Lies, lies, naught but lies!

Coffe mate, purveyors of frightening pseudo-milk products that don’t spoil at room temperature, recently announced a new line of soy based “creamers”. (Side note: I must shame facedly admit that I kind of LIKE those sweet, artificially flavored concoctions. But I typically avoid them. Unless someone else has them in their kitchen and I’m drinking their coffee . . . what can I say? I’m a bad hippie.) Today I stopped in to a little local coffee place, and my two shots of espresso came with a cardboard sleeve plastered with a Coffee Mate Soy ad.

Irritating, but I suppose lactose intolerant folks are entitled to really sweet fake milk products too, right?

What really set me off was this statement: “Now your healthy routine meets your morning routine.”

Huh? How do they figure? So I visited the Coffee Mate website to pull up the ingredients. (Editors note: Coffee Mate has now, apparently, been purchased by Nestle, and the original link to the ingredients is now dead. But here’s the list anyway). The results? “INGREDIENTS: WATER, SOYMILK (WATER, SOY POWDER), PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OIL, SUGAR, AND LESS THAN 2% OF DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM TRIPOLYPHOSPHATE, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, POLYSORBATE 50, GELLAN GUM, SODIUM CITRATE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, BETA-CAROTENE COLOR.”

So, ignoring the fact that I can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, I also see that 1 tablespoon of this stuff contains 1.5 grams of fat. Well, okay, I’m sure this isn’t a particularly large amount of fat, especially when combined with a cup of coffee, but the fat is neither saturated fat, nor monounsaturated fat, nor polyunsaturated fat. So what kind of fat is it? Why trans fat of course, derived from the hydrogenated oils. (For further info on trans fats you can check out www.bantransfats.com, or google trans fats. There’s plenty of info out there.)

And then, of course, that same tablespoon contains 1 gram of sugar. Correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, partially hydrogenated oils and sugar are NOT on the list of the top 10 health foods.

So now lets compare the “healthy” soy product to the original Coffee Mate liquid. The ingredients? “WATER, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OIL, SODIUM CASEINATE (A MILK DERIVATIVE), DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, POLYSORBATE 60, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, ARTIFICAL FLAVOR, CARRAGEENAN, BETA-CAROTENE COLOR.” Well this one only has 1 gram of fat, .5 of which is monounsaturated, so apparently the other .5 gram is transfats. 1/3 the trans fats of the “healthy” option. And if you’re a calory counter, the calories are the same. Of course the sweetener is corn syrup solids, which I believe are even scarier than sugar, so maybe it’s a tradeoff. But I don’t see how the soy version is “healthy”.

Now let me run to the fridge and get my carton of “fattening” half and half. We’ll begin with the ingredients: “Milk, Cream”. Wow, I know exactly what those th ings are. Looking at the nutrition information, I see that 2 tablespoons of half and half has 3 grams of fat. Now, I’m no mathematician, but if my calculations are correct, this would mean that 1 tablespoon (the equivalent serving size as that on the label of Coffee Mate Soy) would have approximately . . . 1.5 grams of fat. The same amount. Not only that, but the fat in my half and half is 1 gram of saturated fat, .5 grams of unsaturated fat, and ZERO grams fo trans fats. Half and half has no added sugar. And the calories are the same. So tell me again why Coffee Mate Soy is the healthy option?

The only difference I can see is that the Coffee Mate product has no cholesterol, whereas the half and half contains 7 mg per servng. But if you read this article, you’ll see there’s mounting evidence that what affects blood cholesterol is, for the most part, NOT the cholesterol in your food, but the bad fats–saturated fat is bad, and trans fats are REALLY bad.

Finally, a tablespoon of half and half contains .5 grams of protein, about 22 mg of potassium, 2% of daily calcium and 1% of vitamin A. Neither of the Coffee Mate liquids provides any of the above.

So call me crazy, but I’ll take something real with some cholesterol over something fake that’s full of chemicals, sugar, and trans fats.

And yet, the folks over at Coffee Mate are allowed to tout their product as “health food” while plain old wholesome milk and cream are villainized as killers.

I just don’t get it.