Food has always been a popular topic. The Bible reports that even in the days of Solomon food was already something a king would pray for. “Feed me with food convenient for me”, as the translator of the English Bible of 1611 put it (Proverbs 30:8), anticipating the age of convenience foods by 3000 years.
We all, of course, want food that is convenient. We want good food (it tastes good), but it should also be healthy (good for us).
There are essentially three pathways to nutritional happiness. There is traditional food: a plain cookie, for example, or Kelloggs Raisin Bran. But consumers are so skeptical nowadays that the manufacturers of the cereal thought it wise to add the phrase “With Pure Fruit” to the label, referring no doubt to the raisins and implying at the same time that other cereal makers use impure raisins. Or, god forbid, raisin flavor; or even more heinously, natural raisin flavor.
Then there is takeout food, i.e. food that has something taken out, like cookies baked without salt and/or sugar. Or milk for example. Milk leads in the take out category. You can have it with fat and all, or else without any of the fat or with some of it, by percentage points. Most other dairy products are also available without fat or with low fat content. The latter kind are sometimes called “lite” which means that even the orthography was taken out. The choices here are either taste or health. You cannot have both at the same time. I am prepared to do without the fat, but I draw the line when it comes to fat free half and half. I see this as a logical dilemma.
And then there is food that has something added, perhaps stewed tomatoes with added garlic, thyme, basil, oregano, basil and oregano, pineapple, or papaya, the variations are endless. I think the prize in this category goes to coffee. Some coffee may still taste like coffee, but beware the Mad Mixer. He is the playful gnome that lives behind the roasting pans, thinking up new flavors. If you don’t pay close attention to labels your coffee may taste of vanilla, cinnamon, mocha, buttery caramel, almond, banana, blueberry, chocolate, chocolate mint, coconut, hazelnut, or peanut butter, to name a few varieties.
We must not forget the extreme convenience foods. There is, for example, a certain kind of salad dressing. The 355 ml bottle, the label indicates, is free of calories, sugar, fat, carbohydrates, gluten, and cholesterol. There is nothing left in it, it seems. If you now just remove the lettuce as well you needn’t even wash the salad bowl. How convenient is that!
Or Maple Grove Farms’ “Low Calorie Syrup with Butter Flavor”, a substance that has nothing whatsoever to do with butter, or with maples for that matter. But it is sugar free. According to the label it consists of water, sorbitol, natural and artificial flavors, cellulose gum, salt, caramel color, sucralose, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, acesulfame potassium, aspartame, potassium sorbate, citric acid, phenylketonurics, and a little phenylalanine.
God may have made the Leviathan for the sport of it (KJV, Psalm 104), but surely he would not have played with Solomon’s syrup for the sport of it. Even the Old Testament God who could be pretty inscrutable on occasion would not have sent him butter-flavored artificial manna with sugar free syrup for the “hellth” of it, would he?
No, God knows better but Mr. Wilton is less concerned with the details of what you eat: Wilton’s chocolate sprinkles, for example, contain sugar, cornstarch, cottonseed oil, cocoa processed with alkali, soy lecithin, dextrin, glaze, natural flavor, artificial flavor, and carnauba wax, a substance that is also used on cars and floors in addition to chocolate sprinkles. But don’t let me stop you. They are delicious on vanilla ice cream.
Which in turn may contain guar gum, locust bean gum, carrageenan, xanthan gum, polysorbate 80, mono- and diglycerides, and possibly artificial vanilla flavor and gelatin. If we are what we eat I am surprised we have not all turned purple yet, or something.
© 2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credit medicalnewstoday.com