Wednesday, March 17, 2010

What's for Breakfast


By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Breakfast at my daughter's elementary school yesterday was whole wheat pancakes with milk and orange juice.

Whole wheat sounds good. Meal items such as this typically are pre-cooked in a food factory and shipped to the school in bags, frozen. They are quickly reheated in a commercial steamer or in the kitchen's convection oven. (There currently is no stove for making pancakes fresh).

Good thing these pancakes are so convenient, because there were only two women working in the kitchen this morning to feed about 150 kids. Breakfast was delayed at least 15 minutes while kids lined up outside the door to the steam table.

The pancakes come with "breakfast syrup" from Heinz. There's a picture of a maple leaf on the container, but of course it's not real maple syrup. Here are the ingredients.

"Corn syrup, water, sugar, potassium sorbate as a preservative, caramel color, salt, citric acid, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavors."

If you were wondering about the propylene glycol, it is a common ingredient in modern anti-freeze and de-icing agents. In the food industry, it's used to keep things moist.

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1 comment:

  1. If this is what kids are told is "healthy", no wonder so many people think that healthy can't taste good!!!!! Those pancakes look decidedly unappetizing.

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