Wattie's Instant Insulin: coming soon to a grocery shelf near you

New Zealand has a love affair with sugar.  Real sugar, too, not ersatz cheap replacements like high fructose corn syrup.  (And I have to admit, Coke really does taste better with sugar vs HFCS... just like in Mexico.)  But even though they use the 'good stuff', they find ways to sneak it into nearly any product.  I compulsively read the labels now.

Wattie's is the worst offender in this regard.  It's an Australian division of Heinz, and makes all manner of canned and frozen vegetables, baked beans, sauces, baby food, soups, and pre-packaged convenience foods.  Wattie's is in every aisle at the grocery store, and is usually the cheapest option outside of store brands.

When we first arrived, one of the first meals I made was spaghetti, using Wattie's jarred tomato pasta sauce.  We really didn't enjoy it, because it tasted candy-sweet.  Sure enough, sugar was the second ingredient behind tomatoes.  We hardly ever buy Wattie's products now:  not for health reasons (although it certainly can't hurt), but because the sweetness is just plain unpalatable.

I surveyed their ingredients in the baby/toddler aisle, too.  They leave sugar out of the products for little babies.  But their toddler foods, intended for 1-year+ kids, are chock full of it.  The conspiracy theorist in me sees a strategy for establishing a sugar addiction early on.  Not cool, Heinz.  Inducing 57 varieties of diabetes.