we feel that rebalancing the ratios of some other ingredients - in particular, increasing wheat germ and molasses at the expense of some flour - altered the flavor profile, and eliminated some aftertaste notes. It definitely has more of a wheat-y feel to it. Still might need some work done, but there is definite progress.

Stay tuned, and we'll let you know when the new production is shipping.