As we sit down to enjoy the quintessential American holiday dinner, let’s stop for a minute and contemplate what we are actually celebrating.

What started off as a harvest festival in colonial times, became an annual tradition during the civil war, and was formally observed as a federal holiday for the first time during World War 2. (Coincidence, or did people needed an extra something to celebrate during wartime?)

So what did people eat here 350 years ago?

It was all local food. Sourced from 100 miles or less. Probably much less.

The main elements of today’s meal are based on fresh local food that was available back then in the new land – the wild turkey (and other fowl), the cranberries growing in coastal bogs, the pumpkins, squash, yams, and corn.

It was also about community. The tradition of a large shared meal with family, friends, and other community members began with the first harvest festivals when the pilgrims and Native Americans sat together to celebrate together the bounty of the land.

Thanksgiving has changed form and been commercialized by big financial interests over the years, but at its core, this beautiful tradition is an ode to all that is good in this world.

– The miracle of food coming forth from the land.

– The harmony of different peoples forming a community of help and trust.

– And a minute to pause and count our blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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[Update: see Ocean Spray's response in the comments below.]

More Cranberry news today.

Here’s a dilemma for you. Let’s say you are the CEO of a successful food company that sells products both to consumers and to other food processors. And let’s assume you are being squeezed by your big corporate clients to lower the price of your product. What do you do? Do you stand by the quality of your product and take a hit on the bottom line? Or do you get the food scientists to whip up a cheaper, inferior version?

This is the story of sweetened dried cranberries (SDC), manufactured by Ocean Spray. The consumer product, Craisins, contains dried cranberries, sugar (lots), and sometimes a bit of oil. That’s the package we buy at the supermarket. However, when we buy products with cranberry, such as Nature Valley Fruit Bars and Pepperidge Farm Chewy Granola Cookies, the cranberries inside are different. They come from a new product by Ocean Spray, called “Choice”.

What you need to know:

The “Choice” product has 50% less cranberry (the expensive ingredient) and more of other stuff: sugar, edelberry juice, citric acid. Some say, it barely has any cranberry left.

Here’s what The National Consumers League (NCL), a watchdog organization, wrote to the FDA:

…the cranberry content is so small that Ocean Spray must add color in the form of elderberry juice concentrate and acidity in the form of citric acid to simulate the color and acidity of cranberries. These findings are consistent with Ocean Spray’s own claims that it uses 50 percent fewer cranberries to make “Choice” than the regular product. Ocean Spray’s marketing materials tout “Choice” as a low-cost SDC with the same taste, texture, appearance, and health benefits as other SDCs.

NCL argues that such products should not be called cranberries, because they barely contain any of the original fruit. After sending the “Choice” product to a lab, they also ask that the ingredient label (on bulk packages, we assume) be corrected to state sugar as the first ingredient, not cranberries.

If you’re wondering why some products are full of all strange sounding names and chemicals, this story exemplifies one of the many reasons – manufacturer cost reduction.

Two other well known examples are the use of high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar in soft drinks (HFCS is half the price of table sugar) and the invention of margarine as a low cost alternative to butter (at the behest of France’s Napoleon two hundred years ago).

What to do at the supermarket:

Go for products with ingredient lists that have real, understandable names. Not always the healthiest (i.e too much butter), but at least you know what you are putting in your mouth.

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If you’re like most people, this Thanksgiving you’ll be having cranberry sauce with your turkey and stuffing. But what is cranberry sauce anyway?

It’s actually more of a jam or jelly than a sauce. The tart acidic flavor of the berries is buried under an avalanche of sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) in order to create this holiday classic.

We took a look inside the label of Ocean Spray’s Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce.

What you need to know:

The product has just 4 ingredients:

Cranberries, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water

If the company had used just sugar instead of corn syrups, the list would have been even shorter and better.

Nutritionally there’s not much here, as the processing has taken away most of the fiber from the cranberries. A serving is a quarter cup, or four tablespoons. It contains 22 grams of sugar, or about five and a half teaspoons worth. Most of the 110 calories from this serving come from sugar. There are virtually no vitamins here, despite a high vitamin C content in raw cranberries (25% of the daily value).

If you think about it, a serving of cranberry sauce on the dinner plate is sort of cheating -  you’re having dessert before the main meal is even over.

In the past, and in some places to this day, the cranberry sauce is not as heavily sweetened. It adds a delightful twist to your stuffing and turkey without the empty sugar calories. Too bad Ocean Spray doesn’t have a less sweetened option.

What to do at the supermarket:

Unfortunately, all the big brand and store brand cranberry sauces are more or less the same. But if you want to make your own, less sweetened sauce, it couldn’t get any easier:

In a small pot, mix 4 cups of fresh or frozen cranberries with one cup of water and half a cup (or less) of sugar, bring to boil and then simmer until the cranberries “pop”. Cool. The sauce thickens as it cools. Best to prepare a day or two in advance.

You can also opt for an uncooked cranberry sauce. Here’s an interesting option from Maria Rodale.

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Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo has figured out just the thing women need more of.

Not fruit, not exercise, not water.

You guessed it – snacks:

Last month the US firm launched its first snack – Smartfood Popcorn Clusters – targeted specifically at women.

Following their premise that the majority of women snack more than men, [PepsiCo] said at the time of the roll out that it seeks to cash in on an estimated $650m in additional sales from women consumers.

John Compton, CEO of PepsiCo Americas Foods, presented the ’smartfood popcorn clusters’ in the context of PepsiCo’s move to ‘Introduce new products for her’.

Listed by PepsiCo in the general criteria for ‘new products for her’ are: make it convenient/portable, ‘help me control my portions’, ‘take away the guilt’, ‘take out the negatives’, make it nutritious, and make it taste ‘great’.

Read more…

What you need to know:

We took a look at the nutrition label of the Cranberry Almond SmartFood Popcorn Clusters to see how smart this snack is.

First, the ingredient list: Cranberries are listed as the #10 ingredient in the list, and almonds are #3, although their placement on the packaging is much more prominent. The #1 ingredient is Brown Rice Syrup – a type of sugar. Popcorn is only the 4th ingredient, just ahead of – sugar! Wasn’t the rice syrup enough?

The nutrition panel is actually OK. Each serving is only 120 calories, and packs 5 grams of fiber through the addition of chicory root to the fiber in popcorn. The 10 grams of sugar are equivalent to 2 teaspoons of sugar, and contribute only 40 calories. And, squarely aiming at women, this product has 20% of the daily value for calcium.

All in all, this snack seems reasonable compared to other greasier, sweeter, fattening alternatives that PepsiCo manufactures.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you have tried out this new snack, we’d love to hear your take on it. Is such a small serving filling enough? How does it taste? Would kids and men like it too?

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