I've blogged about undercover veggies before. Not sure what your definition of undercover veggies would be, but mine would be pureed vegetables.
Unfortunately that's not Mott's definition.
Mott's definition is adding concentrated carrot juice, cucumber juice and bell pepper juice to apple sauce.
Vegetable juice is most assuredly not a vegetable.
And that's not all. The ad copy reads,
"There is now one serving of fruit and veggies in each delicious cup"So there's one serving of fruit and one serving of veggies in each cup, right?
Wrong.
If you follow the symbol to the fine print you'll discover that according to Mott's definitions of fruits and veggies there is 2/3 of a serving of fruit and 1/3 of a serving of veggies in each cup.
Funny thing though, despite Fruitsations +Veggies claiming to provide 2/3 of a serving a fruit and 1/3 of a serving of veggies each container has only half the fibre and 1/40th the Vitamin A of one lonely carrot.
So what do you actually get with a container of Fruitsations +Veggies? A container full of sugary mush where 80% of its calories come from sugar and where nearly all of the vitamins, phytonutrients of fibre of fruits and vegetables have been stripped away.
Yum?
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My kid tries to get me to believe this crap. My husband insists that pumpkin pie is a vegetable too.
ReplyDeleteAnd we will, from time to time, have pumpkin pie with dinner--as a side dish. It's one of my daughter's favorites and not too hard to make from scratch. Yes, it has more sugar and fat than any other vegetable dish I cook (and I make it with cream--yum!), but even our kids' pediatrician didn't seem too concerned when my kid mentioned it
DeleteBut the question I ask with the pumpkin pie (and even foods like the applesauce whatever mentioned above) is, "What is this replacing? What's the context of this food considering what we eat all week?"
If my pumpkin pie is replacing cruciferous vegetables once a week, and NOT replacing the starch I serve with dinner, that's probably not the best idea. If this carrot-juice spiked applesauce is replacing actual carrots and actual apples, that's a problem. But if it's replacing another commercially-prepared applesauce, I don't see what difference it makes, really.
Just curious, but I don't see sugar in the label, so all of the sugar you mentioned is "naturally occurring"? I realize they are not packed with the goodness of whole fruits and veggies, but would it be a terrible snack?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same as Lindsay. I thought applesauce is just mushed up apple with the core removed and in this case probably the skin removed too. Now I always eat the skin on my apples, but I know lots of people don't, so in their case, wouldn't applesauce be equal to eating a peeled apple? I'm assuming you'd object to the extra juices being added which are adding additional (naturally occurring) sugar? Would plain unsweetened applesauce be ok then? Obviously it's better to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, but the reality is that a lot of food bank and school food programs for low income families must rely on non-perishable items and I'd rather they get applesauce and canned fruit without added sugar rather than granola bars and fruit gummies.
ReplyDeletei occasionally eat PC organic applesauce, which if i remember correctly has an ingredient list of "apples" and "cinnamon" and nothing else. it's only 50 cals so i can't imagine it contains more than one serving of apple. my dietician says that one serving of unsweetened applesauce = 1 fruit serving. is it really that bad of a snack if you can't replace it w/ a whole fruit? ie: i use applesauce in yogurt/muesli mix i make.
ReplyDeleteI would be very surprised to learn that the manufacture of apple sauce on an industrial scale was comparable with home made. I'd also be surprised were the processing not stripping out more nutrition than would be expected simply consequent to peel removal.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is why every time I enter the grocery store, I feel like I'm on the defensive.
ReplyDeleteIt's such a terrible feeling when you're simply trying to avoid getting "tricked" into purchasing something you think is healthy, but really isn't.
The only way to really be sure is to start from scratch. Reading ingredients isn't even enough anymore, since ingredients are processed in so many ways that suck the nutritional value out along the way.
I'm of two minds on this one. Yes, I tend to think that almost anything touted as "healthy" is not, and I think non-processed foods are better than processed, generally.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this seems to me to be a situation of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This product seems to be little more than applesauce. Tricked out a little and hyped a bit, but still essentially applesauce.
Linday's comment got me curious, so I looked up nutrition data on a peeled apple vs. canned applesauce on two sites (NutritionData and Wolfram Alpha), and there doesn't seem to be a whole hill of beans difference between the two. And that peeled apple indeed is about 80% sugar, just like the applesauce + veggie juice you're so horrified by.