OH BEANS…

My good buddy Matt was in town for the weekend, so we stopped by the store for groceries.  He watched me pull a jar off the shelf.  “What’re you getting?” he asked. 

“Crunchy peanut butter,” I replied, placing the jar in the cart. 

“Man, there’s something wrong with it.  Look at the top.”  He indicated where oil and whole peanuts formed a top layer in the jar.

“That’s because this is real peanut butter,” I said.  He looked confused.  “Haven’t you ever bought peanut butter before?”

“Sure, but it didn’t look like it was going bad.”  He pulled another jar — a different brand — off the shelf, to show me.

“My jar reads, ‘Peanuts, salt’ as the entire ingredients list,” I said.  “So there aren’t emulsifiers to trap the oil.  I pour off a lot of it, mix in what’s left, and — being just peanuts and salt — it’s tastier than the other stuff.  Read your peanut butter’s ingredients.”

“Ummm….’Peanuts and sugar, molasses, hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed), salt, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, mono-and-diglycerides.’”

“Matt, I’m not sure how mono-and-diglycerides or rapeseed oils are supposed to make peanuts healthier or taste better.  There’s already plenty of oil in the peanuts, as you can see from the top of my jar.  If I want mine stabilized instead of rising to the top, I’ll stick it in the fridge.”

I got the feeling my friend didn’t read food packages much.

I was planning on making tacos later in the week, so I reached for a container of sour cream, because my daughter Jasmine loves to dip tacos into it.  “Check this out,” I told Matt, handing the container to him.

“Cultured cream, skim milk, whey, modified corn starch,” he began.  “Why is there corn in the dairy product?  Gelatin, sodium phosphate, guar gum, carrageenan, sodium citrate, calcium sulfate, and locust bean gum.’”

“Locust bean gum?” I repeated.

“That’s what it says.  What part of a locust does a locust bean come from?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“What’s yours say?”

I read from the container of Daisy brand sour cream.  “‘Grade A cultured cream.’  That’s it.  I can’t understand why anyone would think adding all that other crap, to something that can be accomplished with cream and enzymes, is a good idea.”

The vanilla ice cream I bought had “Milk, cream, sugar, vanilla beans” as its only ingredients.  Matt was familiarizing himself with his old friend the locust bean on another container.

Makes me think whichever guy in the FDA approves this stuff should be treated to a week-long diet of tasty mono-and-diglycerides, guar gum, and calcium sulfate, just like his grandmother used to make.

“‘You know what the perfect spices would be in your food, my dear?  Calcium sulfate and sodium phosphate,’” I said in an old lady voice.  “Geez.  Must’ve been some Grandma that kid had.”

It reminded me of when I lived in Massachusetts, years ago:  The best bread I bought there in a store had “Whole wheat flour, water, yeast, salt” as the only ingredients.  The usual bread on the shelves had a list of ingredients as long as the palm of my hand.  That got me started. 

Now I always read the labels.  I don’t think I wanna serve my four-year-old guar gum, carrageenan, mono-and-diclycerides, or calcium sulfate if I can avoid it.  Not to mention locust beans, tasty as those might be to that guy from the FDA.