Kelly's DAY 24!

Breakfast: Some peanut butter

Lunch: Lentil Soup

Dinner: An avocado that wasn't ripe, some peanut butter and corn salad (that corn salad is FINALLY gone!)

Snacks: Couple cups of OJ

Run: 4 painful miles

My friend, Maria, who is doing a similar fast to ours right now (GO, MARIA!!!) told me about her experience at our local Martin's grocery store.  At the checkout, the checkout lady asked her, "Are these [apples] the bubble gum flavored ones?"  Maria: "Um, NO.  I want my kids to like APPLE FLAVORED APPLES!"  (That was me paraphrasing Maria's explanation about their conversation)  Well, I looked a little further into these so-called "FLAVORED APPLES."  I mean, SERIOUSLY?!  I'm appalled.  The website for Crazy Apples says that they are "GMO free, 100% natural, no added sugars or preservatives" but they also say, "We can't tell you exactly how we do it, but we can tell you that magic doesn't compromise a Crazy Apple's wholesome start as a crisp, fresh apple."  Thanks, "Crazy Apple," but until you tell me what you're putting in that thing and how it becomes a "bubblegum apple," my kids are going nowhere near one! 

The scary thing is that schools around the country are offering these apples in the school lunches!  Check out what's new foods were offered at the School Nutrition Association's national convention held in Sin City (coincidence?) in 2009. Jerusha Klemperer, of The Slow Food USA Blog, says, "My personal favorite from the show was the Crazy Apple. In an attempt to get kids to eat more fruit, this company has developed apples that taste like bubble gum, cotton candy and tropical blast. Candy-flavored apples????? Next thing you know, they’ll be making bacon-flavored hamburger patties. Oh wait, they already do that…"  Jerusha, you are my new best friend! 

Folks, I don't know where this tangled food web ends.  I don't even know how to get to the bottom of this!  I could probably study apples for a YEAR and still not understand before I moved onto, oh, strawberries!  This is RIDICULOUS!  At what point did we become a country where we have every inalienable right...except for the right to know what's in our foods and how they process them?!  This same country, then, decided to tell us all that we're fat and require that we give our children chemically cleaned, freeze dried, sandblasted apple slices in our happy meals (that is OBVIOUSLY a gross exaggeration on my part...I'm relatively sure they don't sandblast their apple slices)!  So much for the "happy" in the meal!  Maybe they should rename them (Mystery Meals, anyone?).