My Crankiness Knows No Bounds, and Yet...

About a month ago, I posted a picture of an envelope on Facebook...

...with a comment: See that envelope? That's in the outgoing mail. Does it have a check in it? It does not. It has a note asking that they take me off of their list because of that ridiculous stunt with the five 1-cent stamps.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that Human Rights Watch has used this direct mail ploy; I wrote about it two years ago, on this very blog!

Today's mail included ANOTHER solicitation from Human Rights Watch. I opened it. (I always open the solicitations, it's like a busman's holiday - you have to check out what other non-profits are doing - and if they're really appealing I might even send them to my Development Department. And sometimes the March of Dimes sends you an actual dime - free money! I digress.)

I had to laugh. Instead of a bunch of live 1-cent stamps, it had printed images of stamp-like doodles.

Well played, Human Rights Watch, well played. (But no, don't put me back on your list.)

What Were They Thinking?

It's time for another round of charitable crankiness. You may recall that in 2012 I kept every charitable solicitation that arrived by postal mail. At the beginning January, I thought I might do that again, but instead of waiting to do a round up at year end, I think I'll do it monthly.

There were ten solicitations that arrived in January - however, two of them were from the same organization so nine places tried to get me to donate.

Of the ten envelopes, four came with plain return envelopes, to which I would have to supply my own stamp:



Five came with business reply envelopes - where the sender gets to mail something and the recipient pays the postage. (I've heard this compared to making a collect call.):



With business reply mail, the post office charges the recipient for each envelope that comes back - plus a premium for handling, and an annual permit fee.

Note that two of those envelopes ask you to put your own stamp on anyway: "your stamp on this envelope is an additional contribution" and "your first-class stamp on this envelope adds to your gift". It's a little disingenuous to call it an additional contribution - but it would arguably reduce the expenses to the organization because they wouldn't have to pay the postage on that particular envelope and would therefore save a dollar or so. However, in my experience as a career non-profit person, who has worked at organizations that have tested using business reply mail, if someone puts a stamp on a BRE, the post office charges ANYWAY. So both the donor and the recipient have now paid postage, and that's ridiculous.

What really chapped my hide, though, was a return envelope from Human Rights Watch - which was a BRE with stamps. Five cents worth of stamps:



I just don't know what they were thinking - so I looked it up. Apparently it's a thing:

Here’s a relatively inexpensive trick that can increase the prominence of the BRE (and make it look like an SRE). Try adding a few low-denomination stamps, such as one-cent, two-cent, or even a five-cent stamp, ideally aligned with an element of your mission. (For nature accounts, we’ve had success using Bobcat or other animal stamps.)

Not only does Human Rights Watch have to pay for postage plus the handling charge for any envelopes that come back, they have also spent money on postage for EVERY ENVELOPE THAT THEY SENT. That seems like a crazy waste of money.

The USPS probably likes it though, all those stamps bought and never used.

A Four Penny Dreadful

As you will remember, from time to time I rail about charitable solicitations that have annoyed me - especially when there are live stamps or actual dimes involved.

Yesterday brought a new iteration of the live stamp mishegoss.

Yes. The organization glued four penny stamps onto a business reply mail envelope. In other words, the organization just wasted four cents on that mailing because if the BRM comes back, the post office is going to charge them whatever they charge for a BRM (first class postage plus a surcharge which varies depending on how many pieces come back), and if the envelope doesn’t come back, the four cents is gone like the wind. And, since the return rate on charitable solicitations is generally low (like in the single digits low), nearly 95% of those penny stamps are going in the garbage.

You may say “but I’ll add my own stamp so the charity doesn’t have to pay”. Whatcha gonna do, use a Forever stamp that you have sitting around, or rustle up 46¢ worth of stamps? You’re unlikely to do the latter, so it’s a waste of 4¢. Plus, in my experience, even though some postage paid BRM envelopes say something like “use your own stamp and help us more”, like this one does, the post office does not always recognize that. You put your stamp on, the post office may well charge the charity the BRM rate anyway. (I have seen this happen; it’s one of the reasons we’ve given up on BRM mail in my office.)

