So last night I had a little fun here at home and for some reason at about 2AM, I got this craving for chocolate.

Tonya and I still have some M&Ms sitting around so I grabbed a handful, popped them in my mouth and I just about barfed…

Ever since we’ve changed our food to more raw and organic things with no crap in them, I can taste EVERYTHING in food now.

Ugh, I used to LOVE M&Ms, I can’t stand them now. It was probably the most disgusting thing I think I’ve put in my mouth since New Years. Never again. How do people eat this crap?

This is a bit off topic but I thought I’d throw it up here anyway…

So after years of studying many faiths, being members of many as well as even holding priesthood authorities within a few, (Aaronic priesthood^W and Elder in the Melchizedek priesthood^W) I have come to a time and place in my life where I have begun settling in and developing an encompassing positive view of them all and not prescribing to just one, but aspects of each.  I have a tendency to learn toward Ignostic^W beliefs as I feel that the majority of disciplined faiths assume far too much about the concept of God and even their own faiths or other faiths in order to assume or even ask the question of his/her existence or non-existence.  I believe that in general, mankind is good and loving but at times become corrupted which leads them to perform acts of evil.  I believe that the assumption by members of one faith that their beliefs are superior to another faith or that one faith’s belief of who and what God, a creator, or lack of a creator is, was, or is not, was not is one of the most destructive forces this planet has ever seen and I feel that everyone is entitled to believe what they wish as this level of spiritualism is deeply personal and no one possess the right to force it upon others.

We must each see it as a person matter and be accepting of others for the choices they make so long as those choices do no harm to others.  If you’re Christian, that’s okay, if you’re Muslim, that’s okay, if you’re Wiccan, that’s okay, if you’re an atheist, that’s okay.

As of today, I have earned my Doctor of Divinity^W degree as well as the title of Bishop^W.

I am ordained and can even officiate weddings and am now officially, as of today:

Bishop Marcus G. Croman, D.D.

It has taken me some time to find a home that would accept me and I look forward to a long stay with this one.  I find myself among friends who have passed and some that are still here like Jimmy Stewart^W, Paul Newman^W, John Lennon^W, Denis Leary^W, Hugh Hefner^W, Johnny Carson^W and Jesse G. James^W.  I will be contacting my local hospital and fire department to volunteer my services as a Chaplain^W and you can expect to see me from time to time in clerical attire.

No, this is not a joke, I take it very seriously.

http://bishop.croman.us

I hear this ALL the time.  “But it’s so expensive to buy the right foods!”  Sure, it may seem that way, but that’s why we’re here, to show you how expensive it really is.

The average American family, wife, husband, 2.59 kids spends just over $700 per month on food.  Well, that dollar amount certainly fits us to a T, we spend exactly $700 per month on food.  Rarely more, rarely less.  It’s what we budget for and we stick to it by using shopping lists and menu planning.

Okay, so we’re on the average American food budget.  But we’re not an average American family.  husband, wife, 4 kids (not 2.59) and Tonya runs a daycare out of the house 5 days a week and can, at times, have up to 8 kids in the house (including ours).

That’s 10 people and here we are, buying organic foods, not everything, but a lot, we’re buying foods that don’t have artificial colors, sweeteners, crap we can’t pronounce and stuff that just doesn’t make sense to eat in the first place.

We don’t starve, we’re always full.  We snack all the time, especially at night and we feel great.

When I hear people say to me, “It’s so expensive, I just can’t afford it.” or “sure you can do it, you make more than me.” all I hear are excuses.  There is no price you can put on your health.  There is no dollar amount that is worth feeding your family poison and I don’t care what you say, there is no way the average American family with 2.59 kids can’t do what we’re doing with as many people as we’re feeding.

We’re paying $50 per mouth per month.

What are you paying right now?  I bet it’s more.

There aren’t any hidden costs, we don’t go to the store every day, we go twice a month.  We take about 4 hours every other Saturday and buy what we need to last us.  We buy in bulk, we buy organic foods in bulk (Costco has a great selection) and we store the food by freezing or canning or just eating it right there and then.

Anyone who starts off with, “Yeah, but…” is just giving excuses.  There is no excuse and there is no justifiable reason for people to be eating the crappy food they are eating today.

You’re just being lazy.

Yes, that’s right.  Me and Patsy Cline^W…  We must be crazy.  At least that’s what a good chunk of people I’ve talked to seem to think.  I’m a nut job, there’s no way the food we eat can be bad for you.  Well, let’s break it own down Patsy Cline style:

Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely… I would be crazy to feel alone.  I’m not alone, there are millions and millions of people in this world that understand the importance of not only watching what you eat but what’s IN what you eat.  Movies have been made about it, media talks about it each time someone dies from tainted meat.  It’s all around us, just look.

I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue…  And why shouldn’t I feel blue?  Or FD&C Yellow 5^W or FD&C Red 40^W?  These artificial food colorings have been banned in many countries because of they are KNOWN to cause hyperactivity and KNOWN to cause cancer but we stupid Americans want our fake cheese to be yellow, dammit.

I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted, and then someday you’d leave me for somebody new…  This is what has happened to our food industry, our FDA^W, our USDA^W.  They used to love us, then they found someone new, MONEY.  Anyone who thinks the USDA and FDA has the consumers best interests in mind is clinically insane.  If there is a tainted meat outbreak, a court has ruled that the USDA^W has NO AUTHORITY to force the producer to recall it.  The producer has a choice to recall or not, the USDA^W is powerless.  The entire system is a joke.  It’s a faux layer of protection to make you feel warm and fuzzy about what you have on your plate.

Worry, why do I let myself worry? Because this is the fuel that we all need to physically survive on this planet.  It’s the fuel that makes my children grow to be healthy (or not) adults and it is their quality of life and their children’s quality of life that is more important than any amount of money.  There is no price tag on my children, there shouldn’t be one on your either.  These processed foods are KILLING US.  You don’t have to take my word for it, the information is there, go look for yourselves.  I’m just one voice among many.  No child deserves to die, accidents happen and sometimes they die, but death by beef is NOT an acceptable loss.  Death by spinach, or chicken or obesity IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Wond’ring what in the world did I do? What did I do?  How did I survive on this crap food all of my life?  I have battled with my weight since I was a teenager.  Why didn’t I ever see it before?  Sure, I always knew that sweets weren’t good for me but it’s not just the sweets, it’s how those sweets were made and as companies shifted to using more and more lab created, artificial ingredients, my weight ballooned with that shift.  It’s like I was caught in that wave of shifting from quality ingredients to shit ones.

Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you…  I was crazy for putting my faith in our government.  I was crazy for thinking that my tax dollar would go to protect our most basic necessity on this earth.  I was crazy to think that food producers cared more about their customers than their bottom line.

I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying…  Maybe I am.  Maybe I’m fighting a battle I can never win.  Maybe I’m crazy for posting this blog and trying to teach people how important it is to read and understand labels and what’s in the food they eat and the food they feed their children.  There certainly are some that think I’m full of shit, smoking crack, have no basis for many of my statements…  Maybe I am crazy…

And I’m crazy for loving you…  Could be.  Could be that I’m crazy for caring about people who are poisoning themselves.  Crazy because I love my children and my family more than anything in this world and want to see nothing but the best for them for as long as they live.

To those that doubt anything, I’m not alone in this world.  There are more and more of us.  Like I’ve stated in the About section of this website, we’re not greenies, or tree huggers.  We are just a typical family that flipped over a bottle of ketchup one day and said to ourselves, “WTF?”  This isn’t a quest against HFCS alone, it’s a quest against everything that we just shouldn’t be eating.  It’s a quest to find out not only if something is bad for you but why, and not only why is it bad for you but why is that ingredient even in something we eat.  This is a quest to learn, discover and teach whatever we can to anyone that will listen.

Echo told me recently that she had someone on her mother’s side of the family (I’m divorced from her mother) that said they were in a profession that would have been notified if there was any truth to what I’m saying and since they never heard it, it must not be true.  THAT is crazy.  I’m in the Information Technology field and I’m one of only 248 people in the entire world that can do what I do and there’s things in this industry I still know very little about and for someone to claim to be an expert on all things is just absurdly impossible and close minded that it makes me sick to my stomach knowing that this person has an influence in my daughter’s life.

The argument centered around fructose and ethanol and how they are metabolized in the human body nearly the same way.  I emailed Echo my findings already but I thought I’d post them up here just in case there was anyone who doubted that FACT.

The information below was written by Dr. Mercola who got a good chunk of his data from a report by Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco

Dr.’s Lustig and Mercola sort of know what they are talking about…

Fructose:

When you consume fructose, one hundred percent of it goes directly to your liver to be metabolized. This is why it is a hepatotoxin — it overloads the liver. Fructose metabolism creates the following adverse effects:

• Fructose is immediately converted to fructose-1-phosphate (F1P), depleting your liver cells of phosphates.
• The above process produces waste products in the form of uric acid. Uric acid blocks an enzyme that makes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is your body’s natural blood pressure regulator, so when it is blocked, your blood pressure rises — leading to hypertension. Elevated uric acid levels can also cause gout.
• Almost all of the F1P is turned into pyruvate, ending up as citrate, which results in de novo lipogenesis, the end products of which are FFAs, VLDLs, and triglycerides. The result — hyperlipidemia.
• Fructose stimulates g-3-p (activated glycerol), which you will recall is the crucial molecule for turning FFAs into triglycerides within the fat cells. Remember, the rate of deposition of fat into fat cells is dependent on the presence of g-3-p. The more g-3-p that is available, the more fat is deposited. Fructose is the carbohydrate most efficiently converted into g-3-p11. In other words, fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate.
• FFAs are exported from the liver and taken up in skeletal muscle, causing skeletal muscle insulin resistance.
• Some of the FFAs stay in the liver, leading to fat droplet accumulation, hepatic insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)[ii][iii].
• Insulin resistance stresses the pancreas, which pumps out more insulin in response to rising blood sugar as your cells are unable to get the sugar out of your bloodstream, and this can progress to type II diabetes.
• As with a bolus dose of ethanol, a 120-calorie bolus of fructose results in a large fraction (again, about 40 calories) that directly contributes to disease.

Do these symptoms sound a bit familiar to you? Hypertension, lipogenesis and dyslipidemia, obesity, inflammation, insulin resistance, and central nervous system leptin resistance?

If you are thinking it sounds a lot like classic metabolic syndrome, you are dead on!

The point to take away is: consuming fructose is consuming fat. Fructose is not really a carbohydrate — a high fructose diet is a HIGH FAT diet. A high fat diet that creates a vicious cycle of consumption that won’t turn itself off.

You can see by comparing the metabolism of fructose with the metabolism of ethanol that they are very similar. In fact, when you compare the metabolism of 150 calories of soda with 150 calories of beer (a 12 ounce can of each), about 90 calories reach the liver in either case. Fructose causes most of the same toxic effects as ethanol because both come from sugar fermentation.

Both ethanol metabolism and fructose metabolism lead to visceral adiposity (belly fat), insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

Studies are accumulating that bear this out.

For example, high-fructose diets were shown to cause dyslipidemia in healthy people with and without a family history of type II diabetes, a recent study showed[iv].

Two other studies were done using medical students, both looking at biological responses to fructose loading. In the first, the med students were given either a large glucose load or a large fructose load. In the students given fructose, almost 30 percent of the calories ended up as fat. In the students given glucose, almost none ended up as fat.

In the second study, medical students were given a high fructose diet for 6 days. In just that short time, their insulin resistance and triglycerides doubled!

Ethanol:

Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is the favorite carbohydrate of many. But it is also a carbohydrate that undergoes a very different metabolic process, leaving in its wake a trail of toxins a mile long.

Ethanol is an acute central nervous system toxin and a chronic hepatotoxin due to the fact that it must be metabolized almost completely in the liver.

After consuming an alcoholic beverage, 10 percent of the ethanol gets broken down by the stomach and intestine as a “first pass” effect, and another 10 percent is metabolized by the brain and other organs. The fact that ethanol is partially metabolized in your brain is the reason you experience that familiar “buzz.”

The remaining 80 percent hits the liver, where it must be broken down. This is four times the load on the liver as the same number of calories from glucose.

But the metabolic process in the liver is quite different from that of glucose.

