Butterscotch

When I was a child, I'd salivate at the very sight of packaged sweets and beg my mom to buy boxes upon boxes of Twinkies and Little Debbie's Nutty Bars. Today, you couldn't even pay me to put these things in my mouth.

When I was eleven, my dad took the Mountain Dew I was sipping and showed me an ingredient on the can. "I use the very same stuff to clean the outside of my buildings."

Needless to say, I've been soda-free for twelve years.

Let's take a look at what's in a Twinkie: Enriched bleached wheat flour, sugar, water, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable and/or animal shortening, whole eggs, dextrose, modified corn starch, glucose, leavenings, sweet dairy whey, soy protein isolate, calcium and sodium caseinate, soy flour, salt, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, soy lecithin, cornstarch, cellulose gum, sodium stearoyl lactylate, natural and artificial flavors, sorbic acid, yellow 5, and red 40.

And then let's take a look at what's in a Chip's Ahoy! Peanut Butter Chunky cookie: Enriched flour, palm oil, peanut flavored drops, sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, partially defatted peanut flour, skim milk, whey, peanut butter, dextrose, salt, soy lecithin, sugar, semisweet chocolate chunks, molasses, leavening, ammonium phosphate, salt, high fructose corn syrup, whey, caramel color, soy lecithin, and artificial flavor.

Sure beats a homemade chocolate chip cookie that contains butter, flour, eggs, chocolate chips, vanilla extract, sugar, and brown sugar, huh?

Next time someone makes fun of me for eating organic food, they should take a look at one of these boxes and find out what's actually in these "sweets".