End result?

International Rescue Committee is off of my list.

Cautionary tale for you?

Don’t put a stamp on a Business Reply Mail envelope.

Just Who Is Coming To Dinner Anyway?

I was totally channeling my mother this morning when I ripped a scrap out of the newspaper, sputtering. She'd have done the same, and circled the offending bit in red pen, and left it for me to read the next time I visited.

I'm just sharing it with you.

(And yes, I checked.  The oh-so-egregious error was fixed in the on-line edition of the Times.)

A Little Charity, and a Rant about Scent

You may recall my post-Blogher post, in which I mentioned that P&G handed out no swag, but instead promised to mail a box to your house. Said box arrived last week, full of full-sized products to try. Lots of the things in the box were products that I've no interest in trying (washing machine cleaner) or just don't need (tampons and pads) or don't ever use (mascara).

Happily, though, the box came the day before our local fire department was doing a supplies drive for people upstate affected by Hurricane Irene. So I repacked about half of the things and delivered Tampax tampons, Always pads, Olay facial cloths, two Cover Girl mascaras, Ivory body wash, two kinds of Febreze, the aforementioned Tide washing machine cleaner, Downy Unstopables, and some Pantene Curly "damage repair ampoules" down to the collection point at the farmer's market.

So, P&G, thank you for helping me to help some other people. Someone whose basement had two feet of water in it is likely to appreciate the Febreze. And someone whose whole house washed away may well be in need of the pick-me-up provided by a new mascara.

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<rant>Okay, okay. I have to poke it with a stick. Downy Unstopables? 1) They spelled it wrong; it should be "unstoppable". 2) Why? Why would you want to dump little pellets in the wash, to add fragrance to your laundry, fragrance that according to the promo language on the Downy website is supposed "to keep active wear, towels, and other fabrics smelling “wow” right up until the next wash." Huh? It's such a persistent odor embedded in your clothing that it lasts through the wash, through the dryer cycle, into the closet, and the whole while you're wearing that shirt? What the hell is in it? Why would I want to do that to my clothes and my nose? To be fair, I'm probably the wrong person for it - I never use air fresheners because I'd rather smell a fart for the few minutes before it dissipates than have possibly dangerous artificial chemicals wafting through my house, I use unscented deodorant, and the laundry detergent I use is so lightly scented that there's no odor left if I run the load through the dryer. But still. Downy presumably saw a need. Why?</rant>

Foot of Brakes

Sigh.



Why do I think the people making signs for the car wash should be better versed in the English language?

Pence

You know what? I hate that you can't email members of Congress anymore. Nope, unless you're in their district, you can't just fire off an email. If you're in the district, you have to fill out an on-line form, which is bad enough, but if you aren't in the district, you need to call or write an old-fashioned letter.

I'm all cranky about this because of the Pence amendment business. My representatives in Congress aren't people I need to worry about - I voted for them, I mostly like how they represent me - but the doctor in the district next door was on the fence. But for a few miles - hell, my zip code is split between two districts - that doctor would be my Congresswoman. The medical practice she came from is the one my family uses.

I'm seething about this because I feel powerless. So I'm telling you - maybe you can make a phone call, send an email, jump up and down.

Separately, you could sign a petition on behalf of Planned Parenthood:

Did you hear? The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can't let it go unanswered. It's time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it. http://www.ppaction.org/IStandWithPP

This still has to get through the Senate, which looks unlikely, but that's not the point. I feel hopeless because there are elected officials out there who are trying to dismantle programs that save lives and there are unnecessary barriers to communication.*

You don't believe in abortion? Fine. Don't get one. But don't take Planned Parenthood down too.

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*According to a congressional website, the "Write Your Representative ... Reduces the heavy burden placed on the House mail servers by the high volume of emails sent to Congressional offices every day - over 15 million emails per month."  Maybe they could get beefier mail servers, so people could talk to them.

