Are you the Ultimate Red Sox Fan? Enter your photo in our contest and you could win fan-tastic prizes.
Are you drawn to foods because their labels boast “all natural” ingredients, “real fruit,” “whole grains” and “immunity strengthening” vitamins?
Well – shocker! – someone may be misleading you. I’d like to draw your attention to a fascinating article in The New York Times last week about some of these labels.
Surprised? Angry? Couldn’t care less?
View our commenting policy and standards | Commenting FAQ | Report a problem
12 COMMENTS
Name is required
A valid email is required (test@test.com)
Comment is required
Your email address will not be published.
All fields are required to comment.
On the Fridge Magnet blog, food writer Lindsey Nair writes about home cooking, local restaurants, entertaining and more. Here, you will also find links to restaurant reviews and our weekly food column, Front Burner. Please also check out our database of Southwest Virginia restaurants resturant user reviews and our recipe database.
RSS feed
About what I expected!
I guess we should carefully read juice, bread and cracker labels and stick to eating unenhanced fruit and veggies.
Is unenhanced even a word? ha
A local Creamery in our area makes ice cream – no antibiotics and no added hormones uses High Fructose Corn Syrup in their ice cream. A chemical. So much for all natural. They could use sugar, you know the real thing.
BTW a good time to find Coca Cola with the orig recipe or as we used to say “Mexican Coke” is during Passover when they have no HFCS in it, only pure cane sugar. You can look for that in certain soda brands, I think Pepsi is promoting it again right now too – the old style Pepsi.
Sugar is bad enough – at least make it “The real thing”
Shellie: I heard that creamery is changing their formula and is switching to sugar! I do not know when it will be ready but it is in the works! Hope so anyway!
Shellie Anne, you can get Mexican Coke at most Kroger stores on a regular basis in the hispanic food section. It’s about $1.50 a bottle, but worth it.
We long suspected that the labeling was purposefully deceptive, so we have taken to mostly making our own stuff. We bake cakes, pies, cookies, crackers, breads…all from scratch. Almost everything we make at home is scratch made in some form or another. The only things that are clearly not scatch made that we cook is Zatarains Jambalaya (I just like it too much) and DeBole’s Rice Mac n Cheese. Otherwise, we try to make it on our own to make sure we know what goes into it. Other than my birthday cake disaster last night, it has worked out well.
Lots of sodas made with real sugar are sold in the ethnic grocery stores in Roanoke or New River Valley. I got some Fresca made with real sugar at La Estrella Latina on Williamson Road one time. It was delicious! I had no idea they even made Fresca w/ real sugar until then. I thought it was always an artificially sweetened beverage.
I think the photo accompanying the article says it all – a woman reading the label on a bag of dried fruit. You cannot trust the food manufacturers to be truthful in their claims. The easiest way to find out what you’re eating is to read the ingredients list!
My husband and I have been making an effort in the last few years to eat more simply – that is, if the product has an ingredient list full of stuff we can’t pronounce, we don’t eat it. We are especially conscious of that when it comes to our 18 month old son. For that reason, we don’t buy things like the Gerber fruit snacks mentioned in the article. Sure it’s convenient, but so is a banana or some apple slices.
Pepsi has been marketing sugared Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew as “throwbacks” for the last month or two. They have older package designs.
You’re right, Sean. It’s been cool to see the old Pepsi can design.
I generally hate Pepsi. For whatever reason, I just do not like the taste, compared to a Jones, Coke, or RC. But, the throwback Pepsi is very good, and we’ve bought a few 12-packs of it. To me, it’s very similar to RC’s flavor…I just like it. But regular Pepsi, bleh.
I drink so few soft drinks that I never check that aisle. However, I was in the grocery store yesterday and heard someone discussing ‘throwback’ Mountain Dew. They were under the impression it was a Super Bowl promotion. I just assumed it was a different label. I might have to actually go buy a six pack of throwback Dr. Pepper.
OJ, I tried the Jones cola and I didn’t like it. I had bought a 12 pack b/c I love their other flavors. I dumped all the remaining ones in a big pot and cooked them down to a syrup and used it in some homemade BBQ sauce. It made a great sauce.