Sitting at my desk Monday, I scrambled to contact clients and friends in Boston. I tried to calculate who had likely finished before the horrific bombing and hoped everyone was ok. I texted a friend and prayed that with a day off from school she and her kids were not near that finish line. I didn’t hear back. Were they somehow there or were they unaffected and back to life as usual? Oh what the victims would do for life as usual.
Yesterday, I received this:
First of all I suck for not texting you back, cell service was junk last night. All OK, thanks for checking in. On a lighter note, ran into Stop and Shop this morning. I know gross but needed paper towels etc. On my way in noticed display of Sparkling Ice flavored seltzer advertised “natural flavor” on front. Grabbed two and as I was going through checkout read ingredients-lots of crap incl yellow #6, 7. I told the troll at checkout I was not going to take them. She incredulously asks “why? they are soooo good” Told her I am not that into food color. She proceeds to rip me a new one. I also had 2 Chobanis, she starts reading the ingredients and mocking me she says, “this has locust bean gum, better watch out for those locusts.”
Let’s see who’ll win this battle at the register:
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| Somehow I envision the rude register person has to have bad make-up |
Sparkling Ice
I already knew Sparkling Ice’s dirty little secrets as I had looked into as mom at school told me buying it by cases (and no. for better or for worse I didn’t circle back and tell her she was chugging carcinogens). You are much better off drinking seltzer, Herbal Water or good old water. This is one of those wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The site has images of fruit inside of ice cubes and it’s zero calories! Contains antioxidants! And uses natural flavors! What could be bad? Well a lot.
Carbonated Mountain Spring Water, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Potassium Benzoate (to Ensure Freshness), Gum Arabic, Sucralose, Green Tea Extract, Ester Gum, Yellow 5, Biotin 1% Trit. (Maltodextrin), Niacinamide (B3), D-Calcium Pantothenate (B5), Vitamin B12 0.1% (Mannitol), Vitamin D3, Pyridoxine HCl (B6), Blue 1.
I want to thank Sparkling Ice for making me laugh. In this gathering of nasty sweeteners, mutagenic dyes and decorative vitamins it’s always good to have potassium benzoate “to ensure freshness”. But why only parentheses for that ingredient, we could have fun indicating why they’re all there.
So well done Bostonian, this product should stay at Stop and Shop.
Locust Bean Gum
To be fair, what about locust bean gum? Did Stop and Shop bossy pants have a point? Is my friend eating bugs? Thankfully there are no locusts in locust gum it’s made from carob tree. It’s a thickener often used as a fat replacer. While the skeptic in me would say this doesn’t need to be there, a little fat is good when it comes to dairy I would mainline the stuff versus sipping Sparkling Ice.
It felt good to laugh and I’m grateful that I’m able to; I realize for the families’ affected will be some time before any lightness returns.
What do you think of the exchange above? Was it the cashier’s place to comment on the Sparkling Ice? Have you seen/tried Sparkling Ice? Have you been fooled by a healthy sounding product? How carefully do you read ingredients?
