Old anti-margarine laws resurface and protect consumers as food companies add water to the food supply to hide shortages and price hikes.
In the United States, the dairy industry has been influential enough over that years that in many states, it was illegal to sell margarine, or at least yellow margarine.
In Wisconsin, there are still anti-margarine laws on the books. One of them makes it illegal for the Sheriffs and the state agency managing the prisons to feed margarine to the prisoners.
As part of the anti-margarine laws, butter became a highly regulated product. There are different “grades” of butter, but the only kind you’re likely to come across in the stores are AA graded, which is the highest possible rating.
Margarine, in comparison, has no legal definition, and many companies are eschewing the “margarine” label even if some state has a definition. Simply calling something a “spread” or a “plant-based butter” or “buttery tasting spread” is undefined.
Many of the reviews I’ve read say that the stuff is now semi-liquid or semi-solid, and it takes twice as much to cook with, and it doesn’t properly melt anymore.
Margarine, in my book, is a no-go in the kitchen anyway. It’s something that most people only ever bought for economic reasons or some seriously misplaced concern for their health.
(Margarine is not healthy, it just has different health hazards than real butter.)
Since butter is legally defined, there’s never any surprises when I take it home. If the cost to make it goes up, the price I pay at the store goes up, but it’s still butter, and I still get four sticks per box that add up to a pound.
While I was looking around, I noticed that food I buy at Walmart is gradually being replaced with water.
Some non-margarine examples are Stouffer’s Stuffed Peppers, which used to be very flavorful (for frozen dinner) and covered in a viscous and tasty tomato sauce.
I just made them for dinner tonight and my spouse said “Dinner was not good.”. I said, “I know, Stouffer’s used to be the best.”.
The stuffed peppers are so watery now that I tried to get them to my plate as they splayed and fell apart, and the meat/rice mixture was so loosely held together that the fork went through it way easier than you should be able to cut “meat”.
Somehow, they added 10 calories per serving vs. the pictured item on Walmart’s Web site.
I also noticed that Hellman’s Mayonnaise is being watered down.
They used to be the best Mayo you could buy at the store, and now they’re just the most expensive. They’re doing these gimmicky rebates like Stouffer’s is instead of maintaining product quality.
On the “Hellman’s Mayo with Avocado Oil”, it’s not even 100% Avocado oil that they use. If you look at the ingredients, water is the first ingredient, and then there is still soybean and canola oil.
There’s only a tiny amount of Avocado oil in there. Just enough to make an issue of it on the product label.
Hellman’s Mayo has actually been run into the ground now to the point where the Walmart store brand is actually better, and has more eggs and oils and less WATER, and it’s half the price.
I think what’s going on here are two things.
They don’t want to shrink the packages further because they know that customers are getting tired of that, and they’re onto them. They don’t want to increase prices, but they have, because Congress and Biden have ruined the US Dollar’s buying power with inflation, and so their last card to play is slip some water in and see if anyone makes a big fuss about it.
In at least the Smart Balance margarine case, “consumer” feedback was so strongly negative and sudden that they promised to have the old formulation back in stores by Winter. We’ll see.
It’s insulting that these companies think that they can slip this by people and will ultimately have customers buying their products again.
In the case of Stouffer’s, they’ve always been a life hack for when you don’t have time to make dinner yourself. For now, the stuffed peppers were the only awful product we’ve come across. I bought some others, on rebate.
We had the salisbury steaks last night and those are still okay. I didn’t think they were watery or using tricks to bulk up the meat to an egregious level, like the stuffed peppers I have a chicken lasagna we’ll get to eventually.
But the general trend in the grocery store is 30% higher prices Year over Year, and when you get home, you find out that they skimp on seasonings and slipped in water to hide the inflation.
I also noticed this going on in lunch meat. Brands that used to say “Contains up to 14% of a solution.” (water) They’re now up to 20%.
This actually makes me a lot angrier than them just admitting there’s inflation and giving me their former recipes.
