Guilty Pleasures

Let's look inside my coworker's refrigerator....hmmm what do we see. Coffee Mate! This is pretty much a non-food. It contains water, sugar (a food) corn-syrup solids, and partially-hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil. The reason we use corn-syrup solids as a sweetener in the USA is because it is so cheap. It contains no nutritional value whatsover but is a sweetener and will promote tooth decay. If you haven't heard already, you should be avoiding any hydrogenated oils whatsoever, and if you start scanning labels for this ingredient you will find it in many many many packaged foods, candy, donuts, cake mixes, even baby foods, almost in everything! It is what people are now calling "trans" fats and they being linked to heart disease.
Also, this product is made by Nestlé . They account for one of the largest coffee buyers in the world. But they refuse to purchase and sell Fair Trade coffee for the following reason
(from their website:)
"Nestlé recognises that Fair Trade is a useful way to raise consciousness about the coffee issue and for individual consumers to express their solidarity with a group of coffee farmers in the developing world. However, if on a broad basis, coffee farmers were paid Fair Trade prices exceeding the market price the result would be to encourage those farmers to increase coffee production, further distorting the imbalance between supply and demand and, therefore, depressing prices for green coffee.Worldwide, the Fair Trade movement accounts for less than 25 000 tonnes of green coffee.
Nestlé’s direct purchasing accounts for 110 000 tonnes of green coffee per year. This system enables the farmer to retain a greater portion of the price paid by Nestlé, therefore improving his income (see page 6). Speciality coffee brand Nespresso pays higher prices to the farmers according to quality."