At Homeland, there are 48 different flavors and brands of cranberry "drinks". (to be fair, we went to wal-mart and they only had nine different flavors, from three brands and yes, I counted because I was furious) Not one of those bottles actually contained JUST cranberry juice. Not even the ones labeled 100% cranberry juice. What they mean is 100% juice, with cranberry. Most of the ones that state 100% juice contain (in this order) apple juice concentrate, pear juice concentrate, distilled water, couple of chemicals, and finally, right before the chemical food coloring, cranberry juice concentrate. IN THAT ORDER! For those who don't read labels like we do, ingredients are always posted in order of weight in the product.
The cranberry cocktails are an even more frightening dietary puzzle. The ingredients on those bottles start with distilled water, then corn syrup. Usually followed by apple or pear juice concentrate, food colorings, cranberry concentrate and last but never least, some preservative chemical. sigh. People drink this. Without thinking. And then criticize ME for not allowing my children to drink juices. Well, find me some real juice that isn't all apple. We do buy orange juice, one particular brand. That's all I want!
Emily and Rachel were with me, and suggested perhaps that we look at the frozen juice concentrates. Perhaps that would do it! So we walk over, and welch's cranberry 'drink' concentrate lists their primary ingredient as CORN SYRUP. That's not juice people. They then suggested looking at the produce section and juicing our own, but of course no one sells cranberry at this time of year. Late September perhaps, but not in August. I guess if we can get our hands on a few pounds, we'll have to buy all we can, juice and freeze for occasions like these.
The irony comes in when you can walk to the pharmacy and pick up a bottle of powdered cranberry, in a pill. You can't buy the juice, but you can buy it conveniently bottle and missing who knows what from the processing. We decided to buy Northlands 100% juice cranberry (I refuse to type it in the order they do) which is 100% juice from apple, grape, pear and cranberry (I'm guessing so that they can change based on cost of ingredients and not have to reprint labels), natural flavors, vegetable colors and ascorbic acid. It's very possible that she'll react to it, ascorbic acid is quite frequently made from corn, as are natural flavors. sigh. But at least the label says gluten-free, so Dan can have it. ;-)
Why do they sell this crap? At the risk of sounding like my dad....because the American consumer will BUY IT! For years now, people have bought whatever was cheapest. So manufacturers have figured out that they can just save money because a majority of people will not even READ labels, and just buy whatever is cheapest. The minority can just suffer. Pay a fortune for a doctor, but fill your body with the cheapest crap you can't afford. We'll head to the health food center later and see if they have real cranberry anywhere.
1 comment:
You are so right, how can people not even notice. All we drink is OJ, water and milk (whole) in that order. I'm sure some would object to the milk, but unless ty're free of HFCS, I don't really care. Loving your blog, just found you today, don't remember how, maybe an unschooling list.
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