What Were They Thinking?: Sweet and Salty

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

These Salt and Pepper packets came from Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Er, make that “KFC”.  The company is trying to disassociate itself from both the “Kentucky” and the “Fried” portions of the name.  Check out their website and you’ll see barely any mention of what the letters stand for.)

It’s kind of surprising to see an ingredients listing on packets like these.  After all, what should they say?  “Ingredients: Salt” and “Ingredients: Pepper”?  Nope.  The salt packet says “Ingredients: Sodium Chloride, Sodium Silicoaluminate, Dextrose, Potassium Iodide and Sodium Bicarbonate”.

Yup, you read that right: one of the ingredients in fast food restaurant salt is sugar.  (As I recall from a few years ago, when I first noted it at McDonalds or Burger King, in some packets, sugar was the #1 ingredient!)  And they wonder why we are fat as a nation.

Note that the pepper packet is fun in its own way, saying “Ingredients: Ground Immature Whole Berries of Perennial Vine, Piper Nigrum L.”  (In other words, pepper.)

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Updated on May 4, 2011

According to the Morton Salt website, the dextrose is added to stabilize the potassium iodide (which is added to help the thyroid gland and prevent goiter), and is only a tiny tiny amount (4/100 of a percent).  Which doesn't lessen the weirdness of seeing it on the label.