No Crush Here, "Crushed Pineapple" Is A Good, But Not Great Jelly Belly!

Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly Jelly Beans - 10 lbs bulk
Click to buy directly from Jelly Belly!

The Good: Tastes like pineapples (more or less), Environmentally responsible bulk
The Bad: Not terribly nutritious, Taste fades quickly with eating a lot of these beans!
The Basics: Not nearly as flavorful or enduring as they ought to be, the Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly jelly beans are a tough sell by the case!


In my sampling and reviewing of Jelly Belly jelly beans (that's coming right along, isn't it?!), I seem to be finding a number of jelly beans that taste great and defy my expectations for what a jelly bean can be. Jelly Belly is the clear winner - in my mind - of the turf war for Best Jelly Bean. They are flavorful, delicious, and largely taste like what they are supposed to. I mention this before my review of Crushed Pineapple flavored Jelly Bellys because that flavor is good, but not exceptional.

For those who might never have had Jelly Belly jelly beans, these are easily the best jelly beans on the planet, packing a lot of flavor into a very small size. Unlike most jelly beans which are only vaguely flavored and are more based on colors, Jelly Belly jelly beans have a wide variety of actual flavors, like Licorice, Sour Grape, A&W Cream Soda, or their signature flavor Buttered Popcorn.

Who needs ten pounds of Crushed Pineapple flavored Jelly Belly's? Anyone who likes a mildly pineapple flavored jelly bean would have good cause. Anyone needing lots of jelly beans for a team where yellow is one of the team or school colors might consider it, but beyond that, I'm at something of a loss.

Basics

Crushed Pineapple is a flavor of Jelly Belly jelly beans. Jelly Belly jelly beans are approximately one half inch long by one quarter inch wide and they are roughly bean-shaped. These little candies are marketed to taste precisely like pineapple and these do that well. They are sweet, have no scent, which might account for the lightness of the pineapple flavoring.

Crushed Pineapple flavored Jelly Bellys are available in a wide array of quantities, but the largest quantity available is the ten pound bulk case. This is a decent-sized box with a plastic lining and while some might wonder why anyone would need a ten pound box, I say if you can't throw pineapples at your enemies, a ten pound box of Crushed Pineapple Jelly Bellys is the next best thing!. The Crushed Pineapple flavor is one that is good and a ten pound case ought to last an entire year. They would certainly keep for a year even in this level of bulk, but my case never seems to last nearly that long.

The Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly is not the easiest Jelly Belly to differentiate from the other yellow Jelly Bellys. There is an opaque yellow (Pina Colada) that looks vaguely like the Crushed Pineapple, but the real trick is telling Crushed Pineapple from Lemon. The Crushed Pineapple is a more pale yellow Jelly Belly. Side-by-side there is a difference, but in low lighting or anyone suffering from a yellow-yellow or yellow-green colorblindness is likely to not be able to make the distinction.

Ease Of Preparation

These are jelly beans, not surviving for a decade on a desert island! Preparing them is as easy as opening the box and popping one (or several) into your mouth. In the case of the ten pound box, one might want to put them in a candy dish of some form as opposed to always going into the box. Then again, gluttony is cool, eat them however you want in whatever quantity you want!

Taste

As with all of the best Jelly Belly flavors, the strength of Crushed Pineapple flavored Jelly Belly's is that they taste like the fruit they claim to. The Crushed Pineapple flavor tastes exactly like sweet, canned pineapples. Unfortunately, that flavor fades ridiculously fast. It is faintly pineapple to begin with, but within five beans, these just taste like sugar, lowering their overall appeal. There is a sharp and delicious initial flavor of pineapple, but it is not enduring and no combination of quantity that I have yet tried makes this bean work better than it does. Of course, rationing to five Crushed Pineapple beans a day insures they will last quite a while.

Unfortunately, Crushed Pineapple is one of the flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans that cannot be eaten in bulk without the taste fading significantly. After five, the taste begins to be more generic sugar flavor.

Nutrition

Again, these are jelly beans, so anyone looking to them for nutrition needs to accept that while eating these are better than starving, it's not by much! Jelly beans, even Jelly Belly jelly beans, are not a legitimate source of nutrition. These are a snack food, a dessert, and are in no way an adequate substitute for a real meal. A serving is listed at thirty-five beans, with each Jelly Belly jelly bean having approximately four calories. This means that in a single serving, there are 140 calories, which is 12% of your daily recommended intake.

The thing is, Jelly Belly jelly beans are not as bad as they could be in the nutrition area. They have no fat and no protein, but for those who have ever dated a Vegan, these are Vegan compliant because they contain no gelatin! They have only one percent of the daily sodium with 15 mg and they are gluten free! The main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup and modified food starch, so it's not like this is an all-natural food, but they could be far, far worse.

Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly jelly beans do not have any of the vitamin nutrients of actual pineapples.

Storage/Clean-up

Jelly Belly jelly beans have a shelf life of approximately one year and I have yet to run across a stale Jelly Belly (though that could have something to do with a package never surviving a year around me . . .). They remain freshest when they are kept in an airtight container (the bag in the bulk box is sufficient if it is kept closed) and they ought to be kept in a lukewarm environment. Storing them in hot places or anywhere particularly odiferous is likely to make the beans stick together and be gross. Kept in a cool, dry place, the beans retain their flavor perfectly.

As for cleanup, unless one allows the Jelly Belly to get hot to the point that the waxy coating on the bean melts, the dyes on these do not bleed or denature, so there is usually no cleanup necessary, not even washing one's hands after eating them (always wash your hands before eating Jelly Belly's, or anything else for that matter). I have never had Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly's stain anything.

Overall

Crushed Pineapple Jelly Belly jelly beans are not one of the most winning flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans and while the ten pound case is environmentally responsible, it's a poor use of one's dollars to buy this quickly disappointing confection.

For other Jelly Belly flavors reviewed by me, please check out:
Lemon
Dr. Pepper
Pina Colada

5/10

For other food and drink reviews, be sure to visit my index page for an organized listing.

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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