Call me a natural-born sucker. If a label bears a healthy claim, it gets my consideration. And I'm a trained skeptic.
There I was, barreling through Costco the other day, for instance, when I
stopped dead in my tracks, arrested by an end-aisle display of fire-engine red, three-box box sets of a favorite snack in our household. Flatbreads. It wasn't the wall of color that attracted me,
however. It was the phrase "with olive oil and sea salt" on the Keebler Townhouse Flatbread crackers.
A couple of hours and one bite later, I instantly resolved that this cracker really tasted
little different from a lot of its brethren and a closer look at the ingredient list confirmed the processing: a whole bunch of different flours and the like and two acronym ingredients "for
freshness": TBHQ and BHT.
Six of the bite-sized crackers -- one serving -- is 70 calories. But who can eat just six? They're like, to steal a phrase, salted peanuts.
I was reminded of
this purchase when I saw Andrew Adam Newman's piece in the New York Times
about olive oil popping up in all sorts of unlikely foods since word got out that it was heart healthy. I know I've been cooking with it for years. And not just any old olive oil. It has got
to be, I read somewhere, cold-pressed organic. And so it is.
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Then there's sea salt. I'd read somewhere that it was healthier for you because it has less contact with the P word (processed) and
is more natural. So, starting a few years ago, there's an awful lot less standard Morton's salt around here. But it seems that, to the body, salt is salt, and it processes it the same way.
"Your body needs only a couple hundred milligrams (mg) a day to stay healthy, but most people get far too much," writes Mayo Clinic
nutritionist Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D.
So, as healthy as those Sesame Ginger and Mardarin Orange Juice ingredients in Lawry's 30-minute marinade may sound, I'm guessing that the high-fructose corn syrup and 580g of sodium (24% of
the daily value) in one serving, which is a tablespoon, is a tad much. Plus, you can hardly marinade a Keebler Townhouse cracker in one tablespoon.
Another label that caught my eye recently
was for Wishbone Robusto Italian Dressing. It, and its brethren. They now claim that it "naturally helps
to better absorb vitamins A & E." How does it do that? In a type size usually reserved for cell-phone contracts, we're told, "from salad with the oils in Wish Bone." Are there really some proprietary
oils among the 18 ingredients in Robusto?
OrganicVille Pomegranate Organic, which sits nearby on the shelf, not only contains the O word, it has two ingredients that have been must-haves on my
list at some point or another. Pom Wonderful has, of course, turned the formerly obscure fruit into a "symbol of health." Then there's
agave nectar. I've made home-made ice cream with agave nectar. It tasted fine. Did it add any seconds to the lives of my loved ones? I wonder.
Go ahead. Try to resist the lure of those
Harpie-like labels crying "I'm good for you" the next time you're cruising the center aisles. How about Hellmann's mayonnaise with olive oil? I don't care what they tell you about mayo, that Roasted
Sweet Potato salad on the label will make you drool for the nutrients in the amber spud. How about Fruit Loops and Cocoa Puffs, packaged together in the same box with a "whole grains" claim.
And Betty Crocker is actually putting "100% real potatoes" in its boxes of mashed potatoes. Its competitors -- Hungry Jack, America's Choice, Idahoan -- make similar claims, of course. Makes one
wonder what's going on in some of those other boxes, no?
One food group not yet affected by the healthy ingredient craze is Hamburger Helper. Sure, there may be six "enrichments" to its main
ingredient, enriched pasta, alone, but there's no pretense to the names of its varieties: Cheddar Cheese Melt, Cheeseburger Macaroni, Cheesy Chicken Enchilada, and on and on.
Oops, this just in. I see that there's a Hamburger Helper line made "with 100% whole grain." Is nothing sacred?