Are Your Nuts Healthy?

Just wondering when the last time you bought some healthy sunflower seeds to munch on as a snack?  Were they healthy nuts, or did they have stuff added to them that you didn't realize?  If you're like I was, I bought some Planters Sunflower Kernels and didn't even pay attention to the ingredients.  After all, who would think they would add so much junk into a natural product.  It seemed like such a simple purchase!

I know, I know - I've said it a million times.  You've got to read the labels, but on something as innocent as sunflower seeds?  Really?  Unfortunately you do, because if you see what I'm looking at right now, you'll most likely be as shocked as I am.

To Check out "What's In Your Pantry" blog post, click this link.

Some of the ingredients in this Planters Dry Roasted Sunflower Kernels include the following ingredients.

• Sea Salt
• Spices that contain celery
• Dried Onion
• Dried Garlic
• Paprika
• Natural Flavor
• Sugar
• Gelatin
• Torula Yeast
• Cornstarch
• Dried Corn Syrup
• Maltodextrin

Okay, some of the ingredients, one would say are healthy things to eat.  However, if you're allergic to onions and garlic like I am, than these things are not healthy in the least bit.  Unfortunately the world thinks that you can't eat anything with out onion and garlic, which I find disturbing and sad.

Let's go on to the other ingredients like natural flavor, sugar, gelatin, yeast, cornstarch, dried corn syrup and maltodextrin - what in the heck are these things doing in something that I consider to be a natural product?  I mean, come on folks, we need to add sugar and corn syrup to our nuts?  Is that the way nature intended them for us to eat.

I'm sure if I wrote to Planters I would get some "interestingly worded" response that basically would not say much.  I'm sure they don't really care what I think on the ingredients in a jar of nuts.  Generally speaking when you write to these places, you get some canned response that makes about as much sense as a politician trying to talk.

I find it disgusting though that a natural food would be decimated with ingredients that are added just to increase consumption.  I know, you may not agree with me on that, but it seems pretty obvious.

Most likely Planters is not going to change their practices anyway, but what you can do is check every label of the food you buy.  If you see all of this junk added to it, move on to a product that doesn't have it.   Eventually if enough people educate themselves and purchase products accordingly, these manufacturers will get the message and quit adding junk to food.

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 Blog Post And Images (c) 5/15/12 Don Shetterly - use and reprint by permission only http://www.donshetterly.com You are welcomed to share the link to this blog post, but ask for for permission before reprinting this article. Thanks!
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