The ZeroWater system is not worth the money or hype. Brita is among the best countertop models.
I came across a video where a man tried all of the standard cartridges for common countertop water filter systems (many of which are also meant to go directly into the fridge), which are gravity-fed.
Now, some people swear up and down by a particular brand, and one particular brand to stay away from is ZeroWater.
Depending on how many you buy at once, you can expect to pay between $9.68 per cartridge in packs of 12 to over $15 per cartridge if you only buy them a few at a time (as of May 2022).
The initial investment into a starter system (a pitcher or refrigerator dispenser along with one filter to get you started) is comparable with other brands, however, if you look at the Total Cost of Ownership and actual lab results and consumer reviews, you’ll quickly see how ZeroWater will eat your bank account alive and spit out questionable water.
Not only are the cartridges sky high expensive, other brands have their standard cartridges for as little as $4 each, but each ZeroWater cartridge is only rated to last half as long as a Brita.
On each box, they say 2 months -or- so many gallons, however Brita says chuck the standard filter ($4 each in packs of 6) every 40 gallons, and ZeroWater says you need to chuck the filter ($9.68 each in packs of 12 or $15 each in packs of 4) after just 20 gallons.
Depending on how much cash you have to plonk down at once, the ZeroWater can end up costing so much that you start wondering what it’s actually worth vs. the standard Brita or Pur cartridge.
And that’s before you get to the fact that since ZeroWater cartridges are so expensive, there are many scammers on eBay and Amazon who will take used cartridges and fill them up with cheap carbon they got somewhere, and reseal them as part of a scam.
Now there is one decently-made aftermarket filter that is compatible with ZeroWater, and amusingly, consumer reviews say they consistently get 000 on the Total Dissolved Solids meter that came with the ZeroWater system.
I’m not making any money to say that, as you can see by the lack of a referral ID.
I just think people should get what they pay for and the video that referenced the lab results showed Aqua Crest clearly outperforming ZeroWater’s OEM filter.
On both Walmart, and Amazon, common complaints regarding the ZeroWater filter included that the water started tasting “fishy” after a couple of weeks, and that the TDS meter that ZeroWater themselves included was reading between 014 and 130 to start out with.
The manufacturer claims that it should read 000 to start out with and you should throw away the filter after it gets to 006.
For comparison, most municipal systems in America have a TDS reading of between 100 and 500 out of the tap.
Given that many ZeroWater filters are higher than 000 out of the package suggests severe problems with quality control at the factory and possibly unfiltered water making it through the system and ending up in the container.
Of course, TDS isn’t a great measure for water quality. It depends on what those solids are, and a TDS meter tells you nothing. In fact, some of those solids are good for you, like magnesium and calcium, as those are essential minerals for bone health, make the water taste better, and prevent it from soaking up the carbon dioxide in the air and becoming acidic.
In fact, some perfectly good bottled mineral waters, like Perrier, are well over 500 TDS if you stick the stupid ZeroWater TDS meter in them, but they’re healthy minerals that taste good.
On the contrary, if you stick the stupid ZeroWater TDS meter into a bottle of nail polish remover, it will read 000. I would NOT suggest drinking it.
The ZeroWater system takes the pH level of tap water down to about 6.2. Brita and Pur leave it at about 7.3.
In other words, Brita and Pur leave the pH level in the “neutral” range, whereas ZeroWater creates a weak acid that is bordering on moderately acidic.
Now, Coke Classic is extremely acidic, having a pH level of 2.5 and orange juice is at 3.5, making both beverages strong acids. A cup of coffee is at roughly 5.
But my dentist says to stay away from all of those except in moderation because they can break down tooth enamel. And while drinking ZeroWater-filtered water is nowhere near as bad as Coke or orange juice, it’s still on the acidic side of the pH scale.
What makes this particularly dangerous is that ZeroWater advertises a 99% reduction in fluoride, which promotes strong teeth, which is why it is in tap water to begin with.