This metabolic cascade can be summarized as follows:

• The liver converts ethanol to aldehydes, which produce free radicals that damage proteins in the liver.
• Some of these aldehydes are converted to glucose, but a large amount of excess citrate is formed in the process, stimulating “junk chemicals” that result in free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL and triglycerides. As compared to the 1 calorie from glucose that was converted to VLDL (see previous section), the same caloric intake from ethanol produces 30 calories of VLDL that are transported to your fat cells and contribute to your obesity, or participate in plaque formation. This is what leads to the dyslipidemia of alcoholism.
• The resulting lipids, together with the ethanol, lead to an enzyme that begins an inflammation cascade, which in turn causes hepatic insulin resistance, liver inflammation and cirrhosis.
• Fat globules accumulate in the liver as well, which can lead to fatty liver disease.
• Free fatty acids (FFAs) leave the liver and cause your skeletal muscles to become insulin resistant. This is a worse form of insulin resistance than hepatic insulin resistance and can lead to type II diabetes.
• After a 120-calorie bolus of ethanol, a large fraction (about 40 calories) can contribute to disease.

Why am I including a discussion of ethanol metabolism in a report about fructose?

Because, in nearly every way, fructose is metabolized the same way as ethanol, creating the same toxins in your body.

In conclusion to all of this I guess my only feeling is that if the worst someone can do is label me as crazy, well, I can live with that.  So can my children and we’ll live a very healthy, long life…

That’s right, pulling out my Gary Coleman…

So I sent an email to Sweet Baby Ray’s about my confusion with their labeling and story on the back.  I thought my email was fairly simple and easy to understand but you can decide for yourselves:

Consumer LineFrom: Marcus Croman [mailto:marcus@croman.us]
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 2:01 PM
To: service@sweetbabyrays.com
Subject: “Original” Sauce

The front of your bottle states that your barbecue sauce is “award winning”.

On the back, there is a story about Chef Larry Raymond perfecting the recipe and beating out nearly 700 entries in the riboff. I assume this is the award that your sauce won but I’m having a hard time figuring out the story with what appears to be nothing more than a marketing claim.

The story goes on to say that your company is formed around that award-winning sauce but I highly doubt that Chef Larry Raymond put high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, which is most likely produced using high dextrose corn syrup and sodium benzoate (half of what makes Benzene).

Now, perhaps I’m wrong and Chef Larry Raymond really did put this stuff in the “perfected family recipe” but I just don’t think that’s how it
played out.

Is this really the original recipe from 1985?

Marcus Croman
Kingston, WA

A few days went by and I finally received a response.  Although I’m not sure it’s really a response since it didn’t answer anything and, well, was pretty hard to even figure out what they were trying to say, here it is:

From: service@sweetbabyrays.com
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2010 6:11 AM
To: marcus@croman.us
Subject: “Original” Sauce

Good Morning,
Thank you for your email.
Orgianl recipe was simple, not as complex as today recipes are.
Regular most likely contained Tomatoes paste, molasses, spices ,honey other
spices.
Thank you for your inquiry have a good day.
Patricia Ajemian
Ken’s Foods

Ummm…  say what?

So the original was a simple recipe.  Today’s isn’t.

Regular (whatever regular is) most likely contained some ingredients you’d expect to find in BBQ sauce.  Most likely.  They aren’t really sure, but they are pretty sure it had some tomatoes and some spices and some honey and stuff.

Okay, so what’s in the bottle is or isn’t original like the bottle says?  It is or isn’t  the award winning, perfected family recipe like the bottle eludes to?

And are you kidding me…   Orgianl?  Tomatoes paste?

Patricia, if you’re going to be the e-Face of Sweet Baby Ray’s, you might want to run a spell checker before you reply to inquiries.  I’m not a perfect speller by any means but come on, you work for the fastest growing barbecue sauce company in the United States…

This was my response to her, sent today:

I’m sorry, I’m having a very hard time figuring out exactly what you’re trying to say.

Are you telling me that what’s in the bottle that I have, which was purchased recently that clearly states on the front, ORIGINAL is not original?

is the sauce in the bottle the same sauce that won the award at the “rib-off” or not? If it’s not, then what is original about what’s in this bottle I have?

It says original, but original what?

You just told me that the original recipe was simple and the one I have isn’t simple, it’s complex and the original recipe most likely contained some ingredients you’d expect to find in barbecue sauce, but it might not have.

Is the sauce that I have in this bottle original like the label claims or not? If it’s not original, then why is your company claiming that it is?

Also, what award did the original sauce that’s not in this bottle win? I owned a pig that won 3rd place in the county fair, should I write a story about the award I won and put it on a bottle of barbecue sauce claiming it’s award winning and original?  If the story about winning an award for being one of the best sauces has nothing to do with what is in the bottle, it’s just as irrelevant as my pig in the county fair.  Neither have anything to do with the other.

If what’s in the bottle isn’t what won the award and isn’t original, then the bottle shouldn’t elude to that.

That’s deceptive marketing.

Regards,

_________________________
Marcus G Croman
8487 NE Country Woods Lane
Kingston, WA 98346
360.930.3018
marcus@croman.us

Web: http://www.croman.us

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”
- Benjamin Franklin
_________________________

I can hardly wait for her response…

That’s the tagline for Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce.  And it certainly is sweet…

Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce is considered one of the fastest growing barbecue sauces sold in the United States (according to them).  They sold 500,000 cases last year and it has replaced Bulls-Eye (which contains no HFCS) as the BBQ sauce used by Burger King on their Rodeo Cheeseburger, also known as the Western Barbecue Angus burger.  So BK dumps the no HFCS Bulls-Eye and decides to use the HFCS Sweet Baby Ray’s?  Nice one BK…  You’re on my shit list now.

Sweet Baby Ray’s has some marketing mumbo jumbo going that I have yet to hear a reply from them about.  The bottle that we had, purchased from Costco in the twin pack variety, stated “Award Winning” and “Original” on the front and back’s of the bottle.  Their website claims the award winning as well but digging into the 1985 awards giving at the event they claim to have received it only shows them getting 2nd place.  I guess 2nd place is an award.  We have the Darwin Awards too…

There is a short story about the birth of Sweet Baby Ray’s on the back of the bottle and a longer version on the website, both go something like this:

It all began back in 1985 when a local Chicago boy named Chef Larry perfected his family’s recipe for a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce and entered it into the country’s largest rib cook-off, the Mike Royko Rib-off. Chef Larry called his sauce Sweet Baby Ray’s after his little brother David, who got the nickname shootin’ hoops on the west side of Chicago. On the day of the rib-off, Sweet Baby Ray’s beat nearly 700 entrants to come in second – an amazing feat for an unknown. The rest, as they say, is history.

