Your Civic Duty to Promote Greater Excellence in Our Nation's Economy

I believe that each and every American citizen has a civic responsibility to help promote greater excellence and healthfulness in all aspects of our nation's economy.

We can each do that in part through our role as consumers.

Those of us who maintain an online blog of our own can each write an online blog from time to time that publicizes and praises the consumer goods or services we have purchased that we believe to be excellent and salutary and beneficial.

To promote that type of proposed civic tradition by as many American citizens as possible, I would like to offer some product endorsements of my own. The following are products I purchase at my nearby H.E.B. supermarket in Austin, Texas, that I particularly enjoy:

--Low-fat frozen Yogurt from Breyer's that does not contain any high-fructose corn syrup as an ingredient. The Frozen Yogurt product from Breyer's that I like the best, and I have only tried two varieties of frozen yogurt from Breyer's so far, is the low-fat Caramel-flavored frozen yogurt featuring almonds as an ingredient. I purchased that particular product at a Wal-Mart store near Lakeline Mall in the Austin area, and I was very pleased with the flavor of that low-fat frozen yogurt from that Oakland, California-based company.
I am particularly delighted by the Breyer's frozen yogurt products I've tried because they offer a healthful frozen yogurt that tastes good enough for me to completely abstain from purchasing ice cream. Why purchase ice cream anymore, when I can purchase a "probiotic" frozen yogurt that is much better for my health, lower in saturated fat, and just as delicious as ice cream?

---Athenos-brand Spicy Three-Pepper Hummus from Churny Company, Inc., of Weyauwega, Wisconsin. Not only do I love spicy foods, but I particularly delight in hummus that is spicy and healthful. This product contains red peppers among its ingredients, and ingestion of red peppers is believed to help prevent cancer. I'm also delighted to note that this product contains no saturated fat, and only 50 calories per 27-gram serving. Chickpeas are among the "miracle" foods that are very beneficial to your health, and chickpeas are the cited leading ingredient in this commercial food product. This product also features olive oil as an ingredient, and many people of today assume that ingesting some olive oil on a year-round basis will help them to prevent heart disease. This healthful product has been officially endorsed by the "Smart Choices Program," as the product container clearly states.

----H.E.B. "Central Market"-brand "All Natural Bruschetta-Flavored Veggie Chips." I love the spicy tomatoey taste of this snack food, which is "made with real natural potatoes, tomatoes and basil," as the front of the package states. This snack food contains zero saturated fat, which is rare in a snack food item. Also, one serving of these veggie chips, or about 16 chips, contains 10 percent of my daily minimum requirements for iron. This product being sold at H.E.B. supermarkets in Austin, Texas, is distributed by H.E.B. Central Market in Austin. This product is particularly remarkable because I myself don't know of any potato chip brand (not even from the Plano-based Frito-Lay Inc., which offers dozens of potato-chip options) that offers as much of a spicy-tomatoey flavor as these veggie chips from H.E.B. supermarkets that are headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. Perhaps it's the craving for the spicy tomato-centered cuisine of Southern Italy that motivates me to seek out veggie chips that satisfy my "spicy-tomato craving." It's not that I have ever visited Southern Italy; it's just that I feel sure I would have delighted in its spicy-tomatoey cuisine, had I won a contest in which first prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to Rome. I like to imagine the fish dishes of Southern Italy that submerge or marinade the fish in a spicy tomato sauce.

---Smart Balance-brand "Omega" vegetable oil, consisting of a "natural blend of canola, soy, and olive oils," as the display label on the front side of this product states. This product contains only 1.5 grams of saturated fat per 14-gram (one tablespoon) serving, and 120 calories per 14-gram serving. I have occasionally debated whether I should instead purchase pure canola oil, instead of canola oil blended with other healthful vegetable oils. However, it seems likely to me that a combination of canola, soy, and olive oils may well be as good for the health as canola oil by itself. I plan to do more research on this, but it seems to me plausible that the heavy consumption of soybean oil by Japanese people and the heavy consumption of olive oil by Italians, respectively, each play a role in the incidence of heart disease in those two nations being low. So a vegetable oil blend combining soybean oil and olive oil with canola oil has a lot of appeal to me.
This Smart Balance Omega vegetable oil blend product is distributed by GFA Brands, Inc., of Paramus, New Jersey.

----"Emmi"-brand Swiss Premium Lowfat Apricot Yogurt. What I love about this product is that it gives me an excuse for eating one of those miracle-food fruits, Apricots, in a product that tastes delicious. This yogurt product contains two grams of saturated fat per 170-gram (six-ounce) serving, with only 170 calories per 170-gram serving. This product, which I purchased at my nearby H.E.B. supermarket, was produced "for Emmi (USA) Inc.," which is itself apparently based in "Valley Cottage, NY (New York)." This product is apparently from a company headquartered in Switzerland, and I note this partly because the Swiss flag is displayed next to the brand name. However, I have not yet done any research on the Emmi company. This felicitous product is definitely grounds for yodeling, if only I knew how to yodel and if only there were mountains nearby.


