Yogi Berra and the Yankees helped Yoo-hoo chocolate drinks become an American icon in the 40’s and 50’s. The sweet and refreshing chocolaty taste became a kids’ favorite across the nation.

When buying Yoo-hoo, many parents mistakenly think they are providing their children a healthy milk-based drink with a touch of sweetness from chocolate so to make it fun to drink. They don’t notice that Yoo-hoo is a “chocolate drink”, not a “chocolate milk”.

A look at the ingredient list shows that there is virtually no milk here, mostly water, sugars, a smidgen of milk by-products, and some chemicals. Oh, and a bit of cocoa too.

Yoo-hoo is not something to treat the kids to. Here’s why…

What you need to know:

If you are looking for nutrition and ingredient information on Yoo-hoo’s website, forget about it. When companies don’t share this information on their website, you can rest assured their product does not have much to boast on the nutrition front. Such is the case with Yoo-hoo.

Let’s begin with the ingredient list (22 items!):

Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whey (from Milk), Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Cocoa (Alkali Process), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Sodium Caseinate (from Milk), Nonfat Dry Milk, Salt, Tricalcium Phosphate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Soy Lecithin, Mono and Diglycerides, Vitamin A Palmitate, Niacinamide (Vitamin B3), Vitamin D3, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).

Water is the main ingredient followed by copious amounts of the highly debated High fructose corn syrup. Sugar and Corn syrup solids are also added to further sweeten this drink, just for good measure…

Notice that there is no liquid milk in here, only milk by-products such as whey (ingredient #3), sodium caseinate (#8), and non-fat dry milk(#9). Whey is the leftover liquid after milk is curdled into cheese. Together with sodium caseinate, they are a source of protein.

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil (#7) appears ahead of the milk powder here. Why in the world do we need trans-fat in a drink?

Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of calcium, while Dipotassium Phosphate is an additive that is used to prevent coagulation. The Guar and Xantham gums serve as thickeners, providing a richer creamier mouthfeel despite the fact that this is a water based product. You can read more about soy lecithin, an emulsifier, here.

The nutrition facts:
Each 15.5 oz bottle contains two servings, but many people gulp the entire bottle down. Here’s the info per 8oz serving:
130 calories, with only 10 from fat and almost all the rest from sugars! 27 grams of sugar, the equivalent of just under 7 teaspoons!

There’s also 210 mg of sodium in here, almost 10% of the daily maximum value. This is something you wouldn’t expect in a sweet drink.
Trans-fat appears as zero because of a labeling loophole that allows 0.5 grams or less per serving to be rounded down to zero. But remember, if you see a partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list, expect trans-fat. And no amount is good for you.

All the vitamins and minerals have been tacked on to this drink, and do not appear naturally in the main ingredients.

What to do at the supermarket:

Ideally you should have your children drinking milk with their cookies, not a sugary concoction. But at some point after infancy, our kids tend to forget the pure milk flavor and demand a sweet flavor. So drinking plain milk is a challenge for many families.

Adding a teaspoon of instant cocoa powder is also fine because you control the sugar level. Another option is to buy chocolate milk and mix it half and half with regular milk to drive down the sugar levels.

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Sloppy Joes are an iconic American family meal dating back to the 1930’s. They are comprised of ground beef, tomato sauce, onions, and seasoning, all inside a hamburger bun. In this era of minimum preparation at the kitchen, most consumers forgo a full blown preparation and opt to mix cooked ground beef with a ready made everything-else. ConAgra’s Hunt’s division introduced its Manwich line of sauces exactly 40 years ago and has been very successful through good marketing (“A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal.”) and palatable products.

At 40, the Manwich brand must be having a mid life crisis, so Hunt’s marketers decided to change the advertising strategy from “family fun” to “nutritional value”. The new tag line, seen in commercials – “There’s a full serving of vegetables in every Manwich.”

Our nutrition investigation team decided to take a look inside the label to uncover the real story. We took a look at the Manwich Original Sloppy Joe Sauce.

What you need to know:

Here is the ingredient list:

Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Distilled Vinegar, Corn Syrup, Less than 2% of: Salt, Sugar, Dehydrated Onions, Dehydrated Red and Green Bell Peppers, Chile Pepper, Tomato Fiber, Spices, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Dehydrated Garlic, Carob Bean Gum, Natural Flavors.

Tomato Puree as a first ingredient is to be expected. But why is it composed mostly of water? The reason is that tomato paste is highly concentrated (they take the water out when manufacturing paste).

Next – why sweetener in the #2 position?  Chefs know that adding a spoon of sugar to round out the flavor of the slightly acidic tomatoes is fine, but come on folks, we were first expecting to see some more veggies.

Ingredient #3 is vinegar, not something you would add to a homemade tomato sauce. and then at #4, another sweetener. Seems like a lot of liquids for the first 4 ingredients. That’s where the gums come in later on in the list (guar gum, xantham gum, carob bean gum – all natural). They all serve as thickeners, so you’ll feel like you’re getting less water, more tomato.