When brother David and friend Mike caught wind of Sweet Baby Ray’s success, they, along with Chef Larry, decided to take the sauce on the road. What would the rest of America think?

Knocking on doors, selling to small mom-and pops, even grilling right on the sidewalk, word of Sweet Baby Ray’s savory taste spread like wildfire. By 1994, Sweet Baby Ray’s distinctive bottle could be found on grill pits and dinner tables across the Midwest. With their sights now set on the rest of the US, Larry, David and Mike took to the streets again. From 1996 through 1999 sales soared. Sweet Baby Ray’s also became the BBQ Guru to the taste of Chicago (that’s 4 million visitors and a ton of napkins). By the end of the century Sweet Baby Ray’s US sales had topped 500,000 cases annually.

Sweet Baby Ray’s has become the fastest growing BBQ sauce in America and the #1 premium BBQ sauce in grocery. Tomorrow, maybe the universe.

Okay, the story is cute but lacks any real information about the sauce, and last names, and correct event names…

It was 1985.  Check.

In Chicago.  Check.

A boy named Chef Larry. Huh?  His first was Chef or he was a Chef?  How did he become a Chef as a boy?  What’s his last name or is it Larry?  Okay, since Sweet Baby Ray’s won’t tell me, I’ll look it up myself…  They must be talking about Chef Larry “Duce” Raymond.

Mike Royko Rib-Off.  Huh?  Oh, you mean the Mike Royko Ribfest…  You’d think if they beat 700 entrants and won a #2 award, they’d remember where it came from…  There’s some more math that doesn’t add up.   The story on BBQ Expo (link above) about Larry Raymond states that Larry is the nephew of David Raymond.  The SBR story says Dave is Larry’s little brother.  But, maybe there are 2 Dave’s in the family.  Larry, Darryl and Daryl (anyone remember Newhart?).  The BBQ Expo story goes on to say that he grew up around food service and has been in it for 12 years and he initially realized his passion at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.  So the guy that perfects a family recipe as a boy, wins the “rib-off” and launches an entire line of BBQ sauces in 1985 didn’t realize his passion until 2002?  A story on SBR Catering’s website is written apparently by Dave “Sweet Baby Ray” Raymond about his brother Larry and how they got started and in 1989, they finally incorporated and became a national brand.  I guess after that success, Chef Larry decided to work the Olympics vending food and become an actual chef by attending Kendall College?

This story isn’t entirely unbelievable but there are certainly some holes in the timelines.   The BBQ Expo story says that “Duce” (a nickname not used in the SBR story) talks about his BB experience from the Taste of Chicago, Naperville Rib fest, and Wrigley Field but doesn’t mention Mike Royko and the famed birth of Sweet Baby Ray’s once.  Weird.  This guy is the “inventor/perfecter” of one of the fastest growing nationally distributed BBQ sauces and it’s not mentioned once in a 2008 bio?

But why was Chef Larry vending at the Olympics?  Granted,  it’s a big event and I’m sure a big money maker but for a part owner in a company that distributed 500,000 cases by 2000, running a food vending stand 2 years later doesn’t seem right.  And only then to discover you had a passion for culinary arts?

I’m sure I could continue to pick away at the story and I’ll cut them a little slack, they didn’t write the BBQ Expo article so maybe that writer got confused.

So, back to marketing hype…  Original.  It’s right there on the front of the bottle with the story about a 1985 award winning (2nd place, the bottle doesn’t say this of course, just award winning) sauce.  It would be reasonable to assume that the sauce in the bottle with the 1985 award winning story on the back and “Original” on the front would in-fact be that same recipe.

However, I am 99.999% positive that Chef Larry “Duce” Raymond and his nephew/brother didn’t run down to their corner Chicago supermarket and pick up a bottle of high fructose corn syrup as young boys.  They probably didn’t pick up sodium benzoate either.  But that’s what in this bottled slop.

It does taste good, no doubt about it.  I’ve made BBQ sauce from scratch.  It’s not that hard to make and I’ve got a few recipes that would blow Sweet Baby Ray’s out of the water so for me, their sauce isn’t the boss.  In all of my BBQ sauce recipes, I never call for high fructose corn syrup.  And if I did, I wouldn’t put honey on top of it.  And if I did, I wouldn’t put molasses on top of that.  And if I did, I wouldn’t put corn syrup on top of that.  And if I did, I wouldn’t put sugar in it.  But that’s what Sweet Baby Ray’s has done in their “original” recipe.

Here’s the ingredient list:

• high fructose corn syrup
• vinegar
• tomato paste
• honey
• modified food starch
• contains less than 2% of:
  • salt
  • natural flavor
  • caramel
  • pineapple juice concentrate
  • spices
  • sodium benzoate as a preservative
  • natural smoke flavor
  • molasses
  • garlic
  • corn syrup
  • sugar
  • tamarind

SWEET is right!  5 sweeteners in each bottle.  5!  YIKES!

How does this break down?  Well, a serving size is 2 tablespoons.  Nobody uses 2 tablespoons, come on, you pour it all over your meat, don’t lie, I know you do because we did it too.

In 2 tablespoons  you get 300mg of sodium!  That’s 8% of your RDA (for adults), that’s more than a slice of pizza and you get 17g of carbs, 15g from sugar.  There’s no fiber, no protein and like Sunny D, it has half of what makes up Benzene.  I just don’t think this was Chef Larry’s original 2nd place award winning recipe and as mentioned above, I did send an email to Sweet Baby Ray’s asking them to clarify their story and claim of being “original” and they have not responded.  It’s been 5 days, I’ll give them a little more time, then I’ll call.

One note, Sweet Baby Ray’s isn’t the family owned enterprise they claim it to be, it’s either owned by Ken’s Foods which is based in Marlborough, MA, not Chicago, IL, or it is bottled and distributed by Ken’s Foods.  I haven’t been able to get a clear answer on that one yet.  Ken’s Foods owns the Sweet Baby Ray’s domain name and they do his a listing for Sweet Baby Ray’s on their own website.

If you’re looking for a good BBQ sauce, you can make your own (I’ll put some recipes up soon) or you can try Biff’s Blue Ribbon.  It’s a small-batch, locally produced sauce that comes in a good old canning jar, handcrafted by Biff himself in Puyallup, WA.  Biff is apparently a strong man because my wife had a hell of a time getting the lid off the jar.

