Low Sugar still means High Fat: Smuch Off!
At my local grocery store the other day I wandered down the cereal aisle and started checking out jellies and jams. I noted quite a few more organic options, a dubious plethora of "natural" options, and one very annoying stand-out: "Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam". As a fan of both jelly and strawberries, I thought, GREAT- this won't point me towards a sugar coma. But regrettably, sometimes "Low" still means "High". Sigh.
So the 2nd ingredient on the list is "Sugar". I understand that jellies and jams typically need a bit of sugar as a preservative. But I also happen to know that they don't NEED it- "Fruit", as we're fond of saying here at Peeled Snacks, "is sweet enough"! Indeed, the "Reduced Sugar" preserves has a little less than half as much sugar as the regular jelly. But still, it shouldn't need ANY sugar.
And I ask you- how can you REDUCE anything by ADDING the thing that you're REDUCING? It's not "Reduced Sugar" Jelly, it's really "Less Sugar Added" Jelly. Or rather, "we've reduced the amount of sugar that we've added to this product, which really means that we're still adding the thing that we're telling you we're reducing, sorry about the confusion".
In all fairness, I can't really hold it against the jam's manufacturer- they're basically just giving the people what they want (i.e. sugar). Our taste buds have been so trained to crave sugar that this product does represent a step in the right direction for them. To truly "Reduce" the sugar in this product, we'd need to reduce the sugar that a whole generation eats, and that ain't easy.
And all this makes me think of the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy". Not only is it one of Peeled Snacks' founder and president Noha Waibsnaider's favorite films, not only is it a gut-bustingly funny slapstick comedy, not only does it hold up astoundingly well almost 30 years after it was released, but it is also a marvelous indictment of our crazy, modern comnsumerist society.
If you haven't seen the film, do so- it's fun for the whole family. In short, it's about a man from an isolated tribe in the African bush who tries to return an unwanted coke bottle to the "Gods". On the way to the gods he runs into white people, and hilarity ensues.
So when he first sees white people, just typical white people of medium build, the film reveals his first thoughts about them:
"He saw the ugliest person he'd ever come across. She was as pale as something that had crawled out of a rotting log; her hair was quite gruesome, long and stringy and white, as if she was very old; she was very fat - he'd have to take the whole day to find enough food to feed her"
To people that don't get to "Reduce" the sugar in their food by adding it, we modern, civilized people look very fat. Have you read your ingredient labels today? Sigh.
Happy Snacking,
Peeled Skinny
