Dueling retronyms today: Land O Lakes offers Traditional Half and Half, while Harris Teeter sells Original Half and Half. Both, of course, mean half-and-half, as opposed to something they call fat-free half-and-half.
As the helpful folks at Harris Teeter point out, half-and-half is made with real milk and cream. To be precise, half-and-half is milk and cream. Half of each. What, then, would fat-free half-and-half be? It would be the same thing as fat-free heavy cream or fat-free light cream or fat-free whole milk or fat-free "2 percent" or "1 percent" milk: It would be skim milk. Of course, the dairies aren't selling skim milk and calling it fat-free half-and-half. They're selling a chemical potion formulated to look and taste like half-and-half, but with a fat content low enough to meet the federal guidelines for a "fat-free" label.
Another blogger explored the ingredients list on a carton of "fat-free half-and-half." I'll leave Eric Schlosser and company to address those horrors (and the fact that even the "traditional" and "original" products include disodium phosphate, sodium citrate and sometimes carrageenan). Meanwhile, I'll suggest that Land O Lakes and Harris Teeter and the others offer me a choice between half-and-half that requires no elaboration and "artificially flavored coffee creamer."
9 comments:
Ahhh, but artificially flavored creamer doesn't sound so mathematical!
Was that a fragment, or just an interjection?
I am far too nervous posting a comment on your blog for fear of grammatically erring.
A grammatical error in the comments? I guess it's theoretically possible -- there's a first time for everything!
This is why I take my coffee black.
But here's a question -- when did skim milk become fat-free milk? No one on the West Coast seems to call it skim.
The FDA apparently authorized the "fat-free" designation several years back, and the industry ran with it (but "skim" is still fine, too):
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1998/198_milk.html
Since it's not really half-and-half, maybe it should be called three-eighths-and-five-eighths instead.
Agreed on the fat-free cheese. I bought fat-free Fig Newtons once. Instead of fat, there's a bizarre chemical aftertaste.
Half-and-half is half milk and half cream; my whole point is that the fat-free chemical soup is not half-and-half at all. People use the real stuff if they want a certain degree of creaminess -- but not as much creaminess, or fat, as light cream or full cream. I'm about to use some in my coffee right now.
Isn't anyone interested in the "ultra-pasteurized" label? What does THAT mean? Can milk (or half-and-half) be pasteurized more than once or is that just more fancy marketing-speak?
Ultra-pasteurized means that it has been pasteurized at a higher than normal temperature, giving it a longer shelf life. If it is packaged aseptically (like juice boxes or soy milk, in those sealed cartons) and labeled UHT, it will not need refrigeration until it is opened. Great for camping!
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