Or, go back to Bulls-Eye which is now HFCS free.  You should still read the labels on the Bulls-Eye to make sure they aren’t using some other nasty in there as a sweetener.  Always, always, ALWAYS read your labels.  If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.  If you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it!

This is always a good test, read the label and if there’s something you don’t know what it is, ask a store clerk that you’re looking for the potassium benzoate (or whatever it is on the label).  If they can’t find it in the store in its own container for you to buy individually (in the food sections, not automotive), DON’T EAT IT!

Alright, so maybe that’s Tony the Tiger’s pitch line for his HFCS infused cereal that is also sweetened with more sugar…  We’ll get to that in later posts.  In this one I want to talk about something that isn’t as quite as bad as Sunny Delight, but is marketed just about the same way to adults.

Kellogg’s® Nutri-Grain® Cereal Bars

Kellogg's® Nutri-Grain® Cereal Bars - Blueberry

I’m going to focus on the blueberry concoction in this post because that’s what we still have in our pantry.  We aren’t eating it, the box just sits there, half empty.  I thought about putting a Mr. Yuck sticker on it so the kids my wife watches during the day don’t reach for it.

Kellogg’s markets this little gem as a Blueberry filled cereal bar that is “Made with REAL fruit” and as having “MORE of the WHOLE GRAINS your body needs”.

More whole grains than what?  You would think a statement like that would need to be backed up.  Like, “MORE of the WHOLE GRAINS your body needs than BARK” or something like that.  But it’s not.  It’s just out there.  Sitting on the front of the box, calling to you from the shelf saying, “I’m healthy…  Eat me…”

Let’s see how healthy it really is.  I’ll do the same here that I did with Sunny D and break down the ingredients.  This will be a little more involved than Sunny D because there’s a lot more ingredients in these, but what the hell, it’s early on a Saturday and I really don’t want to help my wife with the dishes.

Here we go…  We’ll break it up like Kellogg’s does and look at the crust and then the filling, first up is the crust:

• WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS – Alright!  Good stuff, we like whole grain rolled oats.  Good source of thiamine, iron, and dietary fiber and they have beta-glucan which helps Type 2 diabetics control their blood sugar level.  Well, that’s good thing because as you read on, you’ll see that they are gonna need all the whole grain rolled outs they can get if they eat this breakfast abortion.
• ENRICHED FLOUR – Here’s how this works.  It’s white flour.  During the processing to make white flour, the nutrients are lost.  The FDA requires they be put back in.  That’s what the list below is, it’s what it started as and what they put back into it.
  • WHEAT FLOUR – This is what it was.
  • NIACIN – also known as vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid. It’s good stuff, we need it, may prevent alzheimer’s like symptoms and has been proven to reverse atherosclerosis by reducing total cholesterol, triglyceride, very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL); and increasing high-density lipoprotein (HDL).
  • REDUCED IRON – Iron (II) fumarate.  Pure ferrous fumarate has an iron content of 32.87%. This means that one tablet of 300 mg iron fumarate will contain 105 mg of iron.  We need iron, it’s not a bad thing.
  • THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1] - A vitamin of the vitamin B complex, found in meat, yeast, and the bran coat of grains, and necessary for carbohydrate metabolism and normal neural activity
  • RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2] – is an easily absorbed micronutrient with a key role in maintaining health in humans and animals.  We pee it out everyday so we need it to go back in.  It’s also used as a food coloring.
  • FOLIC ACID – Vitamin B9.  Another good one for us.  It does all sorts of good things like help women get pregnant and men from having a stroke trying to get women pregnant.
• WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR - Like the enriched flour above, this is not processed the same way, you’d think they could have just used this and not the enriched flour but what do I know?
• SUNFLOWER AND/OR SOYBEAN OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS – Sunflower oil, check AND/OR Soybean oil, check.  WTF is TBHQ? Tertiary butylhydropquinone.  Now you know why they just said TBHQ.  But what is it?  It’s a highly effective preservative for unsaturated vegetable oils and many edible animal fats.  It also has shown precursors to stomach tumors and damage to DNA in lab animals in high doses. 
• HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP – Again, we all know what this is by now but in case you don’t.  It’s a sweetener that is metabolised like ethanol in your body.  IT’S BAD FOR YOU!
• SUGAR – Because the HFCS just wasn’t sweet enough, they tossed in a little sugar.
• HONEY – Ugh…  As if the HFCS and sugar weren’t enough…  Honey is good stuff, why couldn’t they just use honey and nothing else?
• DEXTROSE – dextrorotatory glucose.  A monosaccharide (or simple sugar) that is a very important carbohydrate in biology.  Some would say that glucose is the essential fuel for ALL life forms on the earth.  It’s a sweetener, not a strong one, but it is yet another one in the long list of sweeteners in this thing.
• CALCIUM CARBONATE – This is a common substance found in rock in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, pearls, and eggshells.  You’ll find it in antacids, tootpaste, etc.  It’s not bad for you.
• SOLUBLE CORN FIBER – This is a prebiotic fiber that is often used in sweeteners like Splenda.  It adds fiber to your cereal bar.  It’s clean tasting and dissolves in water.
• NONFAT DRY MILK – Not necessarily bad for you but if you remember the Chinese baby formula melamine scare, it was the “dry milk” substitute.  We don’t know where Kellogg’s got their dry milk but I guess we’ll have to trust them…
• WHEAT BRAN – Good stuff, has iron fiber and all that goodness the body needs.
• SALT – Okay, we do need salt.  About 2,400mg (just over 1 tsp) per day.  But just how much we are getting is something we overlook.  Just 1 Kellogg’s bar gives you 4% of your daily value.  Add 1 serving (8 oz) of Sunny D and you just got 11%.  It doesn’t take long to blow past your daily value of sodium.
• CELLULOSE – Okay, here’s the problem.  WHAT cellulose?  There are so many different kinds.  I’ll assume they are talking about the most common organic compound on earth type of cellulose.  It’s also used to make cardboard, paper, cellophane and rayon.  There are some who convert it to cellulosic ethanol to burn it as an alternative fuel.  I don’t know why it’s in your cereal bar.
• POTASSIUM BICARBONATE (LEAVENING) – It’s an odorless, tasteless salty substance that is used in baking.  It’s also used in dry chemical fire extinguishers.
• NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR – Again, we don’t know what these are and I hate it that they don’t break this down.  Natural AND artificial WHAT?
• MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES – Doubling up again…  monoglycerides are used in baking to improvevolume and create a smooth, soft crumb.  There is also on monoglyceride, 2-arachidonoylglycerol, which is a full agonist of the cannabinoid receptors.  Lucky us, anyone got the munchies?  Diglycerides, they use this to mix oil and water, or something like that which doesn’t like to be mixed.  It’s fairly common in baking.  Tonya has some for her cakes to mix the food coloring into the icing.
• PROPYLENE GLYCOL ESTERS OF FATTY ACIDS – Same as above.  They put a lot of this stuff in to get all the ingredients to mix well and look pretty in the wrapper.  Personally, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.  If nature didn’t want it to mix, why are we forcing it?
• SOY LECITHIN – Oh yum.  It’s an emulsifier and a lubricant and is used in pharmaceuticals as a protective coating on pills.  This is the stuff they use in candy bars to keep cocoa and cocoa butter to stay mixed.  It’s not bad for you and some studies may show it’s a good thing but it’s gone back and forth with no real proof either way since the 1920s.
• WHEAT GLUTEN – It’s a stabilizing agent, a thickener that is created by washing wheat flour dough with water until the starch dissolves.  What’s left is an insoluble mass called, wheat gluten.  Wheat gluten can be found in a lot of things and sometimes in things you wouldn’t expect, like ice cream or ketchup which causes a problem for people with celiac disease.
• NIACINAMIDE – This is the amide of nicotonic acid (B3).  After they processed the flour they put niacin back in so I don’t know why they included this.  It has many uses, acne medicine, chemo-sensitizing agent and skin whitener.  All good things (if you’re white and have cancer) but I just don’t know why it’s in a cereal bar.
• SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE – This is another emulsifier, a pretty common one and is popular because you don’t need as much of it as other emulsifiers, about 1/10th less.  Nothing bad has been discovered about this but again, why so many emulsifiers in this?
• VITAMIN A PALMITATE – This is an additive usually found in non-whole milks.  Perhaps that’s how it got in there but I see no mention of any dairy products…  Again, not bad, but why is it added.  You should have all the vitamins you need from the raw, natural product.
• CARRAGEENAN – This is a polysaccharide that is extracted from red seaweed.  It’s also used as a sexual lubricant and microbicide.  Yum.
• ZINC OXIDE – We need zinc.  Again, don’t know why it’s added.  It’s also used to prevent corrosion in nuclear reactors, cigarette filters, concrete and rubber manufacturing.
• REDUCED IRON – Not going to dive into that, iron is good, but again, why add it?
• GUAR GUM – This is usually the ground endosperm of guar beans.  I know, that sounds nasty doesn’t it?  I may do a whole separate article on guar gum but it appears that research does back and forth on it being good and bad.  I don’t know exactly what it is and I’ve never eaten a guar bean so other than being a way to get more bang for the dough buck, I don’t know why you’d eat it.
• PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6) – You know what this is.
• THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1) – And this
• RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2) – And this.
• FOLIC ACID – And this…