She goes where angels fear to tread

I'm so glad I drink my tea straight up, because this is an actual email I had to send out last week:

Yo! Buy your own milk!

Someone opened a brand new unopened bottle of milk from Ronnybrook – and drank some. This was someone else’s milk! If you didn’t buy it, if you didn’t put it in the fridge, it’s not yours!

Be nice.

Besides, the office provides FREE coffee, tea and sugar – because they aren’t perishable. Milk is your responsibility.

There are now eleventy-four containers of milk in the office fridge. Do they behave better in your office?

Eat Real Food

A couple of months ago, I had a PR pitch land in my inbox, with an offer to send me (on dry ice, I guess) a frozen meal in a bag, the supermarket version of a dish from a mall chain restaurant. I toyed with the idea of accepting the frozen product, preparing it, and snarkily ripping it to shreds, for you, dear Readers. But I decided that I couldn’t live with myself for even having it in my house. I wouldn’t buy it, and I don’t want to eat it, and I don't want to feed it to my kid, and I never eat in those kinds of mall chain restaurants anyway, so why would I want to try it at home? And because I don’t want to give them any undue publicity, I’m not even going to name them.

I did, however, go to their website to check the ingredients list for one of the varieties, their General Chang’s Chicken, just to see.

• Broccoli
• Fully cooked crispy battered chicken breast meat [chicken breast meat, water, corn starch, potato starch, soy sauce (water, soybeans, wheat, salt), tapioca maltodextrin, sodium phosphate, garlic powder, leavening (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate), egg white powder, ginger, xanthan gum. Fully cooked in vegetable oil (soybean oil, canola oil)]
• Water
• Sugar
• Red bell peppers
• Soy sauce (water, soybeans, wheat, salt)
• Concentrated chicken broth
• Garlic
• Canola Oil
• Corn starch
• Ginger
• Chili paste (red chili peppers, distilled vinegar, salt, xantham gum)
• Hydrogenated soybean oil
• Oyster flavored sauce [water, sugar, salt, oyster extractives (oysters, water, salt), modified corn starch, caramel color]
• Sesame oil
• Caramelized onion juice concentrate
• Distilled vinegar
• Spice

You like that? That label is impossible to read, what with being printed in all caps and full of nested parentheses, which is why I took the time to type out the whole list for you, dear Readers. Yum, yum, yum. Oh, I suppose you could argue that it's not *that* bad, but do I want to be eating chicken that was raised in some god-awful factory farm, prepped and frozen a dozen moons ago, doctored with xanthan gum and caramelized onion juice concentrate, containing more sugar than soy sauce?

Furthermore, look at this picture. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't it look like it's got lots of red peppers in it? Yes, but look up at that ingredients list again: this here General Chang's Chicken has more sugar than red peppers. That's a lot of sugar, and here we could spin off into the whole industrial-food-complex-added-sugars-equals-American-obesity business, but we won't because it's been said in plenty of other places.

What it boils down to is this: I want real food - a fresh chicken from a clean local farm, with a side of broccoli from my CSA. And you should too.

I Feel Better Now

Letter # 1

10 September 2010

Aristidis Zaharopoulos
Gothic Cabinet Craft
58-77 57th Street
Maspeth, NY 11378

Dear Mr. Zaharopoulos:

Last Christmas, my husband & I bought a dollhouse for our daughter. We quickly realized that we needed a table of some sort to put the dollhouse on, and after canvassing various local stores and on-line retailers, we ended up in the Gothic Cabinet Craft store in (redacted).

We wandered around the store for awhile, not finding anything that was the needed dimensions. Finally, a salesperson pointed out a piece that was sitting up high, on top of a modular wall system – not down at floor level. In fact, we never would have noticed it without the salesperson’s assistance. As it was the right dimension, we decided to order it.

The salesperson wrote up the order, we signed it and paid for it, and left the store. A couple of weeks later, my husband returned to pick up the piece – and found that it was not what we had ordered.

