January 27, 2011

When a Blueberry Isn’t Even a Berry

January 27, 2011 at 5:25PM by Jolène Bouchon

Looking forward to enjoying some wholesome antioxidant-chocked blueberries in your morning cereal? Chances are, you're going to have to look elsewhere. Nonprofit organization Consumer Wellness Center recently released a video report on blueberry breakfast cereals, breads, and pastries that are missing, that's right, blueberries.
According to the video report, many popular products, which show pictures of fresh blueberries on the package, contain not a single drop of the actual fruit. Take Kellogg's Blueberry Muffin Frosted Mini-Wheats. They contain "Blueberry Flavored Crunchlets," made of "sugar, corn cereal, soybean oil, modified corn starch, water, natural and artificial flavor, glycerin, corn syrup, red #40 lake, and blue #2 lake."
The report calls out other offenders, from General Mills' Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal to Target-brand blueberry bagels. It does call out several brands that do contain actually blueberry fruit puree, though usually in a concentrated form augmented by high fructose corn syrup, "petrochemical colors," and other extenders.
Anyone who's ever enjoyed a fresh batch of Jiffy Blueberry Muffins won't be surprised that many of these products contain fake blueberries - then again, Jiffy doesn't pretend they're anything but, with the disclaimer "artificially flavored with imitation berries" printed prominently across the front of the box. The real issue, as it often is, is truth in advertising.
Amid the flurry of news reporting the dangers of processed foods and the childhood obesity epidemic, not to mention the debates over new food labeling laws, the question, to our minds, is what's appropriate advertising. Sure, the onus is on consumers to check nutrition labels, but is it deceptive practice to show pictures of fresh fruit on a product that bears that fruit's name, but contains none?
Maybe if they were called bleuberries ... or bluebyrries?


I think that if a package is going to have a picture of a food source that contains blueberries, it should contain the real thing and not some imitation sugary substance.  I really like blueberries and if I see something that has blueberries on the package I am more prone to buy it because of the perception of "real blueberries."