WOW…  And that’s just the crust…  Again, there are a lot of “good” things in there, but if you didn’t process some of the ingredients so much, you wouldn’t have to add all that crap in there…

Now to the filling…

• HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP – Again?  So the crust is sweet, then the filling is sweet…
• CORN SYRUP – And because it just wasn’t sweet enough…
• BLUEBERRY PUREE CONCENTRATE – Okay, I like blueberries, I guess it is made WITH real fruit.
• GLYCERIN – My wife uses this in her icing,
• SUGAR – What!?  Are you kidding me?
• WATER – Okay…
• SODIUM ALGINATE - Sodium…  from algae.  It’s an emulsifier, a flavorless gum that increases viscosity.
• MODIFIED CORN STARCH – Because regular corn starch wasn’t good enough…
• NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR – And what are these?  Who knows…
• CITRIC ACID – We all know what this is from the Sunny D article.
• METHYLCELLULOSE – this is a hydrophilic powder that dissolves in cold, but not hot water (cool!).  It’s used as a constipation treatment, is the main ingredient in K-Y Jelly (really?  two lubricants in one bar?), glue, and is the same stuff the Sea Shepherd uses to throw on the Japanese whaling boats to make the deck slippery.
• CALCIUM PHOSPHATE – This is the principal form of calcium found in bovine milk and is what most of your tooth enamel is made of.
• MALIC ACID – This is used to give the blueberry filling a tart taste.  It’s what makes unripe fruit taste sour.
• RED #40 – Also known as Allura Red AC.  This is one of those additives found by the British FSA to cause behavioral problems when mixed with sodium benzoate (which is in SunnyD).  It causes lower IQ and hyperactivity.  This food coloring was been phased out of the UK in 2009 and in the rest of the EU, this coloring is NOT recommended for consumption by children.  We don’t care if they eat it here…
• BLUE #1 – Brilliant Blue FCF.  This is one of the colorants that the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group and the Feingold Association recommends you eliminate from the diet of children.

Granted, there is a lot of healthy stuff in this thing but it’s masked over by HFCS on top of sugar on top of honey on top of more HFCS on top of sugar mixed with stuff that causes hyperactivity.

Sorry Kellogg’s,  this is NOT a health option, come on, 2 sex lubricants?

Oh Jack, I can’t wait to see you on TV again (rumor has it, he’ll be doing something in February).

Jack LaLanne was way, WAY before his time but the things he said then are even more true today.  Jack has numerous feats and accomplishments in his life, just take a look at his site and you’ll see a list of them.  The funny thing about them is that NONE of them were done before the age of 40.  When most people are having a mid-life crisis, Jack said “Do – Don’t Stew”.  And he did.  Jack has all sorts of LaLanneisms as he calls them:  ”Your waistline is your lifeline”, “The food you eat today is walking and talking tomorrow”,  ”If it tastes good, spit it out”, “Eat right and you can’t go wrong”.

Today, Jack is 95 and still going strong.  Still swimming, still jumping around, healthy as a horse.  Sure he has good genes, but unlike Transformers, there really isn’t more to Jack than meets the eye, he’s told everyone everything there is to know and it seems that as a nation, we just didn’t really listen to him.  Just read your labels and you’ll see what Jack was talking about.  Your tomato soup isn’t tomato soup.  Your turkey sandwich, is that really turkey?  Just because it says, “made with” or “made from” doesn’t mean that it IS all that.

My toilet gets filled with stuff made from peanuts, want to eat it?

