I went to KFC for lunch today, and for my biscuit, I grabbed what I though was honey. Upon inspection of the packet it labeled itself as “Colonel’s Honey Sauce.” If it wasn’t for the word “Sauce” on the packet, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it, but that little qualifier made me look at the ingredients:
High fructose corn syrup, sugar, corn syrup, honey, caramel color.
Honey is the second to last ingredient! Is plain old honey that expensive? Does corn syrup really need to be mentioned twice? Honey is almost elemental, the workers don’t need to get paid to make it, just package the stupid stuff! Why did we need a replacement for honey?
I ate it. Since I already had in my mind that I wasn’t going to like it, it tasted watered down, very little like actual honey. Taste is so subjective, and easily swayed by the mind, I wonder if I would’ve noticed the lack of taste if I hadn’t noticed the wording on the package…
What other straightforward foods have been replaced by specially designed food-like substances? I know the stand-up comedians loved mentioning the “cheese food” product. Anything else?
Maple Syrup, replaced by maple-flavored high fructose corn syrup. The real stuff is more expensive and harder to find, but is nearly as economical since you need less of the stuff to impart a flavor.
High fructose corn syrup is not, legally or otherwise, the same thing as just plain old corn syrup.
And I’m sure that the honeybee disappearance “crisis” is severely affecting the price of honey. If you can’t get any, it costs more. So to speak.
Corn syrup will be next because of the idiot farmers who are taking feed corn out of production to burn as ethanol. That’s already driving the prices of many foods up, including ones you wouldn’t suspect. (Like milk and dairy products, since cow feed, made from corn, has doubled in price.)
Food substitutes are there for one reason: because you the consumer will not pay the real price of the things they’re giving away for free.
This one is much ado about nothing. All “American cheese” is cheese food. If you go to the fanciest deli or highest-class dairy in the world and ask for American cheese, and they give you something other than cheese food, you’re getting ripped off. Cheese food just means that you take one or more cheeses, melt it all together, and let it re-solidify. This improves its properties for some cooking applications, and lets you uniformly blend cheeses with different flavors, textures, etc. It’s still made from 100% cheese.
Good info Otto. I probably should’ve looked that up.
The honeybee crisis does explain this. Still, it didn’t taste like honey (in my opinion), next time I’ll have to take my own. Damn the price! I deserve honey!
To answer garygnu, though, I have been sick of seeing high fructose corn syrup in everything for a long time, but Americans refuse to eat anything that is not sweet. Witness the OP, who needs honey on a biscuit. Or go to any thread about food or drink on this board to find people who only consume sweet things, and require that everything they eat be packed with sugar (or sugar substitute). There are even members on this board who refuse to drink water because they don’t like the taste.
Is it really any wonder Americans have obesity issues, with all this high fructose corn syrup in absolutely everything? It’s only there, however, because we all demand it.
I didn’t say it costs almost nothing to produce, I said the workers (bees in this case) don’t need to get paid.
But, you’re RIGHT! Collection and packaging are the only thing to it (after the initial investment in the apiary). That’s it! I’m done with injection molding, and production machining! Anybody willing to trade a beehive for a milling machine? Do you think engineering skills would transfer over well to honey collection?
The above post is being said (typed) with my tongue in my cheek
This is especially rich considering KFC’s latest commercial, touting its fare as “real food, which requires a fork and a knife”. (I was already shaking my head at that one–who the hell eats fried chicken with a knife and fork?)
