Friday, December 16, 2011

Occupy Grocery Store: Fake Blueberry Pancakes

I'm not usually a big basher of Big Food or Big Ag, but for some reason this drove me crazy.

Blueberries were on sale at Harris Teeter recently, so I was looking for some pancake mix to make blueberry pancakes - an excuse to have fresh blueberries AND feed my crippling maple addiction.

I almost bought this Hungry Jack "Blueberry" Wheat pancake mix, thinking between its blueberries & the fresh ones, I'd have some pretty good pancakes.

But then I looked closely at the box and in tiny letters it said "artificial blueberry bits." Number one ingredient: Dextrose, a sugar.

Where's the line between obviously fake and trying to pass something off as real? It's a hard one to figure. I mean, no one expects Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries to have actual berries (they have a trivial amount of strawberry juice concentrate and are an incredible 42% sugar according to the Environmental Working Group's Sugar in Children's Cereals report).

But you certainly expect potatoes in Hungry Jack Mashed Potato Mix, don't you?

It's stuff like "artificial blueberry bits" that makes me feel like every step through the grocery store, I have to watch out for corporate food trying to put one over on me - fake food, cheap fillers, surprise chemical additives. And I'm not even a parent.

1 comment:

Richard Mercer said...

I found a good easy whole wheat oats and honey pancake mix that I like.


Kodiak Cakes: Frontier Flapjack and Waffle Mix - made by Baker Mills
You just add water. The ingredients list is pretty basic.

You may have to check around at different grocery stores to find it.

BTW, I'm also a layman climate change blogger at:
http://energysolutionswecanbelievein.blogspot.com/2008/11/climate-change-and-disinformation.html