Do you like stealth raisins?

I like oatmeal-raisin cookies, but my significant other doesn’t like raisins. She leaves them out when she bakes oatmeal cookies. However, the last time I bought plain oatmeal cookies for us at the supermarket I was surprised to find that they tasted almost exactly like oatmeal-raisin cookies.

I found out why when I read the list of ingredients on the package. Raisin paste was on the list. It is made by pushing raisins through a fine mesh screen (extrusion). When you look up some popular brands of oatmeal cookies at LabelWatch you will find raisin paste on the list of ingredients for:

Archway Classic Oatmeal Cookies
Mother’s Iced Oatmeal Cookies
Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal Soft Baked Cookies












Those raisins are there, but you can’t see them. They’re little purple ninjas, like a strange cross between the California Raisins and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

I like to clearly see what I’m getting, so I don’t like stealth raisins. Similarly I don’t like that the new rules for the election game lets unknown advocacy groups with curious names like Americans for Prosperity, Apple Pie, and Pickup Trucks pour mass quantities of money into campaigns.