Monday, February 12, 2007

Make Mine Vanilla

Food bugaboo of the week:

You see it everywhere now, vanilla milk, vanilla yogurt, vanilla creme, but not many people know that vanilla is the new codeword for sugar. In fact, if you scan the ingredient list on a "vanilla" item, there's a decent chance you won't find "vanilla" listed as an ingredient, but it's a lock that you'll find sugar (aka corn syrup, cane syrup, cane juice, rice syrup--sorry, it's all sugar).

My particular favorite is soy "milk." Regular soy milk is already loaded with sugar. Many health conscious people, who wouldn't dream of putting chocolate milk on their cereal or feeding it to young children buy vanilla soy milk, which has almost as much sugar as chocolate milk.

...and if it says "very vanilla," do not pass go, go directly to diabetic coma.

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