Super Eco

Photo credit: Isaac Wedin

A friend of a friend is Lära, of Lärabar, and the company's products have long been on my list of responsible food choices. They meet the ingredients criteria: they have fewer than five ingredients, the ingredients are whole foods that you can imagine growing, and they are minimally processed. 

That will teach me to assume things about the foods I eat. This week, Lärabar was added to the list of recalled products which used peanut paste from Peanut Corporation of America, and may be contaminated with salmonella. Also on the list: Luna Peanut Butter Cookie and Nutz over Chocolate bars, and a wide variety of CLIF Bars, most crushingly, CLIF Kid Organic ZBaR Peanut Butter; a brand I've picked up in the past as a smarter choice for my little boys. Lärabar corporate parent General Mills also voluntarily recalled its JamFrakas Peanut Butter Blisscrisp flavor snack bars, and many other organic and natural peanut snacks are on the list, such as Whole Foods Carob Energee Nuggets and Health Valley Organic Peanut Crunch Chewy Granola Bars.

While whole foods and organic ingredients do make a product safer to eat in the aggregate, it's a good reminder that even natural and sustainably-grown foods (especially peanuts) can be contaminated with salmonella and other dangerous bacteria. Peanut Corporation of America sells several organic peanut butter products to its commercial customers; while those who have already consumed a recall-affected product can hope that the salmonella only contaminated the conventionally-grown peanuts, though there is no way of knowing today as the outbreak is so widespread.

And I have to wonder: Is anyone else starting to feel the jilted consumer in this tortuous corporate love story?