Do you ever feel like food is lying to you?
This morning, as I enjoyed a bowl of cereal and an egg white scramble (tossed in cheese and a couple bacon bits) with a glass of V8 Fusion, I got to thinking about what exactly my V8 juice is. Passion Fruit Tangerine tastes sort of fruity, with a strange carrot smell and aftertaste. For the most part, I feel healthy drinking it, compared to say… a beer with my breakfast, which would be decisively unhealthy. According to the front of the bottle, the juice contains a full serving of vegetables in addition to its full serving of fruit, AND it is approved by the American Heart Association, as it meets food criteria for saturated fat and cholesterol for healthy people over the age of 2… and I am definitely over the age of 2!
But when you look at the actual nutritional value, this is where I get a little confused. At 110 calories, it has pretty standard juice calorie intake. 0 fat, 70 mg of Sodium (3% daily value), 600 mg Potassium (17% daily value), 27 g total carbohydrate (including the 24 g of sugars) (9%), 0 Protein. None of this sounds particularly healthy in anyway. Onto the vitamin breakdown, Vitamin A 15%, Vitamin C 100%, Calcium 2%, Iron 0%, Vitamin E 10%.
With the exception of Vitamin C, V8 juice doesn’t seem to be giving me any amount of substantial nutritional value, so who cares if each serving contains a full serving of fruit and vegetables? A multivitamin would give me more nutrition than V8 seems to provide! Is there some sort of unquantifiable vegetable goodness which is soaking into my brain as I type this?
Don’t even get me started on peanut butter. Choosy moms choose Jif, but why? So I can get 4% of my daily Iron, 15% of my daily Vitamin E, 2% of my daily Riboflavin, and 20% Niacin? What does any of this even mean? Who cares about my Riboflavin levels? Why has the peanut butter and jelly sandwich been such a staple of the American lunch if there is absolutely nothing worth saving in here?
This has seriously just become a jumble full of questions. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I feel like the labels lie. Thoughts from you fine food-eating folk?
I am a poet, Pushcart Prize nominee, and 2011 graduate of Georgia College & State University’s MFA program. I am looking for a teaching position where I can help foster students’ creativity and critical thinking skills.
I don’t care that V8 Fusion doesn’t have that much nutritional value. It tastes so good! I drink it like it’s going out of style. And that full serving of fruit and vegetables makes me feel good, at least on a psychological level.