Tuesday, September 04, 2007

terribly early in the morning

Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Eat Yogos

Since I often read mommy blogs, I’ve read about Yogos occasionally.  I often like what kids like, so I finally caved and bought some Yogos last week.  Ugh, these never should’ve been made.  First of all, they taste nothing like yogurt and nothing like fruit.  They’re nasty.  Not only are they nasty, the ingredients show exactly why they taste nothing like fruit OR yogurt, despite their description of “Yogurty covered fruity dots.”

Check out these ingredients:  SUGAR, COATING (SUGAR, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL AND PALM OIL†, CALCIUM CARBONATE, NONFAT YOGURT POWDER [CULTURED WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, CULTURED SKIM MILK, YOGURT CULTURES; HEAT-TREATED AFTER CULTURING], NONFAT MILK, REDUCED MINERAL WHEY, COLOR ADDED, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SALT), CORN SYRUP, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, APPLE PUREE CONCENTRATE, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF WATER, PECTIN, CORNSTARCH, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), CITRIC ACID, SODIUM CITRATE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MALIC ACID, CARNAUBA WAX, COLOR ADDED, YELLOW #5 LAKE, CARMINE COLOR, YELLOW #6 LAKE, YELLOW #6, BLUE #2 LAKE, BLUE #1 LAKE.  The only “fruit” they contain is apple puree concentrate.  And that, that is why they taste like, well, nothing found in nature.  The concept is good though, little fruit balls covered with yogurt, so why couldn’t they actually put the fruit in them and make them healthy for kids to eat?  The first ingredient should be fruit, but it only makes an appearance a little bit before WAX, which is why, like I said, they taste awful.

If your kid likes them, replace them with yogurt covered raisins or fruit roll-ups or something that doesn’t make me gag.  At least the first ingredient in my Fruit Roll-Ups Stackerz is grape from concentrate...and the second ingredient is sugar.  Heh.  Or splurge and get the Stretch Island Fruit Leather - it tastes good AND it’s all fruit.  No wax!  No artificial colors!  No sodium!  Now I’m sad, all I have are my fruit roll-ups and I want fruit leather.  Damn.  At least we bought a big ol’ watermelon.  We went grocery shopping at 2am and we were the only customers in the store.  It was so nice and peaceful.  They turn the lights down, and except for it being hard to see inside what’s on the shelves in the frozen food section, it’s great.  Try shopping in the middle of the night sometime.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

the wee hours

The Artificial Sweetener Denial Experiment

Well, it’s now been quite a while since we gave up artificial sweeteners and the verdict is...we feel the same.  Sure, we may have prevented an aspartame brain tumor, but we don’t know that.  All we know is that it’s a whole lot more inconvenient to make single serving beverages in bottles of water.  I got an iced tea maker for my birthday (Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker - 3qt) and we’ve been making delicious iced tea - fruit medley from Adagio and passion tea from Tazo, the same stuff you get at Starbucks.  Frankly, I think our new beverages are slightly tastier than our artificially sweetened (we use Stevia in the fruit medley & Sugar Shots in the passion tea, because it’s too strong for the rather expensive Stevia to sweeten) beverages of yore, but is it worth the trouble?  Meh.  Who knows.  Like I said, we feel the same...exhausted and sore, but did that have anything to do with artificial sweeteners?  I guess not.  Perhaps it’s not fair to do any sorts of food/beverage related tests when our stress level is at 12, on a scale of one to ten.  I would think the stress would overwhelm everything else.

Artificial Sweetener Denial Experiment - Inconclusive!