boxed beverages

if you want to know what happens to pixie sticks when they are mixed with high fructose corn syrup concentrate...just drink an organic vanilla milk box. seriously. i thought it was healthy. even though it's milk (and i use that word lightly) that doesn't have to be refrigerated. hmm. i thought milk was a dairy product. that, i don't know, turns sour/bad/rotten/retched when not refrigerated. bygones. apparently the magic milk box needs no refrigeration. and it needs no taste resemblance to milk either. it's organic. what does that mean exactly? the corn which the high fructose corn syrup is derived from is organic? fabulous. fabuless. my kids go to school. they see other kids' lunches. damn kids. those other kids get boxed drinks. my kids get water. boxed beverages are only for special occasions. like the pink franzia of my yesteryear. way yesteryear. my stomach just turned typing this. no one should ever say the word franzia. let alone put it in writing. so my kids see other boxed beverages and i think they, or she, as it may be (you know twins. they always get blamed for something even if only one did it), was actively coveting someone's boxed beverage. happened to be a milk-like boxed beverage. the teacher reported that she was really into it. read: she was hardcorepressing the kid for his/her boxed milk beverage. i of course went out and procured milk-like boxed beverages for my kids to bring to school. oh the peer pressure. i'm pretty sure this won't happen when lilly shows up at 10th grade with a brand new BMW and the creepy gym teacher tells me how much R wanted that BMW. so i got them vanilla. because chocolate sounded too sugary. vanilla somehow sounded more innocent. the night before school i decided to give it a taste. just to see what vanilla-milk-like-boxed beverages taste like. you know what? it's. dis. gusting. sugar in a straw. sugar in a box. sugar everywhere. not even the good kind of slurpee sugar. this sugar is like a pixie stick gone wrong. gone beveraged. so besides the sugar, the idea that "milk" did not have to be refrigerated was bothering me. so i looked into it. stop reading now if you like your organic milk boxes. carrageenan. i believe this is our culprit. it's a "thickening agent." as if that doesn't sound gross on it's own, you can make your own carrageenan by boiling down irish moss. yum. and i believe the reason you don't have to refrigerate this organic milk-like product is because it is superpasteurized. that's an official term. i don't know what that means. but they must pasteurize the hell out of it. and then double pasteurize it. like a double dare. regardless. this i know. it is not superpasteurized enough to make it taste like franzia.

well, it's no organic milk box. thank God.