Yes, the piece matched the stock number on the order form – but the salesperson wrote down the wrong item number on that order form. There was no way for us to have known that the clerk made a mistake until we saw the wrong piece of furniture. Stock numbers are idiosyncratic and obscure, kind of like medical billing CPT codes. Would you recognize that your doctor wrote down the code for an angioplasty when in fact you had a cholecystectomy? Unlikely.

We protested to American Express and after much back and forth, American Express has sided with your store.

I am appalled by this. We are out nearly $400 because of an error made by YOUR SALESPERSON. I simply do not understand why our failure to recognize the salesperson’s error in the stock number should be held against us.

The salesperson’s argument that we changed our minds is just not true. We needed this, we wanted this, we thought we ordered it. We would have glad taken receipt of the item had it been the right item.

I’m not a complainer – but this situation makes my blood boil. This is heinous treatment by your company and by American Express, and if I don’t get resolution I am taking this matter to the New York Times, the Better Business Bureau, and small claims court.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[Magpie Musing]

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Letter #2

10 September 2010

Kenneth I. Chenault
American Express
200 Vesey Street
New York. NY 10285

Dear Mr. Chenault:

I hope you can help me. I have been a CardMember since 1987. Membership has its privileges, right?

Last Christmas, my husband & I bought a dollhouse for our daughter. We quickly realized that we needed a table of some sort to put the dollhouse on, and after canvassing various local stores and on-line retailers, we ended up in the Gothic Cabinet Craft store in (redacted).

We wandered around the store for awhile, not finding anything that was the needed dimensions. Finally, a salesperson pointed out a piece that was sitting up high, on top of a modular wall system – not down at floor level. In fact, we never would have noticed it without the salesperson’s assistance. As it was the right dimension, we decided to order it.

The salesperson wrote up the order, we signed it and paid for it, and left the store. A couple of weeks later, my husband returned to pick up the piece – and found that it was not what we had ordered.

Yes, the piece matched the stock number on the order form – but the salesperson wrote down the wrong item number on that order form. There was no way for us to have known that the clerk made a mistake until we saw the wrong piece of furniture. Stock numbers are idiosyncratic and obscure, kind of like medical billing CPT codes. Would you recognize that your doctor wrote down the code for an angioplasty when in fact you had a cholecystectomy? Unlikely.

We protested to American Express and after much back and forth, American Express has sided with Gothic Cabinet Craft.

I am appalled by this. We are out nearly $400 because of an error made by a salesperson. I simply do not understand why our failure to recognize the salesperson’s error in the stock number should be held against us.

The salesperson’s argument that we changed our minds is just not true. We needed this, we wanted this, we thought we ordered it. We would have glad taken receipt of the item had it been the right item.

I’m not a complainer – but this situation makes my blood boil. This is heinous treatment by your company and by Gothic Cabinet Craft, and if I don’t get resolution I am taking this matter to the New York Times, the Better Business Bureau, and small claims court.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[Magpie Musing]

---

I'm on the verge of cancelling my Amex card, and I am never shopping at Gothic Cabinet Craft again. What happened to "the customer is always right?" And on second thought, maybe the title should have been "I Feel Better Now Though I'll Feel A Lot Better When I Get My Money Back". Because right this minute, I'm still out that money.

Let's Review: Crest Neat Squeeze

It's harder than it should be to buy toothpaste for the kid; she's very picky about the flavors. Mint? No. Cinnamon? Hell no. Watermelon? No. Orange-Mango? No. The only flavor she accepts is blue bubblegum, thanks to a free sample of Crest "Sparkle Fun" that came home from the dentist one day (ah, insidious marketing).

