Orihiro Low Calorie Konjac Jelly Pouches Kyoho Grape Muscat & Mango 432g Bag

About 24 twist-open pouches of konjac jelly, in Kyoho grape, muscat and mango. It's much firmer than the jelly you know: konjac sets harder than gelatine, so you squeeze it out of the pouch and chew it rather than let it dissolve. This is Orihiro's erythritol-sweetened recipe rather than its sugar-syrup one, which is where the low calories come from. The zero printed on the pack is Japan's labelling rule for a food this low in energy; Australian rules count it a little differently, so we call it low calorie rather than zero.

It's Orihiro's everyday supermarket range rather than anything premium, and within their low-calorie line this is the big bag: the rest of that line is a 12-pouch version or single standing pouches.

ぷるんと蒟蒻ゼリー, "purun to konnyaku jelly", is the name on the bag, if you're matching it to something you tried in Japan.

If you're choosing between our two big Orihiro bags: this is the low-calorie one, built on erythritol, in grape, muscat and mango, with 18g pouches. The other is the 480g white peach, mango and grape bag, built on sugar syrup, with slightly bigger 20g pouches. Same maker, same twist pouch, genuinely different eating.

What you're getting

• Taste: Kyoho grape (Japan's dark table grape, with a bit of skin astringency to it), muscat (the mildest of the three) and mango, the standout of the three.
• Sweetened with erythritol: a sweetener made by fermenting plant sugar, a little less sweet than sugar itself, and what this bag uses in place of the sugar syrup in Orihiro's others, plus acesulfame K, aspartame and sucralose. A few people find it cloying.
• Texture: The "purun" in the name: springy, bouncy, with real bite. Closer to a soft gummy than to a wobbly jelly cup, and meant to be chewed.
• Count: packed by weight rather than counted, so the number in a bag varies, usually 24. Each pouch is 18g, about two bites.
• Gelatine-free: set with konjac, which comes from a plant, not from gelatine.
• Allergens: Orihiro declares none of Japan's 28 listed allergens in this one. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.
• Also on the label: It does contain aspartame, which is a source of phenylalanine. That matters to anyone managing phenylketonuria (PKU); for everyone else it changes nothing. The Kyoho grape flavour also carries hydrolysed protein of a source Orihiro does not state, so we cannot rule out an animal source.

Konjac jelly is firmer than it looks: chew it well, keep an eye on children and older eaters, and never freeze it, because the pouch can tear and fire the jelly out as one hard lump.

One honest note before you get a bagful. Orihiro's own packet says eating a lot in one go can leave your stomach unsettled. That's the erythritol, a sugar alcohol, and it's true of anything sweetened with it rather than this bag in particular. One bag to try the texture; more if the household approves.