The great dried fruit conspiracy

3 Mar 2010

I’ve had a conspiracy revealed to me, and I’ll never see the world in the same way again. I’m really quite angry about it all, and I definitely think something should be done about it. What has caused this infuriation? This:

A Jordan's Frusli bar labelled as 'Blueberry'

I’ve been eating these for years, a nice snack that hopefully is more healthy for me than a mars bar, and I’m quite keen on blueberries. And clearly, as you can read, this is a blueberry oat bar, and you can even see the blueberries in it.

But the blueberries are a lie.

Whilst listening to episode 15 of Shift-Run-Stop, I was alerted to the fact that some companies get cheaper fruits and flavour them as other fruits to save money. The scoundrels! Apples flavoured as pineapple apparently. Cranberries flavoured as strawberries. The very thought. At least my noble healthy Jordan’s Frusli would not stoop to such lows. But no…

A close up view of the ingredients of the 'blueberry' Frusili bar that does not contain actual blueberries.

This Frusli is 24% dried fruit, most of which (13% of the bar) is in fact “Blueberry Infused Diced Cranberries” – those cranberries are at it again! Next comes raisins (7%) and then finally at the end there is just a scant amount of actual blueberries (2%). The cheek! It clearly states “BLUEBERRY” on the front, not “BLUEBERRY FLAVOURED OTHER STUFF”. Why isn’t Parliament doing anything about this?

Well, many thanks to the crew at Shift-Run-Stop, who have ruined snack bars for me forever now – yes they may help take the edge off my hunger in the middle of the day still, but they’ll also bring a sad feeling of mistrust in the world in doing so.