Social Tea Biscuits

Does anyone know when exactly Nabisco changed (ruined)the recipe for Social Tea Biscuits? These are a food I only buy when I'm sick. My mom had them around when I was little (along with those great Chocolate Snaps), and I always had some when I had a tummyache. I went and bought some last week when I had a stomach bug, and found they tasted completely different, as in no taste.

I see on the box that they contain no trans fats. I can only guess whatever ingredient made them so good (butter?) must have been loaded with trans fats, and was removed.

What a shame... Some things should not be messed with.

Oh my god! I recently got sick and I asked my boyfriend to go out and buy me a box of social teas. Like you, they are the only thing I eat when I'm sick (even my boyfriend loves them). To my horror, the biscuits tasted like cardboard! At first, I thought they were just stale, so I tried another...then I made my boyfriend try one. UHHH. YUCK!
I actually found a half-eaten box in my cabinet from like a year ago...they actually removed dietary fiber from the new (crappy) recipe and took out only ONE gram of "polyunsaturated fat." ONE. I guess that's what made it taste like cardboard. All the other nutritional info is the same. I'm SO upset, I hunted down the contact info for Nabisco and typed up a complaint e-mail. The contact info was not easy to find, for some reason.
Please e-mail them and complain, too! Here's the link...just hit the "contact us" tab and fill out the form:



I'm so upset! So is my mom!

Wow, i thought there was something wrong with my taste buds! They are tastless and hard now. They should have left the original recipe alone. Can you please re-post the link to complain to them? Thanks.

I just moved to the West Coast, and haven't been able to find Social Tea cookies in California. I'm sad to hear about the recipe change, but I have found another product that was similar to Social Tea that I thought I'd share for us who appreciated the original recipe. They are biscuits by Marie Lu, and they may be a bit tough to find but should be in the area of Pepperidge Farm cookies. Not quite the same taste as Social Teas, but very very close.

quote:

Originally posted by kahughes

Oh my god! I recently got sick and I asked my boyfriend to go out and buy me a box of social teas. Like you, they are the only thing I eat when I'm sick (even my boyfriend loves them). To my horror, the biscuits tasted like cardboard! At first, I thought they were just stale, so I tried another...then I made my boyfriend try one. UHHH. YUCK!
I actually found a half-eaten box in my cabinet from like a year ago...they actually removed dietary fiber from the new (crappy) recipe and took out only ONE gram of "polyunsaturated fat." ONE. I guess that's what made it taste like cardboard. All the other nutritional info is the same. I'm SO upset, I hunted down the contact info for Nabisco and typed up a complaint e-mail. The contact info was not easy to find, for some reason.
Please e-mail them and complain, too! Here's the link...just hit the "contact us" tab and fill out the form:



I'm so upset! So is my mom!

I'm curious to see if there were changes in the list of ingredients. The tea biscuits have been around longer than trans fats which probably replaced real butter in the original recipe. Were there any preservatives or other chemicals? HFCS instead of real sugar? I don't think I've ever tasted these.

I am sorry to hear this. I, too remember "Social T's" (I always thought that was the name when I was a kid.

I think of another childhood favorite, Lorna Doone's. Have they been tampered with too?

Wow! Three of you made this your first post and one as their 2nd....!
WELCOME to Roadfood, All!!!!

Why not try a true "tea biscuit"? Look for Walker's Shortbread...been in business forever and is truly comforting. Available in most supermarkets. A true product and very good. Great for what for whatever ails you. It's a Scottish thing simply done and excellent.

Walker's from Scotland is great!!!!

The supermarket near me had a sale on Nabisco products, so I stocked up on Social Teas. I'm so sorry I did. These are certainly not the Social Teas I have loved all my life. I may as well have purchased Barnum Animal Crackers, because that's exactly what they taste like, only a lot more expensive. They're horrible! What possessed them to change the recipe? Even the texture is different.

I have found the same problem. I thought it was just me. I wanted some several months ago and I was living in NY and when I tasted the first cookie I thought I had gotten a bad box. The taste was awful if you can call the cardboard taste. When you want a certain taste especially from your childhood then you are prepared to allow those calories into your diet. I threw the whole box away and will not buy them again until they rethink their recipe.

Weird. Alot of first time poster looking for these.
You might try places that sell British/Irish foodstuffs.
McVities and Jacob's both sell a similar looking biscuit.

Cathy

Cathy,
This thread was mentioned in today's Atlanta Constitution:
http://www.ajc.com/living/content/printedition/2008/05/03/findit.html

Also, it comes up on the first page of a google search for people using search terms such as "changed recipe".

Nothing new to add here except that I had the exact same experience this past weekend as those above. Honestly and taste-wise, I felt as if I was eating the cardboard box containing this latest, tampered batch of the once great Social Tea biscuits.

I'm thinking about a modern day Boston Tea Party revolt by which a number of us dump cases of Social Tea Biscuits into some body of water near Nabisco's New Jersey headquarters.



Oh, who am I kidding? Any existing fish in New Jersey's waters have been tortured enough.

Hey everyone.  I just found some Social Tea biscuits on the shelf at the supermarket after not having any since the 80's.  Just to have them in my hands took me back to my childhood and having the buscuits with my grandmother while sitting on the porch on the weekends.  Grandma is gone now but I thought I had a piece of the past to make me smile as I remembered her.  Well, I can surely say that Nabisco has wrecked that for me.  Nabisco use to hold a little nostagia for me but that's all gone now.  I sent in a complaint on the styrofoam cookies they produce now.  I only hope they will change them back, or at the least make two types.... styrofoam and real buttery buscuits.

I've never had one of these Social Tea biscuits, but his reminds me of the "new" Coke.  Anyone remember that crap?  Coca-Cola quickly brought back the "original" formula.

If there is a nearby supermarket that stocks imported UK foods or a British food shop around look out for McVities Rich Tea:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=rich%20tea%20biscuits&rlz=1I7GGLL_en-GB&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

I've enjoyed them for years and they have always stayed the same.

The Walkers suggestion is a good one, they do really good all butter short bread!

It may just be my tastebuds but I may have found a decent

substitute for the former Social Tea cookies that being:

 

 

While I'm sure that these "cookie crisps" are still subject to the U.S. requirement

of ridding the product of certain fat/s, I'm telling you -- and even though they're a completely

different cookie -- they truly taste like the old Social Tea cookies.

 

A cursorary view of the ingredients show that unlike the "standard" Lorna Doones,

these new crisps have actually more sugar and have palm oil (versus "partially hydrogenated

cottonseed oil"). They're also less "crumbly" than the standard Lorna Doones.

 

Just thought you should know.

 

 

 

 

 

hello from CA!! hey i recently found something that reminds me EXACTLY of how the Social Tea Biscuits tasted. They are called Kedem Tea Biscuits, and I happened to stumble across them in a Food For Less store nearby (this may be a Foods Co where u are, im not really sure). But these things, to me at least, seem to be the closest taste to Social T's as ever. According to package, there's no HCFS, no cholesterol, no trans fat, and no food coloring. They are crunchy, delicious, not too sweet, and remind me of the good old days.....when the FIRST Social T's were out. Let me know......SOMEBODY, let me know if you have these in your area, and if have tasted them.
 
JB

Kedem biscuits are plentiful in Bergen County, NJ; Shoprite and Pathmark both carry them. They're often pretty inexpensive too, and come in several flavors, including a couple of sugar free varieties.
 
Bart

Make your own!
 
http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,tea_biscuits_cookies,FF.html

Ah! The one post wonder thread is alive and well again after 4 years.l