Cities across the country where the anti-fluoride conspiracy theorists gained the upper hand saw upwards of 40% more tooth decay in children after they stopped adding it.
So ZeroWater is a double whammy if you want bad teeth. It removes the supplement that keeps your tooth enamel strong and then continually exposes them to somewhat acidic water.
Moving right along, the video shows us that ZeroWater also raises more health concerns.
While Brita and Pur don’t tell you anything about how their standard cartridges handle disinfection byproducts like trihalomethanes, the lab results in the video show that both systems remove nearly all trihalomethanes, which are cancer-causing agents that form when chlorine disinfectant reacts with certain organic matter.
But in the lab tests in the video, ZeroWater, with their stupid TDS meter reading 000 left nearly 60% of the hazardous disinfection byproducts while the cheap Brita and Pur filters both removed basically all of them!
DBPs are not TDS, so there can be some pretty nasty stuff that doesn’t even register on a TDS meter lurking in your water when ZeroWater is done with it.
Just as disturbingly as Trihalomethanes, considering what ZeroWater costs, while the cheap Brita and Pur standard cartridges removed nearly all chloroform, ZeroWater left 60%.
The Brita standard cartridge removed a similar amount of trace copper and uranium from the Arizona tap water in the video. 90% of copper and 100% of uranium. Well, that’s nice at least. But the standard Brita cartridge says nothing about a uranium rating, and gets out nearly 100% of it anyway.
What do I use?
Well, my family was among the first wave of Classic Brita pitcher owners back in the 90s when owning one became one of the things you did as part of the middle class in the United States.
Today you can get them everywhere and even the standard cartridges have improved greatly.
Right now I am using standard Brita cartridges. They’re cheap, they’re effective at what you can expect with a countertop system, and the lab results from the video back that up.
In fact, out of a 100 point rating scale, where 100 is best performing and 0 is absolute garbage, the video rates Aqua Crest at 88, Brita’s standard cartridge at 83, Pur’s standard cartridge at 76, and ZeroWater’s system at just 71.
Does ZeroWater have an effect on your tap water? Sure. Provided you don’t get one of the manufacturing defects that seem quite common and it actually works, and assuming you don’t get water that tastes like it came out of a fish tank, like some people say they do.
But for a system that’s at least more than 400% more expensive than Standard Brita to keep going once you own the pitcher, it seems like you should really question why you would invest your money into a system that does less when it’s important, does more where you don’t want it to, and is plagued by quality control problems.
I have _never_ had a defective Brita filter that started giving me fish water 2 weeks in. I can tell you that much.
Every time I’ve tried switching to a “Brita compatible” filter it’s ended up biting me in the ass. Walmart used to make “Great Value” filters that were physically compatible, and quite cheap. Unfortunately, they left my water tasting like nasty chemicals instead of just the swimming pool with a hint of wet dog that was coming out of my tap, so I ended up returning them.
The red cap Great Value filter with Lead Reduction claims produced great tasting water, but was $5 a filter and they started plugging up and refusing to flow correctly.
While the video doesn’t make any lead claims for any of the tested filters, Cleveland 19 News says that at a challenge concentration of 20 parts per billion, the Standard Brita was able to remove about half.
According to my Consumer Confidence Report from the local utility, the TDS reading at the water filtration plant averages 140 and the lead reading is 5 parts per billion at the highest detected level in 2021, so lead doesn’t appear to be a major concern in my area.
Plus, the Illinois state government is quite strict about monitoring homes for lead in the water at the tap to check how the city’s plumbing is doing, and that doesn’t violate the 15 ppb action level set by state and federal laws either.
However, while the Standard Brita filter is something most people who drink city utility water in America can put their faith in, Brita also has the new Long Last Filter, which is good for 120 gallons or 6 months, and works out to be about the same 11 cents per gallon as the Standard.
In addition to not costing more over time, the filters are of a superior design that allows them to make more claims of contaminant reductions, including 97% of lead.
