Healthier options

Okay, yes, I took a day off. Sue me. Things to do, like laundry, hoovering and making a new batch of granola – complete with healthy seeds.

Yes, I found flax seeds. (What are the bottles about, you ask? I’ll get to that.)

Time to try my newly healthier breakfast.

Can’t tell any difference between previous taste and this new version with two tablespoons of healthy seeds. (Oops. Just did a search and of course it turns out these super seeds lose quite a bit of their superness when baked into things. Guess I’ll need to start sprinkling on my breakfast instead. Hope they’re either reasonably undetectable or actually a pleasant addition.)

What about the book? Interesting, but perhaps a story for another day.

What about those bottles? Okay, yes, here you go.

When I wrote recently about my no longer only slightly elevated cholesterol, I mentioned that one of the doctor’s eyebrow twitches was about nightly glasses of wine. I then asked what people who didn’t drink wine in the evening drank instead, as I had no idea. One friend recommended lime Bubly. I know these drinks are very popular – no calories, no sweeteners, yada yada. I’d never tried a Bubly, although, when I mentioned these drinks to another friend, she was very enthusiastic about how refreshing they were. Okay, I’d pick up a can next time I was in the grocery store and check it out.

In the meantime, I did have a bottle of elderflower cordial – something I already liked a small measure of in sparkling water. This is something our once lovely grocery store used to stock. (That was before it was bought out by a chain that got rid of it along with my favourite cheese and countless other things I liked.) Fortunately, when I complained on Facebook about this, someone told me it was still available at the up market shop I seldom use because it is so much more expensive. So, whilst awaiting my next visit to the store, I tried elderflower cordial in sparkling water in the evening. And guess what? It was a perfectly acceptable evening drink. The trick was putting it in a big wine glass.

A couple of days ago I was in the store. I knew they had a special Bubly fridge, because I’d seen it, but when I walked up to it for the first time I discovered there wasn’t a can of Bubly in the fridge. Instead there were three rows of energy drinks. Humph. Okay, I also knew that there were little bottles of Bubly syrup (along with Coke, Pepsi, 7Up, etc) in the section set aside for SodaStream. Picked up a bottle of lime syrup and tried it that night. Yeah, okay, it was fine, but frankly I preferred the elderflower. 

Let’s check the ingredients. 

Listed on the bottle of elderflower cordial: “Sugar, elderflower extract (22.4%), lemon juice from concentrate, citric acid.” Well, of course, whichever ingredient is listed first is going to be the one that’s a larger amount than any other. So presumably a fair old bit of sugar. But I really do only use a few drops in a glass. Citric acid? Natural from lemons good for you. Manufactured (more likely to be the case), not so good, but not particularly bad either. 

Listed on the bottle of lime Bubly: “Propylene glycol, natural flavors, water.” Once again, whatever’s listed first is the main ingredient. What exactly is propylene glycol? Hmm. According to WebMD it is used in a wide variety of food products, including fast food and highly processed snacks. (Oh, and antifreeze!) And what exactly constitutes “natural flavors”? According to this article I found, “Despite the term ‘natural’, the exact components of these flavors are proprietary, and the lack of disclosure can leave some consumers wondering about their potential impact on health.” Indeed. And Bubly is owned by Pepsi.

Verdict? I’ll finish off the lime Bubly syrup, but I’m sticking with elderflower cordial in sparkling water – in a wine glass.

And am I missing my spritzers? Oddly, no.