Lon, Penney, and I were down in Monterey last week for a tiny amount of business, and a lot of vacation. After a long day at the Steinbeck museum in Salinas (fantastic!), we stopped for pie and coffee at a local diner. Along with our coffee we got a little bowl of those tiny coffee-creamers. I drink my coffee black, so I don’t usually pay any attention to the creamer, but this one caught my eye. It was called “Wholesome Farms Coffee Creamer.”

It had a cute little picture on it. The sun is rising on a pastoral scene with rolling hills, plowed fields, with a little barn on the right. Even the typeface was old-timey-looking, giving you that good, old-fashioned, down-on-the-farm feeling.

But next, in tiny little letters, almost too blurred to read, came the Ingredients: Water, Corn Syrup, Contains one or more of the following (Palm Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernal Oil, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil), Sodium Caseinate (a milk derivative), Dipotassium Phosphate, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Artificial Flavors. Contains: Milk.

Good thing they warned me — I almost ate something…wholesome. Oh, corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, is there anything you can’t do?”

I wonder what the UN-wholesome creamer has in it?