You know the feeling of witnessing a car crash? It’s horrendous but you just can’t look away? Well, that’s the same feeling I get when I see people buy light products.These are probably nice yet desperate people trying to lose weight, shoving down fat free mayo, butter (that actually isn’t butter!) and low fat ice cream in their baskets.
I am imagining that the inner dialogue that goes on in their minds (and probably yours too) goes as following:
- I reeeeally want something fattening and/or sweet!
- You can’t have it you fat cow - think of all the calories. You disgust me.
- I know. But if I take the light option which only has half the calories and then go to the gym tomorrow, can I please buy it?? Pleeease?
- *sigh* Fine.
- YAY, thank you, thank you!
- You know you won’t go to the gym.
- ...I know.
- You disgust me.
And so on and so on. My point is that a lot of people will choose the lighter option because they think it’s healthier and better for them. And why would they not think that? The commercials for light products all loudly proclaim the miraculous option of enjoying something sinfully fattening – without fat! To be perfectly honest – it does sound a lot more logical to choose the low fat and the low sugar option. I mean if you are eating something unhealthy you might as well take the healthiest option right?
WRONG.
What most people don’t understand is that, when you taking something out – you have to replace it. You see, most fatty foods are actually dependant on the fat; the oil, the butter, the lard (ew I know). The fat is the base, the most essential cornerstone. So when you remove the fat, you lose all kind of things; the flavor, the thickness, the smoothness, and the substance of the particular food mysteriously disappears. What the panicking food companies will do in a sticky situation like this, is that they will replace this poor fat with all kinds of goo. The song goes like this: Take one main ingredient out – put twenty other in!
If you like mayonnaise then you’ll probably know that it’s very fattening. One table spoon contains around 100 calories (somewhere in the world a size 0 celebrity just fainted) and it consists of egg, oil and vinegar. Yeah, it’s fattening but at least you can pronounce the names of the ingredients.
Well, a famous company that makes a very popular mayo decided some years ago to give in to the pressure of fat free society. They reduced the calories of their mayo by 50%, named it light and called it a day!
Oh yeah…and the ingredients went from the around 5 natural ones to : WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, WHOLE EGGS AND EGG YOLKS, SUGAR, SALT, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON AND LIME PEEL FIBERS (THICKENERS), (SORBIC ACID, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA) USED TO PROTECT QUALITY, LEMON JUICE CONCENTRATE, PHOSPHORIC ACID, DL ALPHA TOCOPHERYL ACETATE (VITAMIN E), NATURAL FLAVORS, BETA CAROTENE.
Yaaaay, it's like my mayo jar is hosting a partaaay!
And that butter which is like soooo not butter has gone from originally being made by...well just milk really, to a fake impersonator which consists of Vegetable Oil Blend (liquid soybean oil, liquid canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, liquid canola oil), Water, Sweet cream, Salt, Soylecithin, Vegetable mono- and diglycerides, Potassium sorbate and calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality), Citric acid, Natural and artificial flavors, Vitamin A (palmitate) and Beta carotene (for color).
I know, it’s like a bad replacement lover. You had the real deal, you cheated, and know you’re stuck with a less attractive look-a-like who snores in bed and gives you fake orgasms.
