In the past few years I have become a label reader. Before I eat anything, I read the ingredients on the label. It usually doesn't affect whether or not I eat it, but it is nice to know that I probably don't have a mono-sodium glutamate deficiency.
What is this stuff we're eating? Some ingredients are just letters, like BHA and BHT. So, I looked them up in the dictionary. BHA isn't even in Webster's New Collegiate. BHT is, according to Webster, "butylated hydroxytoleune". That's a big help.
And how about invert sugar? Invert means to turn inside out, or upside down. Apparently, someone is turning my sugar inside out. Sure saves me a lot of trouble.
Many labels say things like "No Artificial Preservatives". I guess they use "Real Preservatives".
Not only do products list all of the ingredients that a it does contain, but they also often list ingredients that a product doesn't contain. Like "Contains No Sugar", "Contains No Salt", "No Cholesterol", "No Saccharin". Why stop there? Why not "Contains No Cow Manure", "Contains No Plutonium" or "Contains No Shoe Polish"?
One of my favorite ingredients is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. If they're going to go to the trouble of hydrogenating it at all, why don't they hydrogenate it all the way?
Since I didn't know what it meant to hydrogenate something, I looked it up in the dictionary. Webster says that to hydrogenate is "to add hydrogen to the molecule of an unsaturated organic compound." Of course.
For those of you who may not remember what hydrogen is I looked that up too. Hydrogen is a "nonmetallic, colorless, odorless, highly flammable diatomic gas." Yummy.
I hope that terrorists never find out that Snickers bars may be potential bombs.
Well, I sure learned a lot today. And I lost my appetite.
