www.google.co.uk – phenylalanine
I went looking for cordial at Morrisons (Safeway) last night and I had a specific goal – to find a cordial that didn’t taste like artificial sweetener. Thinking of Australia and the vast amount of lovely sugared Cotties, Kia-Ora, etc. I figured “no problemo!”.
So did I succeed?
Barely.
Almost every cordial/squash in this rather large supermarket is made by a single company – Robinsons.
“Surely they have normal, sugar-sweetened cordial in their range, right?”, I mused as I browsed.
Bzzt! Wrong!
Out of maybe thirty different cordial varieties (most from Robinsons), I found perhaps three that were not artificially sweetened. Ribena and two “High Fruit” drinks, which are basically fruit juice concentrates, were it.
Not a single, “normal” cordial lived on the shelves. I grew up drinking Diet Coke, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, I can’t stand that artificial sweetener taste now. Diet Coke is barely passable, but in cordial.. bleh!!!
I have a rough idea of what sugar does to my body, but what are phenylalanine, saccharine and aspartame doing??
There’s quite a large amount of “anti-sweetner” websites out there, which is just a touch disconcerting! Sure, it could be all nutter, conspiracy theorists, but where there’s smoke…
(there’s hippy and a box of matches? :D)
In other food news, Waitrose supermarket has come up with the goods! The best iced coffee I have found in this country is sold by them. It has a name like “Columbian Iced Coffee” and I think it is their own brand. A 1L clear-plastic bottle of this loveliness costs about ?1.30. Although not an Ice Break or Farmer’s Union, it is far and away the best iced coffee I’ve found here.
Waitrose also appear to be the only store that stocks Vegemite in jars larger than the piddly 115g variety. A 230/235g? jar goes for ?1.99 Beaut!!
hey.. .check out phenylalanine at http://www.snopes.com..
Hey Stu, I’m now going to tell you a very sad story that will make you never want to come back to Melbourne.
Melbourne stupormarkets all seem to get their orange juice from the one set of distributers now.
All of it is reconstituted crap (anyone else reckons this stuff tastes like vomit?), except for a couple of two litre cartons way over in the inaccesible corner behind the trolley full of rotten vegetables (don’t mistake it for the carton with added iron and vitamin C, and is only 99% orange juice). Oh, and what */_UTTER FOOL_/* ever thought it was a good idea to market pulp-free orange juice, eh?
Also, I have never been happy with the "fresh" oranges you get in Melbourne. A pox to the time I spent living in Sunraysia.
I only ever bought "Daily Juice" or um.. the other one that was 100% Australian fruit juice. No concentrates, no imports.
They are the same brand that does the Pulp-Free, Added Iron, Vitamin A/C/E and the Added Calcium one, I think.
I grew up drinking the watered-down juices so I can pretty much drink any juice nowadays.
I’m not sure if there’s any reasonably priced, ‘non-concentrate’ juices over here or not?
Pah! Who needs vitamins anyway?! :S
Check the Australian Fruit Juice Assoc. here: http://www.afja.com.au/
They might be able to help with your search for REAL juice?
I think daily juice is now from reconstituted juice too. Or at least, it was last I looked — perhaps an orange shortage at the time, between seasons?
I also don’t like fresh oranges down here. Most of them seem bruised. But then again, since I have seen just how they are processed, it is obvious why they are bruised and rotten — for gods sake — they are in bins weighing a ton, and the bins are upended and the oranges fall a few metres onto a conveyor belt, which sends em through the machine at a rapid pace, and then they get graded, and drop another 2m into empty bins, as more and more oranges fall ontop of them, also from 2m.
Orange shortage? Yeah, like last time..
I remember when truck-loads of good Mildura oranges were dumped/destroyed, simply because the fsckers could get cheaper fruit from the USA.
Orange shortage? Yeah, like last time..
I remember when truck-loads of good Mildura oranges were dumped/destroyed, simply because the fsckers could get cheaper fruit from the USA.