Chocolate Chip-Flavored Cookies
A chocolate chip cookie, by any other name, is a total red flag. See chocolate-chip-flavored cookies. Why is it called flavored To be called chocolate, the FDA requires that a food contain cocoa butter, and these use cheaper vegetable oils as substitutes. And yes—that partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil is code for trans fat. Better bake your own. (Try our recipe for guilt-free chocolate chip cookies made with whole wheat flour.)
Ingredients Enriched flour bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), sugar, chocolate flavored chips (sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, cocoa processed with alkali, dextrose, soy lecithin), partially hydrogenated soybean andor cottonseed oil, water, contains 2% or less of molasses, wheat protein isolate, baking powder (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate), salt, eggs, artificial flavor, nonfat milk
Caramel Syrup
This product may look and taste like the gross approximation of caramel, but industrial caramel is way different than the kind you make at home using a sugar base. Some “caramel color” is processed with ammonia, and California even added the compound that makes it up—4-methylimidazole—to its list of known carcinogens. Companies don’t have to disclose whether they use ammonia in their caramel color, so it’s best to melt your own with this DIY recipe.
Ingredients Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sweetened condensed skim milk (skim milk and sugar), water, contains 2% or less of disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, salt, artificial flavor, caramel color, xanthan gum, artificial color (yellow 6, yellow 5)
Peanut Butter That's Not All-Natural
Peanut-flavored sugar oil doesn’t have quite the same ring, but it’s far more accurate a name than your average peanut butter. What shouldn’t contain added sugar typically has at least two types, plus partially hydrogenated oil (code for trans fat). What should be on the ingredients list Peanuts. Period.
Ingredients Peanut butter [roasted peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed), molasses, salt, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil], sugar, and honey
'Frozen Dairy Desserts' Posing as Ice Cream
Gone are the good ol’ days of ice cream. Now, we’re forced to shovel down spoonfuls of frozen dairy dessert, which can’t legally be called ice cream without containing at least 10% milk fat, according to this depressing New York Times lament of ice cream lost. What frozen dairy dessert does contain is plenty of corn syrup, gums, and whey.
Ingredients Milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream, whey, mono and diglycerides, carob bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan, natural flavor, annatto (for color), vitamin A palmitate, Tara gum
Egg Substitutes
Eggs are one ingredient. But creating a faux version of them takes 20. Thankfully, eggs top the ingredient list, but it goes downhill from there the very next ingredient is a proprietary blend of natural flavor to conjure up egginess.
Ingredients Egg whites (99%), less than 1% of the following natural flavor, color (includes beta carotene), spices, salt, onion powder, vegetable gums (xanthan gum, guar gum). Vitamins and minerals calcium (sulfate), iron (ferric phosphate), vitamin E (alpha tocopherol acetate), zinc (sulfate), calcium pantothenate, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B1 (thiamine mononitrate), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B12, folic acid, vitamin D3, biotin
Instant Mashed Potatoes
Meet the mashed-potato-in-a-box, whose first ingredient is, thankfully, potatoes. (Dehydrated potato flakes, to be exact.) But they also come with preservatives, emulsifiers, flavorings, and even trans fat. At that point, good luck trying to convince anyone of potato realness.
Ingredients Potato flakes (sodium bisulfite, BHA, and citric acid added to protect color and flavor), contains 2% or less of monoglycerides, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, natural flavor, sodium acid pyrophosphate, butteroil
Maple Syrup
Check out the syrup in your pantry before you pour it on your stack of pancakes Chances are good you’ll find plenty of corn syrup (two types!) and artificial flavorings. Here, treat your pancakes to another squeeze of sodium hexametaphosphate!
Ingredients Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, water, cellulose gum, caramel color, salt, sodium benzoate and sorbic acid (preservatives), artificial and natural flavors, sodium hexametaphosphate
Blueberry Pancakes
What goes best with fake maple syrup Fraudulent pancakes, of course. Read the tiny print that says “with imitation blueberries,” and you’ll be dying to hear how to fake a fruit. Here’s the secret Take some dextrose, fractionated palm kernel oil, flour, citric acid, cellulose gum, maltodextrin, artificial flavors, two types of blue, one part red, and you’re set.
Ingredients Enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, may contain malted barley flour), imitation blueberry pieces (dextrose, fractionated palm kernel oil, enriched flour [wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], citric acid, cellulose gum, maltodextrin, artificial flavor, red 40, blue 1, blue 2), sugar, soy flour, leavening (sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum sulfate), canola or soybean oil, dextrose, salt, mono-diglycerides, guar gum, artificial flavor.
BDST: 1604 HRS, MAR 28, 2015
