Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those bugs in the peanut butter stories, although there are other important things to know about your peanut butter as you will see below. What I want to talk about is food that isn’t exactly what it appears to be.
The next time you go grocery shopping, you can be more aware of what you are buying. Changes in regulations and food formulas are happening faster than changes in our perceptions. We might think we know what we are eating, but a closer look at the food labels may reveal a lot.
We assume, for example, that when we buy a jar of peanut butter that it is peanut butter, but that may not be the case. In fact, if you look closely, your peanut butter may actually be a peanut spread. That is because new formulas designed to appeal to the health conscious or simply save money may not qualify to be called peanut butter. Peanut butter has to contain at least 90 percent peanuts, and peanuts can get reduced to reduce fat. Additional ingredients that are not normally found in peanut butter, such as honey, may also disqualify your peanut butter from being called peanut butter.
Another fact that you might not know, is that strawberry is one of the hardest flavors to replicate artificially. Sometimes it takes more than 50 different chemicals to make up a strawberry flavor in ice cream, for example. Benzyl isobutyrate, phenythyl alcohol, and amyl acetate are just three of those 50. So if that sort of recipe disturbs you, look for natural products or pick a different flavor!
Thanks to the advertising cheese wars, many of use know that cheese may not actually be cheese. Velvetta, for example, is proud to be a “cheese food.” But did you know that many cheeses that we take for granted also don’t contain much cheese? American cheese for example.
Since cheese is strictly regulated, there are different classifications on which “cheese” can actually be called cheese. For example, pasteurized process cheese product contains less than 51 percent of actual real cheese. What makes up the test? Usually emulsifiers, flavorings and stabilizers.