07 August, 2009

Dollar Store Nightmares: Butter Blend Spread Solids

I swear, the refrigerated sections of dollar stores are the nutritional equivalents of stepping outside Vault 101 in Fallout3. Check out this "spread," which we are led to believe is supposed to be analogous to butter:


"Butter Blend Spread Solids." The very name sounds like something wet and vaguely chunky that got caught in an industrial filth strainer. A quick check of the ingredient list shows that both "water" and "palm kernel oil" appear near the top of the list, and "butter" down towards the bottom, which should give us all a pretty good idea of the type of thing we're dealing with here.

Also, because my sense of humor seems to have stopped developing sometime around eighth grade, I laughed when I realized that their logo seems to have been borrowed from an an ASCII representation of a penis. 8===>



2 comments:

Steve said...

LOL, nice ASCII reference. Love it.

I'm curious... if there's "No Trans Fat" what does the asteric note? "Except when there is?"

Dave said...

Good catch with the footnoted "No Trans Fat" label. It's possible that my crappy cellphone camera made it too blurry to read, but that actually says:

No Trans Fat - Per Serving*

With the asterisk referring to the note under the product title reading: "See nutrition information for fat and saturated fat content."

Thanks to the vigilant guardians of food purity at the FDA, the United States is the only country in the world where foods with less than 0.5 gram of trans fat per serving can be labeled as having NO TRANS FAT. Who defines a "serving?" Oh! The manufacturer printing the label! That is so comforting. I sleep much better at night knowing that taxpayers are saving a buttload of money by allowing the industry to not only make up their own rules, but police their enforcement as well.