Living Footloose and Corn Syrup-Free

In the past six months, I've made a concerted, San Francisco-like attempt to avoid food products containing high fructose corn syrup or plain corn syrup. It's not really due to health reasons--I don't eat too much of whatever I find it in--but more out of rage. With certain exceptions, I am overall not one for processed foods, nor do I understand the necessity of using them in frozen desserts. I find it confusing when I am able to enjoy a product like Sharon's All Natural Lemon Sorbet, which contains lemon juice as the first ingredient, swiftly followed by water and cane sugar. Why, there's no high fructose corn syrup here, not even a whiff of regular corn syrup. But when Trader Joe's closes at 9:00pm and I've got a sorbet craving, or I'm nowhere in the vicinity of the two existing TJ's in the city, or they're just OUT of the lemoniciousy goodness, what brand can I look for in the more commercial Lucky's or Safeway that matches Sharon's in ingredient-integrity?

The answer?

Well, there is none. The best I've found is a box of Dreyer's lemonade fruit bars. The order of ingredients leaves a little to be desired (in comparison to Sharon's hearty concoction): water tops the list, followed by sugar, then lemon juice from concentrate. And the tooth chill factor brought on by having to bite into a bar versus spooning soft sorbet takes some fun out of the eating, but there's nothing else questionable on that frozen bar ingredients listing. Which begs the question, why can't name brands like Haagen-Dazs take corn syrup off the menu and still serve a fine product? (Sharon's can, and they're pretty much evenly priced.) Don't look to their "Zesty Lemon" sorbet, which names CS as the third ingredient.

Apparently, Sharon doesn't have much competition in the "non-scary ingredients" category at the moment. Until the FDA reveals some terrible news about secret agent Guar Gum, which pops up just about everywhere, (as a thickening agent might), I'll keep packing on the corn syrup-free pints. I recommend you do the same.