Saturday, June 02, 2007

Pomegranate - the new Madison Avenue spin

I never much cared for pomegranates, having once lived where I had a tree in my back yard. I ate the few the birds left, but thought they were a lot of work. There's a very thick, hard skin and once you get in seeds with a thin layer of good stuff. Eat the seeds and you get an astringent taste, remove the juicy flesh and spit out the seed and it can take forever to eat a single fruit.

Now they're telling me that pomegranates are the new health food. Greater than wine or blueberries they say. Full of vitamin C, folic acid, and newly discovered antioxidants.

So I decided to try the juice and see if I could lose 20 years of hard living overnight. Going to the local store there were shelves from ceiling to floor stocked with pomegranate flavored juice.

Wait, what's this? Pomegranate flavored? Looking closer, I noticed as many as four other juices plus water.

Apple, grape, and pretty much anything that adds sweetener and is cheap. But the label shouted "POMEGRANATE" on the label.

So as always, buyer beware. And let's hope that someday all of the labeling laws will actually result in truth in labeling. It would be nice if someone were telling the truth these days.