TIDBITS102507

Tidbits: How much is Plus?

Star Tribune

Last update: December 10, 2007 - 10:37 AM

How much is Plus?

As if we didn't have enough ways to pay too much for a drink of water, Coca-Cola now offers its Dasani brand in a vitamin-fortified variation with ginseng and guarana. Each 8-ounce serving of Dasani Plus contains 10 percent of the recommended amounts of vitamins B3, B6 and B12 and chromium. That doesn't come cheap: At one discount supermarket, where regular Dasani is $1.39 for a 33.8-ounce bottle (4.1 cents an ounce), or $3.69 for six 24-ounce bottles (2.6 cents an ounce), a 20-ounce bottle of Dasani Plus is $1.59 (8 cents an ounce).

Allergy? Always check

Label regulations require food manufacturers to highlight the presence of 12 common food allergens (wheat, soy, shellfish, peanuts, etc.). Many manufacturers also indicate when a product that doesn't contain such allergens is manufactured where one or more of them are processed, so contamination is possible.

People with food allergies might feel best about a particular product's safety if the manufacturer has such a warning on some of its products but not on the one in question: If Bloob's chocolate cookies have a notice that they are made in a plant that also processes peanuts -- evidence that Bloob's customarily prints such notices -- but Bloob's vanilla cookies don't have that notice, that would seem to be an indication that Bloob's isn't handling peanuts where it makes its vanilla cookies. But things change, so people with serious allergies (the peanut one can be fatal) really need to look at every package every time they purchase it -- even products they already "know" are safe.

A significant case in point is a common ingredient in home baking: Nestlé, which makes a practice of using these warnings, newly has one for peanuts on all of its semisweet chocolate morsels. (Hershey products also carry such warnings where appropriate; always check the bag, but Hershey semisweet chocolate chips that Mr. Tidbit just checked did not have a peanut warning.)

AL SICHERMAN