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Where’s My Peeps?

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Peeps: the blazing yellow and hot pink marshmallow bunnies and chicks that were hatched over 50 years ago. They’re called PEEPS because the original candy was the yellow chick.  Now they’re produced for many holidays – in seasonal colors and shapes, of course –  and they continue to be the subject of lots of design contests (you’d be amazed what you can make out of peeps) and scientific experiments (some claim them to be indestructible). Just Born, the parent company of PEEPS, claims to produce enough PEEPS in one year to circle the Earth twice.

PEEPS have been the number one non-chocolate Easter candy in the US for more than a decade. Although yellow is America’s favorite color for PEEPS chicks and bunnies, they also come in pink, lavender, blue, orange, green, and other seasonal colors.

What’s In Them?

They’re made of sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, and less than 0.5% of potassium sorbate, natural flavors, dye, and carnauba wax, and they are gluten and nut free.  (No wonder some claim that they’re indestructible!) You can even get sugar free PEEPS made with Splenda.

Five little chicks (42g, listed as one serving size) have 140 calories, 0g fat, 1g protein, and 36g carbs.

PEEPS Preferences

Some people like their peeps nice and soft.  Others leave them out in the air to age to perfection so they get a little crunchy on the outside.  They’ve been microwaved (careful, they expand and can make quite a mess), frozen, roasted, used to top hot chocolate, and added to recipes. They don’t toast well on sticks like regular marshmallows – the sugar coating tends to burn.

 

Jelly Beans: What’s Your Favorite Color?

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Jelly beans —  little nuggets of sweetness that come in multitudes of colors and flavors.  Their gummy insides might have originated centuries ago from the treat, Turkish Delight.  Their outsides are basically the same as the colored hard candy coating, developed in the late 17th century, for the Jordan almond.  The modern jelly bean appeared during the American Civil War when Boston’s William Schraft encouraged sending candy to Union soldiers.  Because of their egg shape they became popular as Easter candy around 1930.

Although standard jelly beans come in fruit flavors, there are now so many flavors — some goofy, some sophisticated — like spiced, mint, gourmet, tropical, popcorn, bubble gum, pepper, and cola.  They also now come in a sugar free version (seems weird, but true – wonder how many chemicals are in those).

What’s In Jelly Beans?

Jelly beans are primarily made of sugar and also usually contain gelatin, corn syrup, modified food starch, and less than 0.5% of citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial flavors, confectioners glaze, pectin, carnauba wax, white mineral oil, magnesium hydroxide, and artificial colors (takes some of the fun out of them, doesn’t it).

They may give you Technicolor insides, but they are fat free.  On average:

  • 10 small jelly beans (11g) have 41 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 10.3 grams of carbs.
  • 10 large jelly beans (1 oz or 28g) have 105 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 26.2g carbs.
  • 10 Jelly Bellies have 40 calories, no fat, no protein, and 10g carbs.

Some Jelly Bean Trivia

  • Jelly Belly jelly beans were invented in 1976. They were the first jelly beans to be sold in single flavors and to come with a menu of flavors.
  • It takes 7 to 21 days to make a single Jelly Belly jelly bean.
  • Very Cherry was the most popular Jelly Belly flavor for two decades until 1998, when Buttered Popcorn took over. Very Cherry moved back into the top spot by only 8 million beans in 2003.
  • Jelly Bellies were the first jelly beans in outer space – sent on the 1983 flight of the space shuttle Challenger by President Reagan.
  • Enough Jelly Belly beans were eaten in the last year to circle the earth more than five times.

How You Eat Your Oreo Says Something About You

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Oh, Oreos!  We must love them because we eat 20.5 million of them a day.

Over 491 billion Oreo cookies have been sold since they were first introduced on April 2,1912, making them the best selling cookie of the 20th century.

They were first baked at the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) factory, which dates from the 1890’s, that runs from 15th to 16th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in New York City.  Now called Chelsea Market, it is a bustling office and food complex.  This photo is of an Oreo label that is showcased in the main lobby.

 

The Original Oreo

Nabisco’s new idea for a cookie was two chocolate disks with a creme filling in between. Early Oreos looked a lot like today’s Oreo with just a slight difference in the design on the chocolate disks.

Originally they came with either a lemon or vanilla creme filling. In the US they cost 25 cents a pound and were sold in cans with glass tops so customers could see the cookies. The vanilla creme filling was more popular and production of the lemon filling was discontinued in the 1920s.

Today they come with a whole bunch of different fillings like mint, chocolate, caramel; double stuffs; chocolate coatings; and colored holiday fillings.

Oreos weren’t the first sandwich type cookies on the market. Sunshine introduced Hydrox in 1910 two full years before Oreo’s debut. But it seems that Sunshine fell short in its marketing because Hydrox never became as popular as Oreo and production stopped in the mid 1990s.

Oreos:  An Interactive Food

One of the keys to Oreo’s success is its interactivity.  Think about it – you don’t just eat it — you can dunk it, bite it, or twist it apart.  Oreo lovers, psychologists, and food writers have all speculated about whether the way someone eats their Oreo indicates a personality type.

According to a History.com video, in 2004, Kraft (Nabisco is now a Kraft brand), surveyed over 2000 Oreo eaters and found that they are divided into three categories:

  • Dunkers tend to be energetic, adventurous, and extremely social. 87% of dunkers say milk is their liquid of choice for dunking.
  • Twisters — and who hasn’t twisted an Oreo – (I personally think it makes the Oreo last longer ‘cause you get two cookies) – tend to be emotional, sensitive, artistic, and trendy.
  • Biters are easy going, self-confident, and optimistic.