Figuring that brushing teeth is better than not brushing teeth, I caved and bought a full-sized "tube" of the Crest. It comes in a new-fangled container, not the usual tube that you squeeze and roll and squeeze and roll. Nope, this is the "Neat Squeeze" container, for fastidious types that don't care to have their toothpaste tubes squeezed in the middle by careless six year olds. Note, if you will, the flat bottom, rendering the container more like a bottle than a tube. I supposed that appeals to the tidy people who abhor their tubes lying down. Because it is new-fangled, it has informative copy on the back of the container:



In case you can't read that fine print, it says:

The Neat Squeeze dispenser has a unique inner bag that empties itself as you squeeze in the middle. When the package gets lighter and is harder to squeeze, it’s time to buy more Crest.

Yeah, right.

The toothpaste stopped coming out of the tube. I squeezed the hell out of it, I banged it on the sink, I stood it upside down, all because I knew there was a lot of toothpaste in there. Finally, I got a pair of scissors, and carefully cut off the bottom of the tube, revealing the silver plastic bag within.

Can I tell you how annoying it was to find that there was at least a third of the product still in there, no longer willing to be squeezed out by itself? And Crest wanted me to throw that tube out and buy more? You can just imagine the people at Proctor & Gamble sitting around inventing a dispenser that contains six ounces, but only spits out four. "Ha, ha", they think, "we'll sell more units that way".

Feh. I think I'd rather her teeth rot that buy that stuff again.

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Disclosure: In case you're wondering, I bought this toothpaste with my own money and no one paid me for this review.

Pointless Feckless Aimless and Graceless

Yesterday, I got a Facebook message from someone, which read follows:

Some fun is going on.... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls no men .... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.. Haha

It pissed me off, for a number of reasons - the silliness, the sexism, the trivialization of cancer. It’s like junior high school or something. First of all, how the hell is this supposed to "spread the wings of cancer awareness"? If you see a status update that says "black", are you going to make the cognitive leap to cancer? I don't think so. Second, I'm irked by the men vs. girls thing in the text. The opposite of girl is boy. The opposite of men is women. Grown-ups are men and women (unless they’re ballet dancers, in which case they’re girls and boys – but that’s another day). Third, is this supposed to be about breast cancer? What about lung and prostate and pancreatic cancer? What about lymphoma and melanoma? Not sexy enough because lungs don't wear undergarments?

Susan (Why Mommy) weighed in with a post today – reminding us that women who’ve had double mastectomies don’t wear bras. In her post, she linked to a Newsweek blog post about this whole Facebook meme, in which the author points out "This isn't awareness or education; it's titillation". And Barbara Card Atkinson got all hot and bothered on Facebook – privately, to me, and publicly, where she said: "Instead of listing your bra color, why not send a donation to the cancer fighting foundation of your choice? Everyone *is* aware - so go make an actual difference!"

That’s it, people – we’re aware of cancer, we need ACTION, we don't need to know what color bra you are or aren't wearing.

Argh.

Pregnancy ≠ Nine Months

You know what really gets my goat? Okay, well, lots of things, but one of them is when someone whines that pregnancy is ten long months, OMG, because they've concluded that 40 weeks divided by four-weeks-in-a-month is ten.

WRONG.

Let’s do the math.

One year = 12 months = 52 weeks.
¼ of a year = 3 months = 13 weeks.
¾ of a year = 9 months = 39 weeks.

Now, gynecologists have perpetrated the myth that pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. But that’s only because they assume that most women don’t know the date of conception, but that most do know the date of the beginning of their last menstrual period (LMP). For convenience, therefore, gynecologists start counting the pregnancy from the date of the LMP. But the date of the LMP is generally understood to be about two weeks prior to the date of conception – two weeks in which one is most definitely NOT pregnant. You aren’t pregnant until you’ve conceived.

So, take the 40 weeks, subtract the two weeks in which you aren’t pregnant, and you get 38 weeks of actual pregnant time. The careful reader will note that 38 weeks is LESS than nine months. Ta da!