Echo requested in a comment that I talk about Sunny Delight (Sunny D), so I will.

Sunny Delight has got to be one the worst things you can give your children or drink yourself.  You’d be better off drinking a Coke, or a beer, or a shot of Whiskey.  What makes this even worse is Martina.  Martina, Martina, Martina.  How could you?

Martina McBride has teamed up with Proctor & Gamble (the makers of Sunny D) to promote their bottled toilet liquid and hook kids young and old into consuming this dietary nightmare.  You can learn more about it here:  http://martina.sunnyd.com

The promotion is to show Martina how your kids “shine” which happens to be the name of her new album.

Martina, you really should look at what you’re promoting before signing the deals.  You’re just another greedy punk looking for more money in your pocket at the expense of our health.

Well, if they drink Sunny D, I’m sure they DO shine…  From the canola oil, I hear it gives you a good coat…

That’s right, canola oil, it’s in your Sunny D.  Now, I’ve had a lot of orange juice in my time but I’ve never thought to myself, “you know what would make this OJ REALLY good?  Some canola oil…  And to top it all off, barkeep, toss in some modified cornstarch and a few dashes of Yellow #5 and #6.”

MMMMMMMM, now that’s goooood…

About all I can say is, WTF, P&G?  You people disgust me.

And speaking of orange juice, well, Sunny D IS NOT ORANGE JUICE.  It COULD contain orange juice, but it might not.

Sunny D contains 2% OR LESS of the following juices:  Orange, Tangerine, Apple, Lime, Grapefruit.

2% OR LESS.  The rest is apparently nuclear power plant run off mixed with water.

Show them how you GLOW, not shine.

The ingredients in your Sunny D “orange juice” (I call it “orange juice” because even though they don’t claim that it is orange juice, it is sold right next to the REAL orange juice in your grocery store.  You don’t find waffle mix next to sauerkraut, but you’ll find Sunny D next to your OJ).  Anyway, the ingredients in your Sunny D tangy original style are:

WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP AND 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING: CONCENTRATED JUICES (ORANGE, TANGERINE, APPLE, LIME, GRAPEFRUIT), CITRIC ACID, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), NATURAL FLAVORS, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, CANOLA OIL, SODIUM CITRATE, CELLULOSE GUM, ACESULFAME POTASSIUM, NEOTAME, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE, POTASSIUM SORBATE AND SODIUM BENZOATE TO PROTECT FLAVOR, YELLOW #5, YELLOW #6.

Lets break it own down for everyone…  And trust me, if this doesn’t make you want to barf, well, have a Sunny D, it has stuff to prevent barfing (see below)…

• WATER – Self explanatory (let’s hope it’s not Dasani or Aquafina)
• HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP – Also, we should all know what this is, it’s a sweetener that is metabolized in only your liver (poison) and possesses the same 8 of 12  metabolic side effects as ethanol (alcohol).
• 2% OR LESS JUICES – Okay, I won’t rip those apart but come on, you couldn’t use 2% or less of JUST OJ?
• CITRIC ACID –  This is used to flavor the Sunny D like OJ since they are using juices other than OJ.  It’s also a preservative and can be found in household cleaners.  It’s not necessarily bad, just unnecessary in your juice if it were REAL juice.
• ASCORBIC ACID – They use this to add Vitamin C, which you could get if it had more than 2% OJ.  Oh, it’s also used in plastic manufacturing.  Again, not all bad, but not needed as an additive in your OJ.  Ascorbic acid is needed in all living animals or you’ll die from scurvy.  Lots of animals make it in their livers, we (humans), guinea pigs and some primates can’t make it, so we have to eat it.
• THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE – Vitamin B1.  Good stuff, funky name.  Again, not really needed as an additive, but they want to market their product as something to get your daily vitamins, so drink up…
• NATURAL FLAVORS – So you don’t use 2% OR MORE juice and you have to add “natural flavors”, we just don’t know what those are.  Poop has a natural flavor, so does bark and dirt.
• MODIFIED CORNSTARCH – Other than “WHY?”, why is it in my OJ?  Well, it’s a degraded corn starch (apparently modified sounds better than degraded, nobody wants to eat degraded corn starch) that’s used as a thickening agent, stabilizer or an emulsifier.  After all, your Sunny D needs a little body, how about some corn starch?  It’s also used in pharmaceuticals and paper.
• CANOLA OIL – I mean really, WTF!!!?  Canola oil is an edible oil produced from either rapeseed or Brassica Campestris (field mustard or turnip mustard).  I have absolutely NO idea why it’s in your bottle of Sunny D.  Nothing comes to mind, I can’t even follow the logic behind it.  Maybe it holds those natural flavors on your tongue so you want to have more, I just don’t know.
• SODIUM CITRATE – Sounds sort of simple I guess, salty citrus?  It’s a flavoring agent.  You know what else it gets used for?  And this is perfectly understandable after looking at the ingredients.  It’s used in the UK as an oral solution before general anaesthesia for caesarian sections to keep the expectant mother from vomiting. I guess Sunny D puts it in too keep you from barfing up their HFCS and canola oil mixture.  Sodium is the key here however, just like soft drinks…  We’ll get to it…
• CELLULOSE GUM – Sounds harmless enough, it’s not.  They aren’t calling it what it is and it ties in with the above ingredient (which we’ll get to later).  This is actually sodium carboxymethyl cellulose.  That’s right, more sodium.  It’s a bulking agent, a thickener, how it became a “gum” is beyond me, once again, marketing over truth.
• ACESULFAME POTASSIUM – Here we go, because enough HFCS wasn’t enough.  This is a calorie-free artificial sweetener.  You can find it your grocery store under the names Sunett or Sweet One.  Some animal studies have shown that this aggravates hypoglycemia.  Sunny D just wants to sweeten their…  shit.
• NEOTAME – Ahhh, neotame.  Don’t know what neotame is?  $10 says you do (I won’t actually give you $10 if you don’t), you probably know it as NutraSweet.  Another sweetener.  Here’s something that’s sort of funny, neotame is considered an alternative sweetener to HFCS because it’s cheaper and sweeter than HFCS, I guess Sunny D spared no expense to make sure you got the sweetest bottle of crap juice around…
• SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE – Good god, here we go again…  more sodium…  It’s used here as a sequestrant.  A kind of preservative.  It’s also used as a whitening agent in your tooth paste.  Now your kids can really SHINE for Martina!  ”Come on little Johnny, swish, gargle, swallow, Martina wants to see your pearly whites!”
• POTASSIUM SORBATE – Guess what that is.  Bet you can’t…  the potassium SALT of sorbic acid.  It’s a preservative.  Just more salt, and they mix it with…
• SODIUM BENZOATE – Oh, more salt.  This is the sodium salt of benzoic acid.  Sunny D uses this and the above ingredient to “protect flavor”.  Want to see something really cool?  Get through this and I’ll show you below…  You’ll LOVE IT, I promise…
• YELLOW #5 – Also known as Tartrazine.  It’s completely synthetic and causes the most allergic and intolerance reactions of ANY azo dyes, especially in asthmatics.  It can cause asthma attacks and hives in children for up to 72 hours in very small doses.  It can also cause thyroid tumors and hyperactivity.  About 360k Americans are sensitive to Tartrazine.  What’s azo?  Azo dyes are synthetic COAL TAR
• YELLOW #6 – Sunset Yellow…  This is a sulfonated version of Sudan I.  Remember that big scare in the UK in 2005?  Sudan I.  Sudan I is a known mammalian carcinogen.  It causes cancer in your liver and bladder and comparisons between animals and humans CYP strongly suggests that the carcinogenicity data can be extrapolated to humans.  Sudan dyes are illegal as food additives in some EU countries. So why is it in your Sunny D?  On 6 September 2007, the British Food Standards Agency revised advice on certain artificial food additives, including E110 (Yellow#6). Professor Jim Stevenson from Southampton University, and author of the report, said: “This has been a major study investigating an important area of research. The results suggest that consumption of certain mixtures of artificial food colours and sodium benzoate preservative are associated with increases in hyperactive behaviour in children.  Professor Jim Stevenson, the lead researcher, stated, “However, parents should not think that simply taking these additives out of food will prevent hyperactive disorders. We know that many other influences are at work but this at least is one a child can avoid.”  Sunny D has both in the list of ingredients.

