So while I was at the Garry / O’Brien family reunion in Springfield yesterday, I deliberately picked up a (plastic – which I’m beginning to swear off of) bottle of Diet Lipton Green Tea with Citrus – so says the label.
I knew I was not going to be happy about whatever constituted the diet part – to me, every bit of it very slightly damages the body. Adding all those up over the years – Houston, we’ve got a problem.
But I wanted to know how it tastes and what else is in it. I’m sure it outsells anything I’d choose to drink by millions of bottles.
It tasted a little too sweet and a little too fake (not sure how to describe that), but not bad really. Then I perused the label. First is water, second is citric acid (not lime or lemon juice, but citric acid), then green tea. Glad we got there. Then there were 7 different chemical ingredients to protect flavor and preserve freshness, and phosphoric acid, which I don’t feel good about either.
And then caramel color (doesn’t say from where), plus yellow 5 and blue 1. You can guess that I’m not crazy about those.
Why would Lipton do all that? Because they expect these things to sit on the shelf for 5 years in some distant land? How come the same product in a glass or plastic bottle in a health food store would have green tea, water, perhaps raw sugar cane and actual lemon juice.
Why do we buy this awful stuff? Don’t we love ourselves enough to have the very best?