We all have out favorite summer foods, the foods that remind us of summers gone by, and taste really good when the weather is warm.
One of those food items for me is sweet pickles. Sweet pickles is something I don't normally eat year round, but summertime is when sweet pickles fits what I want.
Unfortunately, getting the sweet pickles of my youth is problematic. Virtually every offering in regular grocery stores has an ingredient that wasn't a part of my childhood: high-fructose corn syrup.
This isn't just another anti-HFCS rant; this is about choice in summertime.
Right now, I am eating sweet pickles from a farm near where my mother lives, made with sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup. And the taste makes all the difference.
In eating less sweetness — sugar or HFCS, I don't feel like I can waste that opportunity on a taste that doesn't make me think of summertime. I can't eat as much ice cream as I used to, so boring ice cream doesn't interest me.
I can't just grab any candy bar; I have to really want it. In summertime, when I really want sweet pickles, I want the good kind, the one with the taste of summer in a jar.
Soft drinks were something I used to drink a lot, regardless of what was in them. At the time, I was hooked and all that was around me were versions with high-fructose corn syrup. I finally stopped, even as there were more options with sugar. So I drink an occasional soft drink but only ones with sugar in them, not high-fructose corn syrup.
We are starting to see some choice in the regular grocery store — there are a couple of brands of hot dog buns that don't have HFCS (but still have too much sugar — we shouldn't have sugar in buns). And finding a soft drink without HFCS is difficult, but not impossible in some areas.
Sweet pickles is still one of those product categories where HFCS-free is extremely difficult to obtain. Until that changes for the better, when that time does come, it's sugar or not at all.
Michael Pollan has talked about how it doesn't matter — that our foods are filled with too much sweetness. And I would agree with him. But when you are going to indulge — sugar has the better taste.
This is about choice. The grocery store shelves are limited, but when you search for sweet pickles with sugar, and they aren't there, we will go somewhere else.
If corporations think high-fructose corn syrup has the best taste, let's find out the old-fashioned way. Offer us both options and see which ones we choose. Right now, it's not a fair fight, and our taste buds suffer as a result, especially in the heart of summer.
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