Many of you are familiar with Walden Farms salad dressings. They are calorie free, which seems like a dieters delight. But they bring mixed reviews whenever they are mentioned. We don’t like them, and we don’t personally know anyone who does, but they do have some fans. We decided to try another product by Walden Farms which sounded and looked delicious. Caramel Dip! Apple slices and caramel dip sounded so decadent, and it quickly landed in our shopping cart.

All three of us decided to give this one a whirl. The jar of dip looked dark and rich, and when we opened it we were surprised by the thick, authentic caramel texture and scent. Forget dipping apple slices, we grabbed spoons!

Each of us carefully dug out a spoonful of caramel and we tasted all at the same time. We immediately responded with happily raised eyebrows and a symphony of Mmmm’s. Then the concoction began to settle down the back of our tongues, and our eyebrows lowered as we all had to give thought to the new taste sensation. Hmmm…

We each scooped up another bite of the dip and this time our faces turned sour as the chemical flavors took over. We rinsed, we spit, we searched for something real to eat to get the taste out of our mouths.

How exactly can you make a calorie free, carb free, fat free, sugar free food? The dip, like all the other Walden Farms products, is basically water that has been thickened, colored, and flavored with gels, thickeners, and various chemicals designed to smell and taste like real food.

Caramel dip isn’t exactly on our regular menu anyway, so we aren’t missing anything by giving it up, and we aren’t desperate enough to eat this. If we ever do get a craving for caramel dip, we’ll eat the real deal and just measure our portions.

To quote Dr. Will Clower … “If it ain’t food, don’t eat it”.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 10:20 pm and is filed under food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.