Much Ado about NOTHING

Sometimes I wonder what exactly it is I'm eating. Case in point: my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich today. In a moment of arrant boredom, I began to read the label on the back of a jar of reduced-fat, super-chunk peanut butter. The fine print reveals that a serving of this "25% less fat" PB contains 180 calories, of which 110 are from...fat. Now I know why this stuff is called "butter."

Almost as alarming is another ingredient: rapeseed. (No, not grapeseed. Rapeseed.) A little Googling reveals that rapeseed "contains high levels of erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly, is toxic in large doses, and may cause cancer) and glucosinolate (which tastes so bitter and unpleasant that it's undesirable even in animal feed)." Lovely. Apparently, I have more refined taste than...livestock.

Then there are the minerals: magnesium oxide, ferric orthophosphate, copper sulfate and zinc oxide. Everything but the kitchen sink? No, I'm eating the kitchen sink.

Still, I like PB & J on my 12-grain bread, and I'll probably keep eating it occasionally, until and unless the FDA (now trustworthy under Obama?) warns me not too. But now I'm afraid to look too closely at the jelly jar.