Walden Farms

Fat is bad.  Sugar is bad.  Carbs are bad.  Avoid all of them at all costs.  And if you do consume something sweet, make sure it is as low calorie as possible.  :deepdeepsigh: 

And with that I give you Walden Farms.  It's a line of food products that allows you to eat all the peanut butter spread, chocolate syrup, waffle syrup, ketchup and BBQ sauce you want without consuming any calories!  You could cut 10,000 calories from your diet every month and lose 34 pounds in a year!  It doesn't get any better than that, right?  I mean, all the taste of your favorite condiments but without those pesky calories and nasty things like fat and sugar. Yay!

/facetious enthusiasm

Let's take a look at the labels of one of these so-called 'foods'.  It's the peanut butter spread.  Some co-workers recently bought a couple products from Walden Farms in an effort to cut their calorie intake and lose weight.  I sampled some with them one afternoon at work.

Looks delicious, right?  Looks a lot like any other peanut butter jar you might buy at your grocery store, right?  Well, kind of.  I haven't seen 'whipped' peanut butter at the grocery store but I guess that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Wait a second.  No calories?  No fat?  Isn't peanut butter made from peanuts that contain fat and calories?  How do they do that?  I'm confused.

Hm.  There's also no protein.  There's actually no nutritional value of which to speak.  Unless you want to eat this only for its sodium content.  And then you might as well just grab yourself a salt shaker.

The ingredients list doesn't contain anything that could actually be called food, either.  Here it is: triple filtered purified water, cellulose gum, salt, cornstarch, xanthan gum, natural fresh roasted peanut flavoring (what the heck is that?!), natural peanut extract, caramel color, lactic acid, sucralose, sodium benzoate.  Good grief.

If I want to eat peanut butter, I'm going to eat peanut butter.  I use peanut butter occasionally to boost my protein intake and round out my fat intake for the day.  It's tasty on Triscuits or apple slices and it's filling and I really enjoy it.  I'd miss out on all of that if I ate this crap.

And the real kicker is that this stuff tastes terrible.  I seriously couldn't spit it out fast enough.  It left a gross, grimy film in my mouth, too.  It was disgusting.

Products like this do nothing to help people improve their health or eating habits.  They only encourage more bad eating habits with more fake food products.  No, thank you!