Imagine a blueberry muffin.
Even with your freshly gained knowledge that there may or may not be wood pulp in the cake mix, it's pretty impossible not to start salivating at the thought, right? This is largely because of the berries themselves. What's better -- they're so very, very healthy that it's almost wrong for them to taste so good.
Everything is better with blueberries -- that's why they put them in so many foods, cakes, cookies, muffins, you name it. Now that we think of it, there sure seems to be a lot of blueberries in a lot of products. You'd think we'd see more blueberry fields around ...
The Horror:
... not that it would do any good, as the number of blueberries you've eaten within the last year, that have actually come from such a field, is likely pretty close to zero.
Studies of products that supposedly contain blueberries indicate that many of them didn't originate in nature. All those dangly and chewy and juicy bits of berry are completely artificial, made with different combinations of corn syrup and a little chemist's set worth of food colorings and other chemicals with a whole bunch of numbers and letters in their names.
They do a damn good job of faking it, too -- you need a chemist's set of your own to be able to call the con. You can sort of tell them from the ingredient lists, too, if you know what to look for, although the manufacturers tend to camouflage them under nonesense terms like "blueberry flakes" or "blueberry crunchlets."
There are a number of major differences between the real thing and the Abomination Blueberry: The fake blueberries have the advantages of a longer shelf life and, of course, being cheaper to produce. But they have absolutely none of the health benefits and nutrients of the real thing. This, of course, doesn't stop the manufacturers from riding the Blueberry Health Train all the way to the bank, sticking pictures of fresh berries and other misleading cues all over the product packaging.
And how do they dodge officials? A bunch of products actually contain an unspecified amount of real berries. This way they can legally advertise natural flavors while substituting the vast majority of berries with the artificial ones.
So next time you choose blueberry cheesecake over carrot cake, think again…till of course we find out that the carrot is actually redwood shavings…
Even with your freshly gained knowledge that there may or may not be wood pulp in the cake mix, it's pretty impossible not to start salivating at the thought, right? This is largely because of the berries themselves. What's better -- they're so very, very healthy that it's almost wrong for them to taste so good.
Everything is better with blueberries -- that's why they put them in so many foods, cakes, cookies, muffins, you name it. Now that we think of it, there sure seems to be a lot of blueberries in a lot of products. You'd think we'd see more blueberry fields around ...
The Horror:
... not that it would do any good, as the number of blueberries you've eaten within the last year, that have actually come from such a field, is likely pretty close to zero.
 |
| I can hear it mocking us |
They do a damn good job of faking it, too -- you need a chemist's set of your own to be able to call the con. You can sort of tell them from the ingredient lists, too, if you know what to look for, although the manufacturers tend to camouflage them under nonesense terms like "blueberry flakes" or "blueberry crunchlets."
There are a number of major differences between the real thing and the Abomination Blueberry: The fake blueberries have the advantages of a longer shelf life and, of course, being cheaper to produce. But they have absolutely none of the health benefits and nutrients of the real thing. This, of course, doesn't stop the manufacturers from riding the Blueberry Health Train all the way to the bank, sticking pictures of fresh berries and other misleading cues all over the product packaging.
And how do they dodge officials? A bunch of products actually contain an unspecified amount of real berries. This way they can legally advertise natural flavors while substituting the vast majority of berries with the artificial ones.
So next time you choose blueberry cheesecake over carrot cake, think again…till of course we find out that the carrot is actually redwood shavings…
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