Food Label Faux Pas: How Could I Be Duped By Almond Butter With Hidden Sugars?

Unbelieveable!

Yours truly didn't follow her own advice! Oops!

Picture me, so in the mood for a nice snack -- a crunch, organic red apple covered with scrumptious unsweetened almond butter.

And so I filled a tablespoon with my newly purchased "All Natural" almond butter. Yum -- I love the stuff. (Unfortunately, though, I couldn't find organic at the store near me.)

Happily, I took a big bite.

Yuck!

It just didn't taste right! In fact, it had this sort of way-too-sweet taste. Darn, I was disappointed.

But what could be wrong, I wondered?

It was then that I did what I tell others always to do: I turned over the jar to look at the label and there, staring me in the face was the truth: Listed second, after the dry roasted almonds was "organic evaporated cane sugar" -- i.e., sugar.

What was sugar doing in my all natural almond butter from a company (won't reveal the name), whose products I had purchased before?

Wait, there's more: Palm oil and sea salt were added, too, to my nut butter. Huh? Why were those needed?

Anyhow, now I'm sitting in my office with my all disgusting all-natural, crunchy almond butter.

How could I, the Ex-Sugar Shrew-turned Sugar Sleuth, be duped by a jar of almond butter? Because I didn't follow my own advice! LOL!

Well, I gotta go now and see if the store will take back my almond butter and let me swap it for a more tasty, unsweetened one. (By the way, when you phase out sugar, your taste buds change considerably -- while sweetened nut butters might have once appealed to me, now they're disgustingly untasty.)

Moral of the story: Read food labels religiously, even from companies whose products you've purchased before.