The survey also discovered that more women tend to be dunkers while men tend to be biters.  And, Democrats tend to twist, Republicans tend to dunk!

 

Some Stats

A serving of regular Oreos, 34 grams, has 160 calories, 7g of fat (2 saturated), 25g carbs, 1g protein,1g fiber, and160mg sodium.

According to the Nabisco label, there are about 15 servings in an 18 oz. bag. After checking lots of sites, the general consensus is that there are around 3 cookies in a 34 gram serving.  It sure would be nice if Nabisco would give us the stats per cookie rather than for 34 grams so the consumer could have more useable information!

 

A Healthy Eating Lesson On The Subway

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New York city, uptown #2 train, Saturday night.  Not too crowded, most people are wearing their subway stares – avoiding eye contact, eyes glazed over, ipod earbuds in place, bodies rocking with the motion of the train.  My trip isn’t long enough to pull out something to read, so I start to scan the ads that run above the seats– something I’ve entertained myself with since I was a little kid.

One whole side of the subway car I was in was filled with posters for New York City’s “Are You Pouring On The Pounds” campaign — aimed at teaching people to reduce their sugar intake (and lose or keep off weight) by cutting down on sugary drinks. It also encourages New Yorkers to drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead of the sweet stuff.

The posters are filled with liquid pouring out of bottles of soda, “sports” drinks or sweetened iced tea and turning into blobs of fat as it reaches the glass. Large graphics leave you with no doubt about the number of teaspoons or packets of sugar in each drink — or the total amount of liquid sugar that you could drink daily – as shown in the photo above.

For example: a 20 ounce bottle of soda is equivalent to 16 packets of sugar and a 32 ounce gigantic size cup – the kind so popular in movie theaters, gas stations, and arenas — contains the equivalent of 26 packets of sugar.

Do You Forget To Count The Calories You Drink?

It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. But, many people who gain weight — and can’t figure out why — forget to include the calories in what they drink.  Sugary drinks can add hundreds of calories and they don’t even make you feel full.

On average, Americans now consume 200 to 300 more calories each day than 30 years ago, with nearly half of those calories coming from sugar-sweetened drinks. A survey of adult New Yorkers shows that more than 2 million drink at least one sugar sweetened soda or other sweetened beverage each day – often at 250 calories a pop. Teenagers who drink sugary beverages get an average of 360 calories from them each day.  (They’d have to walk 70 city blocks to use up that many calories.)

Some Facts

A teaspoon of sugar weighs about four grams and each gram of sugar has four calories – or about 16 calories per teaspoon of sugar. On average, Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day – the equivalent of around 350 calories.  (Added sugar refers to the extra, empty calorie, added sweeteners, not the sugar that naturally occurs in foods like fruit and milk.)

The quickest way to decrease some of that sugar is to cut down on soda and sweetened drinks.   Sugary drinks, including sweetened tea or sweetened water that claims to be healthy, account for about one-third of added sugars.

Eating large quantities of sugar can lead to obesity and health problems like diabetes and heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends a daily max of six teaspoons of added sugar for women and nine teaspoons for men.  That’s quite a bit less than 22 teaspoons Americans generally average.  Too many spoonfuls of sugar may create the need for medicine rather than making it easily go down!

Does The Label On The Front Of The Food Package Tell You The Whole Truth?

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I was recently helping a client learn how to interpret nutrition and ingredients labels of food products.  He clearly wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of spending the extra time to read labels.

It does take time.  But, you don’t have to do it for everything.  It’s particularly important to get a feeling for products that might have a laundry list of ingredients.

It’s also really important if something screams “healthy,” “loaded with fiber,”  “reduced calorie,”  “contains a day’s worth of nutrients,” and a whole host of other “you’ve got to buy me because I’m great for your health” claims.

 

Does The Front Of The Box Tell You The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth?

There just might be a kernel of truth surrounded by a great big blob of calories, sugar, chemicals and other stuff.

My client pulled out an Oats and Chocolate Fiber One Chewy Bar that his wife had bought for him.   She thought that with140 calories per bar and a label emblazoned with “35% daily value of fiber,” it must be a good snack.

The Facts

According to the nutrition label, each bar has 140 calories, 4 grams of fat (1.5 grams are saturated fat), no cholesterol, 95mg of sodium, 29 grams of total carbohydrates (9 grams of which are dietary fiber and 10 grams are sugars), and 2 grams of protein.

The calorie count isn’t bad, there isn’t too much sodium, there are 9 grams of fiber, but there are also 1.5 grams of saturated fat and only 2 grams of protein.

The ingredients label:  chicory root extract, semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural flavor), whole grain oats, high maltose corn syrup, rice flour, barley flakes, sugar, canola oil, glycerin, maltodextrin, honey, tricalcium phosphate, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, salt, nonfat milk, fructose, malt extract, cocoa processed with alkali, baking soda, caramel color, natural flavor, mixed tocopherols added to retain freshness.

Hmmm:  It seems that eight ingredients are sugars or forms of sugar:   # 2 (semisweet chocolate chips), 4 (high maltose corn syrup, 7 (sugar), 9 (glycerin), 10 (maltodextrin), 11 (honey), 17 (fructose), 18 (malt extract).

Not only are there a whole lot of ingredients for a 140 calorie bar, there sure is a whole lot of sugar.  Nine grams of fiber may be 35% of the daily recommended amount of fiber, but this bar is filled with sugar – 8 of its ingredients are sugar and this measly140 calories is using up a full 10% of the recommended daily value of sugar for a 2000 calorie diet.

 

What Do You Think?

The 35% of your daily fiber label on the front of the package is true – BUT – with this much sugar, 1.5 grams of saturated fat and only 2 grams of protein, is this a healthy food?