Spotted* Fortune Cookies - Not So Wise Afterall
What's in your cookie besides the fortune?
My fortune read ” You will live a long and healthy life.” Maybe so, but it won’t be because I ate the fortune cookie that comes along with my steamed chicken and mixed vegetables. When you buy a pint of lo mien or moo shoo pork, in reality you have no idea of what’s actually inside that cardboard container. There is no ingredients list that tells us the makeup of that brown sauce coating and floating your noodles. We’ve all heard the urban legends ( or so we hope ) of the various meat replacements that could be posing as your “chicken”. Despite all the unknown contents, Chinese food is a staple of the American diet in most neighborhoods.
But there is one part of your meal that WILL list the ingredients; the prepackaged fortune cookie that we all look forward to cracking open and reading for that quick glimpse into our future. I must admit that this little, seemingly harmless treat has been the inspiration for this website as whole.
Click for full size image
Listed as the fourth ingredient, right behind flour, water and sugar, is our favorite; partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil. Since there is no actually nutrition facts panel on the wrapper, though I would assume you could find it on the manufacturers box, there is no way to know how much actual trans fat is in a cookie per serving. While I don’t think eating one trans fat laden fortune cookie is going to change your overall health and well being, it is the cumulative effect of eating many small amounts of trans fats in obscure foods that leads to possible problems. A little bit here and there, in foods your wouldn’t normally think contained things such has margarine or shortening, is the main reason I began Transfatspotting.com. We need to be aware of just how much trans fat we ingest on a daily basis, and from what sources, if we hope to be able to keep things like high cholesterol or heart disease from occurring. We may go out of our way to avoid buying packaged foods or dessert products that obviously list trans fats on the labeling, and yet we still ingest trans fats unknowingly through various sources.
So the next time you tear open the plastic wrapping, by all means crack the fortune cookie and copy down your ever important lucky numbers. But toss the cookie, your body will thank you.
