About those groceries ...warning

[Ontario Chick]

This is going to be a rant !!!

In the Seventies, when Horrowsmith Magazine started publishing and I had 3 growing boys to feed, it made me delve deeply in to food quality available at the time, and made us pack up and do the "back to the land" bit.
We grew lots of our food, supplemented by products of local farmers.....

Now that we have "aged out" of that kind of hard labor, it has become a great source of frustration to do any kind of food shopping.
Even if I ignore the cost, and it is very hard to ignore, what prompted this rant was Farm Boy Cranberry Cocktail "All Natural" !!
looking at the new label , I noticed the "All Natural" is MIA and the original picture of cranberries on the front has been replaced by a picture of red liquid.....
that sent me to the INGREDIENT label ,
the original bottle had first ingredient Water, second ingredient cranberry juice
the new bottle has first ingredient water, second ingredient, wait for it...SUGAR !!!!!!

And odly enough, the new cocktail has no Iron and no vitamin C , so they have actually managed to produce cranberry cocktail with no vitamin C

[Killerbunny]

OK so DH went into our local "Superstore" which ain't so super here. Picked up a pack of toilet rolls which were on sale. Got to checkout and the cashier said that since he didn't have an "Optimum" card he must pay full price. He was told to get one but he refused because you have to give too much info and get flooded with spam. Went to leave it there and she then put it through at sale price. I mean WTF! Good job we don't use the store too often.

[Ontario Chick]

Reply from Farm Boy to my "vitamin C lacking" complaint
I am waiting with a bed breath

*****************************************************
Farm Boy
Hi Hana,

Thanks for your inquiry regarding our Farm Boy Cranberry Cocktail. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

Upon receipt of your inquiry, I shared it with our Regulatory Affairs Team so that they can provide more information from the vendor. This may take some time, but as soon as we have more information I will provide you with an update.

Sincerely,
Nicole
Customer Care

[Shnookie]

I like Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail. I noticed that it is not the same. It tastes more like sugar than cranberries. It used to leave a bit of a cranberry aftertaste and be more sour. The first 3 ingredients on it are water, sugar and reconstituted apple juice. Reconstituted cranberries show up further down the line. I don't drink it much any more. Did you notice that most of the juices on the store shelf are now in plastic bottles instead of cartons? Even tomato juice is in plastic, not in tin cans any more. Yuck. I've noticed that a lot of foods that are stored in plastic don't taste as good as they used to. Some have a taste or an odor of plastic as well.

The world complains about plastic pollution but there is more and more plastic used in all kinds of products every day. Banning plastic grocery bags is just a drop in the bucket.

[Ontario Chick]

I stopped using the Ocean Spry Cranberry cocktail when the cranberries were no longer the second ingredient after water.
That is now several years ago, oddly enough at that time the third ingredient after water and sugar was grape juice.
Apparently ANY fruit will do , and you can still call it Cranberry

I hear you on the plastic containers. I think I am going back to Pure cranberry juice in glass bottles, expensive, and I better pay attention that it doesn't morph in some other fruit.

[Shnookie]

My friend buys large bags of frozen cranberries and makes her own juice. I think I will try that. They might be on sale for Christmas.

[Brebis]

I’ve had a similar example as well. I really liked the Metro Maple Dijon salad dressing. I noticed my last bottle was getting low so got a new one and was curious that it was in a different bottle with a different label design. Today the old bottle ran out and I got out the new one and was stunned to see the new one was 350mL vs 475mL of the old one but really disappointed when I tried it and it isn’t anything like the old one. I can’t remember the price of the new one but I’m sure it was similar in price…

Comparing the ingredient list, the first ingredient in the new version was water vs Canola oil for the earlier one. The old version was really nice but as well as adding more water they’ve added other spices such as turmeric which I love in curries but in this case overwhelmed the maple and Dijon flavours…will not buy this again!

[Kbr42]

Okay, I'm going to weight in here, since Farm Boy was sold, lots of things have changed.,the quality in most of the FB products have gone for a . Their lemon garlic salad dressing was awesome. We used if for everything. You put it in the fridge and it stayed separated. And it was about 25 cals for a tablespoon. After the company was sold. That products was totally changed. They used sunflower seed oil, cals shot up 125 cals per tbps and you couldn't remix it after it went in the fridge. You would have to wait until it warmed up. We complained and they changed the oil to something else. They never put back the original recipe, my guess it was too expensive. So, we stopped buying it.

[Brebis]

It seems that food science these days is used to try and cheapen food without much thought to how it tastes. Processors and large grocery chains don’t really care and expect consumers will go along with it because it’s cheap.

[Farrier]

That is now several years ago, oddly enough at that time the third ingredient after water and sugar was grape juice.
Apparently ANY fruit will do , and you can still call it Cranberry

When you see grape juice, think fructose. They can call it grape juice, but it has been fractioned so it is almost all fructose.
And look for the labe juice. Coctail means it can be just about anything that pours.