The nutrition facts are as follows: a serving is a quarter cup of sauce (not including the beef) which seems quite small. Mixing a 15.5 oz can with 1 lb of beef and then dividing to 7 portions as suggested will yield much less “joe” than is pictured in the  images on the product label and in the commercials. The “mini-serving” has 40 calories, 6 grams of sugar (1.5 teaspoons) and 2 grams of fiber (good, but comes from added ingredient called tomato fiber…). The sauce is not a substantial source of vitamins A or C, but cooked tomatoes are a great source of lycopenes, a kind of antioxidant that is supposed to help ward of cancer. The little serving has 410 mg of sodium, about 16% of the daily maximum value. A real manwich serving would be double the sodium though – upping sodium to a third of your daily max.

So is this a nutritious product? Yes and No. You can’t argue with tomatoes, although they are heavily watered down in this product. And all the added sugars / high fructose corn syrup seems superfluous.  And if you eat a portion as pictured in the label – you’ll be getting a hefty amount of sodium. On the other hand, there are no artificial preservatives here and the calorie count is low (lots of water…). There are worse things you could add to lean ground beef.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re going to be sauteeing the beef anyhow, why not start off with a tablespoon of canola or olive oil, a diced onion, 2 bell peppers and some spices? When the veggies get soft, add the beef, and when it loses all its pink, add a can of crushed or diced tomatoes and simmer for 15-30 minutes. Salt to taste. If required, a single teaspoon of sugar will round out the flavor of the entire skillet.

So much better, not much harder. Can keep in the fridge for up to a week.

Here’s the shopping list: lean ground beef, can of diced tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, one onion, (oil, spices)

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July is National Ice Cream Month, and in honor of our favorite dessert, we’ll post some interesting articles in the coming weeks.

Today, a look at Breyers and Dreyer’s, two leading brands that people often confuse with each other. Dreyer’s is owned by Nestle, and Breyers by Unilever, both huge European food corporations.

Breyers started on the east coast and expanded west; Dreyer’s – in the opposite direction. Dreyer’s adopted Edy’s as their brand name east of the Rockies, but Breyers did not reciprocate out west.

So which company makes better ice cream?

What you need to know:

Taste is a matter of choice, so we won’t comment. But we did want to check if  there was any nutritional advantage to one brand over the other.

Breyers was once famous for its very short ingredient list – milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. However, since being acquired by Unilever, and as a means to cut production costs, the ingredient list has changed and includes Tara gum, Guar gum, ice-structuring proteins, mono and diglycerides, corn-syrup, and something called Natural Flavor. For the most part, these additives are harmless, but you should inspect ingredient lists to make sure there are no artificial colors.

Today, both companies carry multiple lineups of products, divided into names such as “Light”, “No sugar added”, “All Natural”, and “Carb Smart”.

Keeping ice cream tasty while reducing its caloric foot print is not an easy task. Replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols is an easy first step, but yields a slightly off taste, and for some people causes bloating and gas.

Taking out the fat is a bigger challenge. After all the “cream” in “ice cream” is milk fat. Dreyer’s introduced a new processing method a few years ago called slow churning, which enables reaching the same creamy consistency of regular ice cream using a third less cream. Usually a spoonful more sugar is added to compensate for the loss of fat (17 grams vs 14 grams).

From a nutritional perspective Dreyer’s and Breyers are very simialar. A comparison of half cup serving of regular Vanilla ice cream is shown below.

What to do at the supermarket:

Here’s our ice cream philosophy – Ice cream is NOT a nutrition product. It should not be treated as one. It should be a fun and tasty treat consumed in moderation. Better a cup of creamy rich Vanilla ice cream once a week, than five half cups of subpar “1/3 calories less” product consumed almost daily.

Don’t eat ice cream as a meal replacement. Don’t eat straight out of the bucket in front of the TV.

Do add a scoop on top of fruit, or in a tall glass of ice coffee.

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Sara Lee is the number one fresh bread manufacturer in the US, so there’s a good chance you’ll find some of their loaves in your local supermarket. We wanted to take a look at a product that caught our eye due to it’s somewhat oxymoronous name – how could a white bread be whole grain? Isn’t whole grain bread supposed to be, well, not white?

Ah the wonders of food science and marketing.

The company boasts, on the package, albeit in small print: Made with whole grain. 30% whole grain (This product provides 10 g of whole grain in a 2 slice serving. USDA recommends consuming 48 g of whole grain every day.).

What’s really inside?… Read more…

Salutations, today is Cinco De Mayo. Originally a Mexican holiday commemorating a great military victory 150 years ago, it has come to symbolize, especially in the US, Mexican heritage day. A very important piece of that heritage is the scrumptious Mexican food so abundant here, especially in the southwest.

Today we’ll take a look at guacamole, Aztec for “Avocado Sauce”. The classic dip is composed of very basic ingredients – ripe avocados, onions, lime / lemon juice, salt and pepper. Additions include chili, tomatoes, and herbs and spices. (see our easy recipe below).

So how different can a supermarket guac dip be from the basic configuration described above?
We were S H O C K E D when we laid eyes on Dean’s Guacamole Dip.

Here’s a look inside the label. Read more…