phantom fruits

[kittenscribble]

I am sad to note that, although my yogurt container is labeled "Strawberry Banana" and indeed tastes of both fruits, neither of these fruits are actually mentioned in the ingredients list. Instead, I seem to be ingesting milk and sugar, mixed with corn syrup, gelatin, and random chemicals.

I may have to ask p_sunshine for yogurt-making help. Because now I really want yogurt with actual fruits in.

Comments

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

This is a conversation I've had with some of my foodies in the past - real v. fake flavors, and what the actual difference is. What, then, are your feelings on Sucralose (aka Spenda)? Chemically it's identical to normal sucrose but that it's mirror-image, which doesn't occur in nature. So it reacts the same way on your taste buds, but the chemicals that actually break down the sugar for digestion/absorption can't do their thing because they're all designed for the right-handed molecule, not the lefty). And the aftertaste issue has to do with the fillers they add so the stuff "measures like real sugar!", that's not the taste of the sugar itself.

Also, if you look at those cheese-and-crackers snacks you can find in gas stations and vending machines, they say "Real Cheese!" on the package but don't mention much in the way of the stuff in the ingredients. There are, however, apparently the components that create cheese... which appears to be good enough.

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

Generally I like my food to be honest; if I'm going to eat sugar, let it be sugar. If I have too much sugar, there's always exercise. Same goes for cheese, butter, bacon, all the good stuff -- I feel I evolved to eat sucrose, fructose, and natural fats, and I'd do best to continue doing so.

Not to say that I'd turn down a chemical meal, but given the option, I go for cane sugar every time.

(Since I don't use Splenda, it's moot, but as for the "measures like real sugar" issue -- what's wrong with putting something on the label that says "if you want to use for baking, multiply by 3/8" or whatever the ratio is? People would get used to it, and you wouldn't get aftertaste issues.)

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

"measures like real sugar": sucralose tends to come in three forms. The one that measures tablespoon-for-tablespoon like real sugar for sweetness is diluted something by something like 4 orders of magnitude, and it's that 99.99% not-sugar that gives it the funny taste. There's a less-diluted one that is easier to measure with a conversion factor like you mentioned, and then the pure form - which almost no manufacturers use - is an ultra-sweet liquid with absolutely no aftertaste at all, because it's *just* the actual sucralose molecule and nothing else. Real sugar isn't all sucrose, it's just honest sucrose mixed in with a bunch of naturally occurring fillers (well, natural to varying degrees, but for the most part) that you grew up with, so they don't have what you can recognize as an aftertaste. The fructose/glucose/sucrose mix in cane or table sugar is very similar that in high-fructose corn syrup, yet one tastes distinctly different from the other.

As for evolving to eat sucrose, fructose, natural fats, etc. rather than their synthetic siblings: true, though the inane quantity of them that's available now and the built-in dopamine pleasure rewards for eating them makes it easy to over-consume. Many people would rather over-consume, reap the pleasure rewards, and figure out a sneaky way to circumvent the consequences. (As an aside, the quantities in which you evolved to consume those things are WAY lower than those in which they are available now - substituting the fake sugar that you don't actually digest isn't going to cheat you of the opportunity to practice processing the natural stuff, just mitigate the quantities. Then again, you eat much more health-consciously than most.)