Because what food couldn’t use some more sugar…

Sugar.  It is added to everything.  I was watching ‘How’d That Get on My Plate?’ last night on Food TV (on a side note, I love that show.  Every episode they take a different food item and show you how it is processed into the various things we eat.  I am always simultaneously amazed at how ingenious food producers are and sickened by how manufactured our food supply is).  In any case, they were showing how potatoes get made into everything from French Fries to Vodka.

On another side note, I discovered last night that on average each American (I am sure the statistic is the same for the British and Canadians by the way) eats 140 pounds of potatoes a year, which amounts to about 1 and 1/2 medium potatoes a day!  Seriously.  I will tackle that one in a future blog.

So, I was watching them making potato salad and I was impressed with how natural all of the ingredients looked (I was impressed because the end product didn’t exactly look as natural) as they added mayonnaise, celery, mustard and relish and spices etc, and then I just about fell out of my seat as they added a whole whack of liquid sugar…  Adding sugar to potato salad?!?!  WTF?!?  Why?  I guess anything could use a little sugar if everything you eat needs to be sweet, but potato salad?  Seriously, aren’t mayonnaise and potatoes bad enough?  Do you need to add sugar?

So I went to the Reser’s website to find the nutritional information in their foods and they don’t tell you the nutritional values for their foods on the internet.  Instead they want you to fill out a form about as complicated as a tax form to find out the nutritional information for each product, including the Use-By Date, UPC and Purchase Location (okay to be fair, those aren’t required fields, but still they are there).  It should be a law that all foods sold in The U.S., Canada and Great Britain should be required to publish the nutritional information for their products on the internet so we can research and review our options before going to a store.

As well, is there an independent testing lab to confirm that products have the nutritional information that they are claiming?  That is something I would pay my government to do by the way.  Does anyone know if there is something like this?

This got me thinking though, what is the oddest thing that  they add sugar to?  What things have you heard of that they add sugar to that surprised you?  Write about them in the comments below.