Misleading Labels

I’m from Seattle, the hometown of Starbucks. We love our coffee, the history, the message of sustainability. And the coffee.

Yesterday, while waiting in line for my sugar-free vanilla latte, I checked out the new bistro boxes the chain is featuring, and something caught my eye. A Justin’s nut butter squeeze pack! I love the squeeze packs. Aside – Joel and I both love them, and the boxes we buy in bulk from amazon.com don’t last long.

ANYways, the Justin’s peanut butter was in the Protein Plate – with one hardboiled egg, crackers, and some fruit. Something seemed off to me – one egg and some peanut butter? That can’t be that much protein. So I checked online – and it’s not. In fact, the so called Protein Plate has the fewest grams of protein of any of the bistro boxes. From what I can tell, Starbucks deems anything with more than 10 grams of protein “high-protein.”

All this is to say – I don’t trust labels. When it comes to gluten-free labeling, it’s even more confusing. There are just so many permutations – certified gluten-free, no gluten ingredients, packaged in a gluten-free facility. How do you know what they all mean? And how can I be sure what I’m eating really is gluten-free?