Kara & Michael’s Blog

I am currently eating a package of peanut butter cheese crackers. I don’t know why I’m eating a package of peanut butter cheese crackers, but I’m not here to introspect.

You know the product I’m talking about, or maybe you don’t if you aren’t lucky enough to live in the land of obesity and yawning nutritional voids: six little cracker sandwiches, each composed of two cheese crackers and a thin smear of peanut butter filling, in a plastic envelope. This particular product is labeled “Frito-Lay PEANUT BUTTER ON CHEESE FLAVORED CRACKERS.”

My problem is the ingredient label:

Enriched flour (unbleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), peanut butter (ground roasted peanuts, sugar, hydrogenated canola oil, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, molasses), vegetable shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil), sugar, and less than 2% of the following: salt, leavening agents (monocalcium phosphate, sodium bicarbonate, and ammonium bicarbonate), hydrolyzed vegetable protein, soy lecithin, corn syrup, dextrose, artificial color (yellow 6), proteolytic enzymes, sodium sulfite anhydrous (preservative), spice, and cheddar cheese (cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes, and disodium phosphate).

Now, aside from the fact that these things probably have a half-life that rivals most isotopes of uranium, and have the kind of ingredient label that ensures they will only ever be successfully sold from a vending machine, can you guess what my problem is with this product?

Cheese. It appears last on the label, after spice. Since ingredients have to be listed in descending order of prevalence by weight in the U.S., this means there is less cheese in these crackers by weight than “spice,” which consists of god-knows-what. The amount of cheese is such that they probably mixed an enormous vat of cracker batter and had someone wave a shred of cheddar over it. These crackers could be sold at a high price as a homeopathic cheese medicine.

Which wouldn’t be that bad if the word CHEESE wasn’t featured so strongly on the label. To be honest, it’s not just the absence of cheese that bugs me, it’s also the complete absence of any artificial flavorings. The microscopic amount of cheese is only there so they can call the crackers cheese-flavored. What they’re really selling you is “Frito-Lay PEANUT BUTTER ON ORANGE CRACKERS.” To add insult to injury, they make a non-cheese version that is exactly the same product minus the microscopic cheese and the yellow #6.

In places with sane food labeling laws, like the UK, “distinguishing” ingredients of a food product have to be called out by percentage on the label. So if I sell “cheese crackers” that are 0.001% cheese, I have to state that on the label. Same if I sell “sour cream and onion potato chips” that are really whey and parsley potato chips, or a “beef burrito” that consists mostly of soy protein. All of these items are common in the US and the labels don’t make it clear what’s going on. If we’re going to subsist on prepackaged food, we should have labeling laws like this.