Sugar-free Peeps?!

Every year along about now we start to see Easter candy. (Actually, it starts well before Valentine’s Day, but Mr. Tidbit doesn’t want to do that kind of season-jumping; 6½ weeks ahead is early enough for him.)

Anyway, as has recently become customary, the folks who make marshmallow Peeps have new versions this year. Last year we got a Peep in a hollow milk-chocolate egg; this year there’s a crispy milk chocolate egg.

Much more disturbing to Mr. Tidbit are new sugar-free Peeps. Not disturbing because sugar-free Peeps are sort of a crime against nature, though they are, but because they consist largely of maltitol, isomalt, polyglycitol syrup and sorbitol – “sugar alcohols” required to carry a warning that excess consumption may have a laxative effect.

Mr. Tidbit doesn’t want to know how close to “excess” for a small child the package’s three-Peep (28-gram) serving comes. Nor does he think you should find out the hard way.

And antioxidants on top

If you keep reading about antioxidants in fruits, but you don’t like blueberries and you don’t even want to find out whether you like acai or mangosteens, the Cherry Marketing Institute wants you to know that you can get almost the same level of antioxidants found in blueberries in – that’s right – cherries! How’d you guess? See www.choosecherries.com.