Hola there!
When it comes to grocery shopping I don’t limit myself to one store. I go to Costco, Natural Grocers, my local Kroger, Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, etc. Trader Joe’s has some great products, but it needs to work really hard on their prepared and packaged foods and also on most of their specialty treats.
While grocery shopping, I usually spend a lot of time looking at food labels. I don’t eat gluten, but I had family visiting and my husband eats gluten as well. This looked like an innocent indulgence…
My family loves Panettone, it was part of the holiday tradition while I was growing up. I made the mistake of buying this pumpkin panettone while in a hurry, trying to convince myself that if it was made in Italy it shouldn’t contain all the crappy ingredients we find in our foods here in the U.S. Right? Wrong!!! That was a big mistake!
Among all the crap that is in our food nowadays, high fructose corn syrup might have won the crown for being the king of nasty food fillers. The high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) industry is pretty sneaky and has come up with many different ways to call it so to confuse the consumer into thinking they are avoiding it.
These are some of the names used in an attempt to disguise HFCS:
- Maize syrup
- Glucose syrup
- Glucose/fructose syrup
- Tapioca syrup
- Dahlia syrup
- Fruit fructose
- Crystalline fructose
In Canada, it can be called “glucose-fructose.”
In Europe, you can find it as “isoglucose.”
Bottom line, if the label doesn’t say “sugar” or “cane sugar,” you can assume that the sweetener used is some form of High Fructose Corn Syrup.
HFCS producers actually petitioned to be able to call it “corn sugar”. The FDA denied this petition. Though, with all those other fake names around, it is still pretty easy to miss…
That is all for now! This panettone is going back to Trader Joe’s…
xoxo,
t.
Sources and further info:
http://hsionline.com/2013/01/31/spot-high-fructose-corn-syrup/
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/a-new-name-for-high-fructose-corn-syrup/?_r=0
hola carrot! 