Okay, here’s the really cool part I told you you’d love…  Now, I’m no chemist so I may be way off here and this may never actually happen, but you never know, follow me on this one and we’ll see were it goes…  By the way, if there are any real chemists out there, I certainly welcome any and all corrections.  I believe in truth, even if it makes me wrong.

Mix sodium benzoate and potassium benzoate and what do you get?

Benzene.

What’s benzene?

A known carcinogen.

But there’s no  potassium benzoate in Sunny D.  That’s right, there isn’t.  But potassium benzoate is used as a preservative in many other food products, including “juices”, sparkling drinks, soft drinks and pickles.  You’ll find it in a number of Pepsi products as well as some Tropicana juices.  Just be aware, you may not want to mix your Sunny D with any other “juices”.

Benzene can be used to clean machinery parts.  It was also put in gasoline to prevent knocking before the 1950s.  It’s still used in some gasolines but in the UK and the US, it can’t be more than 1%.  Benzene is also the primary component in many plastics, synthetic rubber, dyes, detergents, and some pharmaceuticals.  Workers that produce benzene often develop leukemia.  Benzene is strictly regulated by OSHA and the EPA, but the FDA couldn’t give a shit if ingredients combine inside your body to produce it, so long as it’s not benzine before it goes in your mouth, they say it’s all good.  Benzene is one of the most dangerous but widely proliferated industrial compounds in existence.  It is estimated that up to half a million people each year are exposed to this deadly chemical, and research shows that as little as one day of exposure can have effects that last a lifetime.

Pretty cool huh?

So what’s it all mean, all those ingredients?  I said we’d get to it on the sodium part.  One serving of Sunny D original tangy style is 8 ounces.

In those 8 ounces, you get 90 calories, 22g of carbs (20g from sugar) 7% of your daily value, and you get a staggering 170mg of sodium.  170!  That’s more than Coke!  That’s a slice of pizza!

So what’s sodium do?  Well, it does the same thing in your Sunny D as it does in Coke, it makes you thirsty so you drink more.  Nobody has 8 ounces of Sunny D, they buy the 64 ounce bottle.  That’s 8 servings!  176g of carbs, 56% of your daily value and 1,360mg of sodium.

Sunny D IS NOT THE HEALTHY CHOICE.

If you look at the Sunny D website:  http://www.sunnyd.com you’ll see families playing together on the beach and you can read about how they want to be in all the schools, just ask your cafeteria to carry it.

All I can say is please, if you love yourselves and you love your children, don’t buy Sunny D and call your schools to ask that they carry 100% REAL orange juice.

Sunny D is poison.  Sunny D is a carcinogen.

DO NOT DRINK IT!

I feel like I sort of came up short on all of this Sunny D talk, there’s so much more to say about it but I think I’ll leave it at that and come back to it in future posts as I figure out more about the ingredients.

The only way to close it all is with the wisdom of Jack.  “If man made it, don’t eat it.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down already, I would have fallen over.

Kyrie.  Our very own little human food processor set down her chocolate pudding last night and said, “I’m full, daddy.”

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard her say that.

What’s different?  No HFCS in any of the food and it was all cooked from scratch (by me).  She had half of a BBQ pork sandwich and a small bowl of my parmesan baked potato soup.  That’s it.

She didn’t scarf it down by any means, I’d say she finished in 20 minutes or so.  We all sat on the couch watching Heroes and ate our dinner and about 30 minutes after we were all finished, it was dessert time.  Chocolate pudding.  I got her about 1/4 cup of pudding in a bowl, she took a few bites and that was it, she couldn’t finish it.

That was so unusual for her, I’ve never seen her turn down anything that has chocolate in it.

The only thing I can attribute this change in appetite to is the no HFCS.

It is my understanding, and I may be wrong, I’m not doctor, that HFCS does not cause or interact or prevents (I don’t know which) the bodies release of insulin and something called leptin which both generate an adiposity signal.  This signal tells your brain, “stop eating, the body has had enough”.  Tonya and I noticed this as well, especially with the soup, a small bowl really filled us up and we were content for a few hours after that.

From all that I can tell, Post Cereal is one of the good guys.  I may have overlooked one of their brands but from what I can see, none of their cereals contain HFCS.

BUT, their Honey Bunches of Oats does contain artificial flavors.  I guess I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

For the most part, I think Post is one of the good guys, they were the only one I saw on the shelf that had a box of cereal that said No High Fructose Corn Syrup.