Friday, March 30, 2012

Day 5.080: Well, "all" might be a stretch

After a busy day of work (me), organising of contractors etc (Exile #2) and school etc. We had a very nice evening - having been invited by some friends a few days ago to escape our kitchen devastation in favour of their delicious cooking in their fully-functioning one.


A few days ago, we (apart from Exile #2) were about to eat this rather less wholesome product when the girls asked if E5N1 (who is, like me, on a broadly dairy-free diet) should be allowed any.

"It says it's ALL butter."
"It doesn't mean that!"
"Why does it say it then?"
"It means that all the fat in it is butter."

But as I said it I glanced down the ingredients and began to lose confidence as I scanned down the list past soybean and cottonseed oils long before I saw the word "butter" after "contains 2% or less of each of the following".

The ingredients list is disturbingly long and it's a bit hard to read, so I'll reformat it for you but keeping the largest constituent first order.  Things are not as bad as they first appear.

Pound cake mix*, water, butter*****

So, as long as you ignore all the footnotes (and don't ask why the footnotes appear to be numbered 1 and 5), you could believe that butter is a major constituent - despite being last on the list.

But I could paraphrase further:
  • Ingredients (largest first): A mix of the ingredients in the cheapest possible cake, butter
There you go - apart from that first thing it's all butter!

It was actually OK - but definitely not terribly buttery.

Here are those footnotes in full.

* Enriched bleached flour**, sugar, vegetable shortening***, eggs, nonfat milk solids,
contains 2% or less of each of the following: dextrose, salt, natural and artificial flavor (contains milk), sodium bicarbonate, acidic sodium aluminum phosphate, xanthan gum, yellow color blend****, sodium diacetate.

** Wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid.

*** Partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils, mono- and diglycerides, propylene glycol mono- and diesters of fats, polysorbate 60.

**** Wheat starch, soybean oil, annatto and turmeric extract.

***** Cream (milk), salt.

Yum.

2 comments:

  1. This needs to go viral... what an example of how we really don't know what we're eating! Real pound cake has what, four ingredients?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha - but this one only has three*

      *yeah right! :)

      Delete

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