Let's Review: Baby Alive

For heaven's sake, does anyone really need a doll that pees? I thought they'd gone the way of all things, but apparently they've made a reappearance. Someone gave my daughter a "Baby Alive Better Now Baby" for her birthday, and I'd like to rip its little molded plastic hair out. For one thing, it only came with ONE disposable diaper. [The packaging said there were supposed to be two - it is possible that the second diaper got thrown out because the packaging was that kind of insane frustration of hard plastic and wire ties that drives parents to drink.] For another thing, the diapers are DISPOSABLE. Meaning, once they get wet, you're supposed to throw them out. Meaning, you're supposed to buy disposable diapers FOR A DOLL. This does not fall into the category of ecologically correct toy.

I have firmly instructed the girl that no more water is to be "fed" to the doll - because I will not buy disposable diapers for a doll.

It could be worse. There's a more expensive version that pees and poops and whimpers, and requires special food and batteries, which was a runner-up in the 2009 TOADY awards:

Want to stamp out your preschooler’s pesky imagination? Try Hasbro’s Baby Alive Learns to Potty. Some version of Baby Alive has been around since the 1980s, but thanks to animatronics the 2008 version does everything. Really everything. In addition to talking, gurgling, eating special Baby Alive food and drinking Special Baby Alive juice, this is the only TOADY award nominee that actually poops. Baby Alive Learns to Potty comes with two packets of food and two diapers—which aren’t reusable when “messed.” In addition to squelching your child's creative play, you'll get big bang out of adding Baby Alive’s food and diaper costs to the family budget!

At least I'm not alone in being such a curmudgeon.

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Disclosure: My kid got this as a birthday present, and no one paid me for this review.

Let's Review: Reduced Calorie Orange "Juice"

Really, the only reason I bought a container of Trop50 was because I had a free coupon and a hare-brained idea for a so-called performance art piece for my own amusement. But then, once home, I had to try it. Right? Waste not, want not?

It cavorts in the grocery case with the real orange juice, all those 64 ounce cartons lined up, with a little pulp, a lot of pulp, no pulp at all, from concentrate, not from concentrate. But it's sneaky, it's a 59 ounce carton, a little taller than the others, a little bit more slender, and holding 8% less. Deceptive, if you ask me.

And it's got 50% less sugar and calories - because it's really not orange juice, it's an "orange juice beverage with vitamins", containing 42% juice. Here's the ingredients list, not including the vitamins and minerals:

Filtered water, not from concentrate pasteurized orange juice, modified food starch, citric acid, malic acid, natural flavors and Reb A (PureVia brand)

So, they took regular orange juice, watered it down, and added stuff back in - like sweetener (the Reb A, also known as stevia) and thickener (modified food starch) and flavor.

Okay, okay. The real question is - how does it taste? Frankly, it's not very good. I tried it side by side against a glass of regular Tropicana orange juice - in a blind tasting (yeah, I roped my husband into serving as my lab assistant). The Trop50 doesn't have the same mouthfeel of the orange juice, it tastes artificially sweetened, and it has a vaguely bitter, unpleasant aftertaste.

You want fewer calories than the 110 in an eight ounce glass of orange juice? Drink less juice. Or water it down yourself. Or drink water with a lemon wedge squeezed into it. Or just have a glass of water, and save all the calories for a nice, refreshing gin & tonic on the back porch at the end of the day.

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Disclosure: I got a free coupon for this "juice" at the BlogHer conference, so I paid nothing for it. And no one paid me for this review.

Let's Review: Scented Pencils

Last year, the PTA at my sister's kids' school decided to be all environmentally correct in their fundraiser - the fundraiser where the parents have to guilt their friends and neighbors into buying stuff no one really wants. Our father signed up to buy five-packs of cunning rip-stop nylon shopping bags for everyone in the family, and there wasn't really anything else we needed, but, to be supportive, I bought some colored pencils for the kid. Smencils, to be precise, colored pencils made of recycled newspaper and soaked in scent to become smelly pencils. Wouldn't "scencils" have been a better name? Scented pencils. I digress.

Yesterday, I decided we should tackle some of the over-the-summer homework that the girlie has - you know, bone up on kindergarten skills in preparation for first grade. So, out came the Smencils.

