Certain Uncertainty

Trey Smith

So I'm reading the list of ingredients on a popular breakfast cereal. I get down to the 4th item and it reads canola or palm kernel oil. Farther down, it reads: May contain wheat ingredients.

First, let's deal with the oils. Canola oil is low in saturated fat and palm kernel oil is not. In fact, palm kernel oil is very high with 80% of its fat being of the saturated variety. Because of the dramatic differences between the fat profiles of these two oils, one would think that the nutritional information shown on the box would be greatly impacted depending on which oil was used in the production of the product.

How can the manufacturer provide nutritional information without specifying which oil is used? If I were to venture a guess, I would say the nutritional information is based on the product being manufactured with canola oil because this would allow the company to advertise a lower fat content when it might or might not be that low.

The part about wheat-based ingredients really puzzles me. What's with this word MAY? Don't they know if wheat is in the product or not? If they don't know, how in the hell am I supposed to know? I don't have a problem with wheat, but some people do. I would bet that folks with wheat gluten intolerance would prefer a more definitive answer!

I guess what I really don't understand is why we allow the producers of food products to list possible ingredients. They should KNOW definitively what's in the stuff they produce or manufacture. Not only should THEY know, but they should let the consumer know, so we can make informed choices as to whether or not we care to purchase their products.