Curds and What?

Healthy snacks. You may think it’s allergen safe. When looking at a vending machine and all you see are Ritz Bitz and Jax cheese puffs, Smart Food may seem like your savior. After all, it doesn’t appear to have been altered. That white powder is from the white cheese, you tell yourself. Also, it says “smart” right there on the label. I must be making the right choice. To my boyfriend, SmartFood is the devil. I mean, after all it’s cheese-covered corn! You may be only getting 100 calories for that little snack pack, but you’re also ingesting potential allergens.

I assumed that all foods labeled as healthy would be just that: healthy. Slowly but surely I’m realizing that you not only have to look at what’s left out of it (like obvious chemical preservatives and colors), but also what’s actually inside of it.

For instance, I recently opened a box of Special K Cracker Chips in the sea salt flavor. In my defense, my mom got them for me, however after seeing the commercial I was also swayed into thinking that they would be the right choice for a snack. I was expecting potential allergens, for instance soy or even gluten. I wasn’t expecting so many. Let’s take a look:

“Potatoes, potato starch, long grain brown rice flour, soybean oil (with TBHQ for freshness), whole yellow corn meal, oat fiber, contains two percent or less of sea salt, monoglycerides, salt, wheat flour, defatted soy flour, sesame flour, whey, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid, soy lecithin.”

Wow. Eight allergens, counting citric acid for its corn potential. Not to mention the preservative in the soybean oil. Now, if you don’t have any of these allergies or intolerances this is probably still a healthy product for you. However, I just wanted to emphasize just how omnipresent the allergens are. I mean, we hit the four major ones: gluten, casein, corn, and soy. We also brushed the mold allergy with sesame flour because sesame can contain some amounts of mold just like all seeds and nuts.

I was very surprised to see whey on the list. Wasn’t this supposed to be the sea salt flavor? Why in the heck would you need it? I was expecting potato and rice flours and perhaps some corn and/or soy oil! Apparently whey is a common additive in food and is difficult for people with lactose-intolerance. Although my boyfriend has casein-intolerance, we go through similar motions as those avoiding lactose in foods. I guess whey can be as sneaky as corn when it wants to be.

http://www.nowhey.org/whey.htm

(image from here)