The packaging made me apeshit. It's all well and good to make pencils out of newspaper; I like that, you even see the rings of paper when you sharpen the pencil. But every single pencil is encased in its own hard plastic "corn-based biodegradable Freshness Tube" and all the pencil tubes are in a zippered vinyl tote - so there's more packaging than pencils. Why, I ask you, does a pencil need a Freshness Tube? Especially when the company says "we guarantee Smencils will maintain their scent for 2 years - in or out of their Freshness Tubes". When was the last time a kid's pencil in general use lasted for 2 years? And if it keeps its scent for two years without a tube, why does it need the tube in the first place?

Furthermore, I'm skeptical about the whole corn-based biodegradable business. It's not biodegradable in your backyard (it requires a "controlled composting environment", and according to Smithsonian, there are only 113 such facilities across the US). It has to be kept separated from the recycling of other plastics, the kinds with a number in a triangle, "lest it contaminate the recycling stream". So if you can't compost it, and you can't recycle it, it ends up in the landfill!

There's also the "morality of turning a foodstuff into packaging when so many people in the world are hungry", and the possible environmental impact of using genetically modified corn for making said packaging.

Couldn't the Smencils have been packed in a simple cardboard box like pencils used to be?

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Disclosure: I purchased the Smencils, and no one paid me for this review.

Let's Review: Pomegranate Juice

A month or so ago, I got an email from someone at Pom Wonderful, wondering if I'd like to try a case of their pomegranate juice. Sure, why not? I'd been vaguely curious about their product ever since a 2008 New Yorker profile of Lynda Resnick, the owner of the company, which focused on her creation of the pomegranate juice market beginning in 2002.

A box of eight cute little 8-ounce bottles showed up, packed on ice because it's fresh juice and needs to be refrigerated. I cracked one open and winced. Man, that stuff is astringent - to the point that it makes your tongue all weird. And it's awfully high in calories - 8 ounces has 160 calories - in contrast, a 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola has only 140 calories. Ounce for ounce, the pomegranate juice has 71% more calories than Coke.

The box came with some promotional material about the "health benefits" of pomegranate juice, but because I'm a natural skeptic, I figured I should poke around a little and see what other people had to say.

Consumer Reports does say that "there's some preliminary human evidence that pomegranate juice may yield tangible health benefits. In a small clinical trial published last year in the journal Clinical Nutrition, for example, drinking a glass of pomegranate juice each day for one year reduced blood pressure, decreased the oxidation that causes “bad” LDL cholesterol to stick to artery walls, and reduced clogging of arteries in the neck (a risk factor for stroke)."

However, and also according to Consumer Reports, "pomegranate juice may offer some health benefits, but it can also interact with some medications, including ACE inhibitors and antihypertensive drugs".

Pom Wonderful claims to be the "antioxidant superpower". But what does that mean? What's the point of antioxidants anyway?

According to the Times, there is "no evidence that [antioxidant supplements] prolong life, and strong evidence that they might shorten it." Furthermore, Barry Popkin, quoted elsewhere in the Times, says that "drinking a glass of fruit juice a day...has been linked...to increased calorie intake and higher risks of diabetes and heart disease".

I think the Pom Wonderful people are selling a bill of goods. It's not great juice, it's high in calories, and its health benefits are dubious.

I'm too cheap to throw the stuff away, so I've been slipping it in my morning smoothies: one banana, a half cup of plain yogurt, and 4 ounces of the pomegranate juice. It comes out a nice shade of pink, but even banana and yogurt don't mask the astringency. I also have been making pink lemonade by adding a couple of tablespoons to a half gallon of plain lemonade, and some of the pomegranate juice made its way into my eggplant caponata.

But will I be buying it any time soon? Nope.

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Disclosure: The pomegranate juice was provided to me by the manufacturer, at no cost to me. And they did not pay me for this review.

More Evidence That I Am A Crank

Last week, three weeks before the school year is to end*, the PTA sent out an email with a link to order school supplies for next year. Being the cussed disestablishmentarianist that I am, my first thought was "the hell with that, I'll buy the stuff myself". But I clicked through to see what was on the list, and found, to my enormous irritation, that the first grade supply lists were divided by gender - different lists for boys and girls.

