Holey Moley!

I’m relatively new to the world of food blogs, and one thing which has struck me is the speed with which a new food item can “take off.” Take Amazing Meal products for example. Among the proponents of the Green Monster smoothies, Amazing Meal has recently become such a raging phenom that I felt compelled to run to Whole Paycheck (ahem… Whole Foods) to grab a couple packets for myself. I plan on trying my first GM this weekend… stay tuned as I step into the truly healthful world of DRINKING my greens! Anyway, Amazing Meal, Adora chocolates, whey protein powder, Mix my Granola, and other pricey (but healthful, interesting, and TASTY) items have gone through spurts of popularity and sometimes stick around (other times they disappear into the food fad world of oblivion).

While I may sound a bit cynical, that is not my intention. I think it’s wonderful that there are all these fantastic healthful products being created. It shows that more people are starting to value their health in new ways. And when these products are local (or at least available at a local supermarket!), it makes me all the happier!

This leads me to one new product that I’m seeing crop up more and more frequently that does NOT make me happy. Holey Donuts. The premise of Holey Donuts (“great tasting donuts without the fat and calories”) sounds amazing. And I am not faulting them for coming up with new ways to remove fat, especially trans fat, from these notorious treats. I am all for the removal of trans-fats.

But I do take issue with their means of distributing these miraculous donuts. According to the website, these donuts must remain frozen until you eat them because they don’t have the same preservatives as shelf donuts. On the website, it describes how, “one by one, we then gently hand package and freeze the donuts before shipping them to you with our carefully designed frozen FedEx delivery system.”

Yikes. I live in California and these donuts are only produced in New York, so if I wanted to order these donuts, they would have to be FLOWN OVERNIGHT in special little freezer box thing. The carbon footprint of flying across the country like that? 2.5 TONS of CO2. At least.

Second thing: are these donuts REALLY that much healthier? I rarely ever eat donuts, but when I do, I like chocolate frosted. A chocolate frosted donut from Dunkin has 230 calories and 11 grams of fat (4.5 of which are saturated fat). A chocolate frosted Holey donut has 149 calories and 3 grams of fat (less than one gram of sat-fat). So I would save 81 calories and 8 grams of fat by buying the Holey version, yes? WRONG.

Holey Donuts has a minimum purchase amount of $35!!! Thirty five bucks just on donuts! Even if I do the cheapest and least caloric choice to add up to $35.85 (3 packages of the chocolate-vanilla-and caramel combo), I end up with 18 donuts, 2670 calories, and 54 grams of fat. OUCH. I'd much rather buy one donut than get roped into buying EIGHTEEN!

Oh and in addition to the $35.85 you spend on 18 donuts (already almost $2/donut), I looked up the FedEx charges for overnight shipping from NYC to California. Between 40-70 dollars!!! So basically, I could drop as much as $105. ON 18 DONUTS.

I don't want rain all over Holey Donuts' parade, so I will mention that they are trying to open up franchise stores, in which case I would be happy to walk on over to my local Holey Donuts to give low-fat donuts a chance. But until I can get to them without a special-frozen-mass-packaged-airplane approach, I am staying far away from Holey Donuts!