---Welch's-brand "Blueberrry, Pomegranate, (and) Concord Grape" 100 percent juice. The front display label for this fat-free product from Welch's in Concord, Massachusetts, states that this beverage blend contains twice the antioxidant power of orange juice. This rich-tasting and healthful beverage product is surprisingly delicious, when every previous beverage blend I've purchased that contained pomegranate juice as an ingredient had an unpleasant aftertaste to it. "Must I suffer in order to enhance my health from ingesting pomegranate juice," I used to note to myself. Today, though, with help from this Welch's product, I have no such doubts about drinking a beverage featuring pomegranate juice as an ingredient. I am also very confident that this type of elegant beverage product will help to persuade many current wine drinkers to switch to an alcohol-free lifestyle that is more healthful for them---and much safer for them when they decide to get into a motor vehicle and drive it somewhere or anywhere.

---H.E.B.-brand "Sweet Potato Fries," featuring "Sliced, Battered Sweet Potatoes" from H.E.B. supermarkets of San Antonio, Texas. Sweet potatoes are among the "miracle foods" that are very good for the health. This particular food product from H.E.B. features "zero" grams of saturated fat per serving, and each serving fulfills 65 percent of one's daily Vitamin A requirements. I am baking my sweet potato fries in the oven, with myself pouring a bit of the Smart Balance-brand blend of canola, soy, and olive oils on the pan I use for baking those sweet potato fries. These sweet potato fries are tasty, and I never find myself wondering afterward whether these particular types of french fries were somehow junk food: the vitamin statistics on this sweet potato fries product are compellingly eloquent.

---Frozen 100 percent grape juice from Welch's of Concord, Massachusetts. During my youth, I disliked and dreaded the insipid taste of grape juice produced by adding water to Welch's frozen grape juice inside the kitchen of my childhood home in Texas. Today, though, the flavor of Welch's frozen grape juice is much better than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm very hopeful, in fact, that as more and more American consumers give this frozen grape juice product a try, millions of wine drinkers in our country will "convert" to being grape-juice drinkers instead. And that, of course, is a nice tribute to Welch's and the Bay State.

--Silk-brand All Natural Chocolate Soymilk, Distributed by WhiteWave Foods of Broomfield, Colorado. This delicious chocolate-flavored soymilk makes it easy to drink soymilk as a beverage. This cholesterol-free product contains only 0.5 gram of saturated fat per 240 mL (1 cup) serving, and 3 total grams of fat per serving. This product also contains 350 mg of potassium per serving, and fulfills 10 percent of one's minimum daily Vitamin A requirements, 50 percent of one's minimum daily Vitamin B-12 requirements, 30 percent of one's minimum daily Vitamin D requirements, and 30 percent of one's minimum daily Riboflavin requirements.

---The Larabar all-natural snack bar or food bar, distributed by Small Planet Foods of Denver, Colorado, is not only delicious and very low in saturated fat, but also rich in vitamins and minerals. My favorites are the Larabar Ginger Snap food bar, the Larabar Cinnamon Roll food bar, and the Larabar Cherry Pie food bar.

---H.E.B.-brand "Rio Red" 100 percent Pasteurized Grapefruit Juice, by H.E.B. Supermarkets of San Antonio, Texas. This grapefruit juice from the refrigerated juices section of H.E.B. comes from Texas's own Rio Red Grapefruit, and is the most delicious juice being produced commercially in Texas that I myself am aware of. It is also the most delicious grapefruit juice from anywhere in the world that I myself can find at the supermarket. I'm reminded when I drink this Rio Red Grapefruit juice from Texas that I hope our Texas Legislature will find the wisdom to approve a resolution designating Rio Red Grapefruit Juice and Iced Tea, respectively, as our two official "State Beverages of Texas." I also hope that our Texas Legislature and State Government of Texas will assign higher priority than they have so far to helping to protect and strengthen the grapefruit-growing and grapefruit juice industry in Texas. At present, rapid urbanization and accompanying urban sprawl occurring in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas is significantly depleting the amount of cropland available for growing grapefruits in our Lone Star State. I have not obtained any factual statistics on this, but I wish that our Texas Department of Agriculture would make a point of compiling those statistics and then publicizing that type of very helpful --and very sobering -- factual information through our state's news media.

---Cargill Meat Solutions Corp.-brand Premium Quality Honeysuckle White and Lean "Hot Italian Turkey Sausage." This is the most deliciously spicy of the turkey sausages I have eaten so far, with paprika being one of the spices used. Unfortunately, most of the other turkey sausages are too bland to be delicious. This commercially-distributed food product comes from Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation of Wichita, Kansas, with a cited website of www.honeysucklewhite.com.
Incidentally, consumers should be warned in advance that while this food product bears the label "Honeysuckle White," the leading ingredient in this is actually "dark turkey." Also, while the saturated fat level is low---only 2 grams of saturated fat in each of these very large sausage links after they are cooked---this item does contain 55 mg of cholesterol per cooked sausage link. Each pre-cooked sausage link in this package weighs 112 grams. One particularly impressive statistic: each cooked sausage link contains 15 grams of protein! Excellent, from that standpoint!