There is one difference between the boxes: the boy's box has one box of 20 gallon sized zippered plastic bags, the girl's box has one box of 50 sandwich sized zippered plastic bags.**

But what thoroughly chaps my hide is that the girl supply list costs twenty cents more! What insidious form of discrimination is this? Isn't it bad enough that women earn less than men? Now it costs more to be a girl, too?

I can't imagine why they didn't split the difference, ten cents more to the boys, and ten cents less to the girls.

And in the end, I just bought the stuff - so I wouldn't have to think about it again - but not without leaving a comment about the pricing.

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*Here in New York, school starts immediately after Labor Day and runs to the end of June. Anything else just seems weird to me.

**They're classroom supplies - it's not that boys need fewer bigger bags and girls need more smaller bags.

Reading Aloud Crankiness

Pretty much every night, I read three books to the girlie before bed. Most of the books in rotation are ones I love and I appreciate - after all, as long as I'm doing the reading, I'd better like the books.

But there are a handful that push my buttons, even some of the ones I really like. Madeline, for example, is a great kid's book. The illustrations are charming, the protagonist is plucky, the text is fun to read. In it, as you must know, twelve little girls live in an old house in Paris, until Madeline gets carted off to the hospital to have her appendix removed. Twelve minus one is eleven. So why are there twelve girls eating dinner when Madeline is still in the hospital? It irks me when I see it - I like accuracy at all times.



Not too long ago, I won a copy of a book called Princess Bubble in a contest on The Girl Revolution. It's good - it's all about showing girls that they don't need a prince to live happily ever after. But there's one sentence that curdles my blood every time I see it - so much so that I leave the offending two words out (though I haven't yet gotten out a Sharpie). I ask you, why was it necessary to include "loving god" in a statement as to how to find true happiness? I realize that I'm a heathen pagan atheist, but that gratuitous "loving god" bit rankles me.



What gets your goat in your kid's books?

How to have a really memorable day

Start by going to the dentist. Learn that the tooth you broke last week during your teaching moment with your child, when you did a compare and contrast analysis of Smarties vs. SweeTarts, is going to require a crown, to the tune of $1600.

Go to the office for forty minutes, drooling because your mouth is shot full of Novocain.

Head home so you can catch the train that will get you home in time to be at child’s school by 1:30 for birthday "story/snack".

Space out on the train and forget to get off at your stop. Take cab home from the next stop, to the tune of $15.

Go to child’s school. Read "The Gardener" and hand out Rice Krispie treats.

Drop car off at gas station, because you noticed that the inspection expired at the end of last month. Walk home.

Get a call from the mechanic, who tells you that the twelve-year old car won’t pass inspection without two new front tires. Discuss situation with husband, who says you need four new tires, to the tune of $500. Breathe a sigh of relief that he didn’t insist on high-performance tires, which would have cost twice as much.

Go to a last minute appointment with the gynecologist because you’ve had your period for two weeks. Sit in the waiting room for half an hour, irritated because there is neither phone service nor internet access.

Grit your teeth through an endometrial biopsy, because the gynecologist wants to see if there’s anything amiss with the lining of the uterus. Be calm when the scheduler says you can get a pelvic sonogram appointment in a month, even though the gynecologist wants it done within the week. Grit your teeth through a blood draw by a phlebotomist who can’t find a vein.

Pick up child. Pick up husband. Pick up prescription.

Decide to go out to dinner with child, even though there’s really no need to spend any more money and there are leftovers, because it is her birthday after all. Arrive at restaurant and find most of the tables lined up into a table for 30 for someone else’s birthday party. Order a scotch on the rocks because it’s been a long day. Have heart sink when the birthday party guests turn out to be eight years old, because 30 eight year olds? Make a lot of noise.

Go home. Give child her presents.

Go to bed at 7:30.