How d'you like dem apples?


If you read food labels as carefully (compulsively?) as I do, you'll notice that the first, second or third listed ingredient (and hence the first, second or third most plentiful ingredient) of many "100% fruit" or "No Added Sugar" drinks is apple juice or concentrated apple juice. This is because apple juice today is an excellent sweetener - packed full of sugar, and with little acidity or complicated flavor to interfere with the other tastes in the drink. Thus, a juice manufacturer can truthfully claim not to have added "sugar" (as in corn syrup or other refined sugar), while sweetening its products to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable from the 10% fruit juice stuff - in taste as well as nutritional benefits. Oh, poor, bland apple, unwitting co-conspirator in the capitalist co-opting of noble (or at least, sensible) desires to live and eat more healthily.

( Bad Apple, Good Apple )

Tags: apples, food, recipe, snottiness