I just bought some of these filters at Walmart and plan to switch over so I don’t have to remember to change out my filters every 2 months, and so I can get my plastic waste down, and benefit from the superior construction. I’ll write more about what I think of these when I actually switch over to them soon.
Amusingly, my mom bought a ZeroWater and ended up switching to Brita later when she complained about what it was costing her and asked what I recommended instead.
The stupid TDS meter was saying the filter was unacceptable about every 10 gallons or so, but that was if you could even get the ZeroWater to filter 10 gallons. More often, she had them plug up on her Indiana tap water and couldn’t even get half of the manufacturer’s stated life expectancy out of the filter.
At that point you’re paying between $1 and $1.50 per gallon of filtered water before the stupid ZeroWater is totally crapped up and useless.
This amounts to roughly 10 or 15 times the cost of Brita.
And when you consider that each person in your house uses about a gallon of water per day for drinking and cooking, you can see what the problem with that is.
All of a sudden, the Brita is costing you about $3 per person/per month, whereas the stupid ZeroWater system could cost you $45 per person/per month.
So the price of the starter kit is the camel’s nose in the tent, and the ZeroWater cartridges are the rest of the camel.
The entire system is designed to rip you off in such small increments, you may not even notice it right away.
Given that it’s not too much more to get started with the Long Last system, which is less of an ongoing hassle, I’d recommend just getting that if you’re starting out.
(Many renters can’t install carbon blocks due to the “no modifications clause” in their lease. The landlord will be pissed if you screw around drilling things into his cabinets and modify plumbing.)
In the end, the most important thing about drinking water, is eliminating the harmful contaminants and the foul taste and odor.
Many people are somewhat dehydrated, and one obstacle to remaining properly hydrated is the “gag reflex” of their tap water. It may be “safe enough” to drink, but it probably just doesn’t taste very good.
Luckily, there’s cost effective options for most any budget.
It’s just that ZeroWater isn’t it.
My pretentious sister-in-law bragged about buying Nestle water off of a delivery truck that runs on diesel fuel.
If you want to talk about bad for the planet, holy crap.
But even then, just as much of an outrage, is that ZeroWater costs about the same to maintain on a Cost Per Gallon basis.
If you already have a ZeroWater system and just can’t bring yourself to toss it (maybe you got the $60 40 cup glass dispenser), I suggest at least switching over to the Aqua Crest ZR-017 replacement filter.
You won’t save any money per cartridge, but at least the filter doesn’t appear to be some complete piece of crap that doesn’t cut the mustard according to the lab guys, and then puts out “so long and thanks for all the fish” water after a couple weeks.
On Friday, I took my spouse to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.
It’s a nice place. I decided we had better get around to seeing it before the Cook County Democrats make it three times as expensive to get in next year. Citing higher foot traffic, they’ve gone from free admission and $25 to park a car, to $8 to park a car, and $26 per person, starting next year.
The Democrats are using the same math they use for figuring out what taxes will be, to exploit the fact that people go to the gardens for a day trip. Right now, that’s an affordable thing to do, but once it costs over $100 for a car with 4 people in it, it won’t be.
When we went last Friday, it was quite hot outside. We brought water bottles expecting to refill them as needed, but the place turned off the water and ice machine in the cafeteria “due to COVID”, yet left the bottle filling machine and drinking fountains on, albeit without refrigeration. Mmmm. Hot water on a hot day.
Meanwhile, if you wanted cold water, it started at $4.99 in a cardboard box in the cafe.
Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son) has a “boxed water” company to get around public objection to plastic pollution, and I believe that was the “brand” available there.
Isn’t America great? You can become rich (or, more correctly, richer) by selling water in a box in depressing Repo Man Generic font, for $5 per 16 ounces. Of course you want to pay $5 for a box of water. You don’t want COVID do you?
And if you want to take your chances, have fun drinking tepid water because they turned off the refrigeration in the fountain for….well, reasons.
BaronHK's Rants 