Keeping the Junk in Junk Food

I’m not very label conscious, but someone has told me that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is bad. What is this stuff, and why don’t they hydrongenate all of it? And High fructose corn syrup seems to have replaced sugar as a sweetener. What does it all mean? I don’t know, but if you try to make my snacks healthier I certainly won’t appreciate it–and neither will anyone else.

It seems a potato chip manufacturer was trying to “do the right thing” by using cottonseed oil which does not contain any trans fat, and their customers complained. The taste, color, and greasiness were different and the company was forced to switch back to the old soybean oil recipe.

What were they thinking? If people are eating potato chips, they have already made the choice to indulge in something less healthy than say, fruit. Plus, you don’t just change a product on your existing customers. Remember New Coke?

Add comment July 20th, 2006