Taste Test | Half-year wrapup

Twice a year, we like to give readers a list of the foods our tasters rated highly the previous six months. In honor of the 10th anniversary of the Taster's Choice column, we've retried a few of the foods we sampled in the column's earliest days. Frozen garlic bread, hot dogs and salsa were sampled the first summer the panel was formed. Since that time, we found many new brands on the market; for instance, we found 16 types of salsa in jars, compared to the seven we found 10 years ago. In the upcoming months, we will continue to sample healthy food items as well as popular ones. Have a suggestion for us to try? We'd love to hear it. Send it to jkeeler@tampabay.com and please put TEST SUGGESTION in the subject line.

Kathy Saunders, Times correspondent

Here is a list of the top three picks per category from panelists for the first half of 2014. The numbers represent the score — from 1 to 100, with 100 being the best — each product received. We did not include the new foods we tried, only products that can be judged against one another.