My kids love blueberries. It’s great because blueberries are wonderful snacks for kids since they are packed with powerful nutrients, antioxidants, and vitamin C. We use them in smoothies, in cereals, and on pancakes. I can set out a bowl of blueberries and their little fingers can’t get in there fast enough to eat them up. We mostly buy them fresh when in season or frozen for our fruit and vegetable shakes, but what to do when blueberries are not readily available? If you haven’t noticed, there are an array of products on supermarket shelves depicting and claiming that they contain blueberries. From cereals, muffins, and Poptarts, to fruit roll-ups, fruit juices, and candies. Blueberries are easily marketed because almost everyone understands how good they are for you. Oh, and they are mighty tasty.

Pictures of blueberries are prominently displayed on the front of many food packages leading the consumer to believe that the product is actually made of blueberries. The blueberries found in blueberry bagels, cereals, breads and muffins are REAL blueberries, right? Wrong! Unfortunately, many of the so-called blueberry ingredients in these products contain sugar, oils, and artificial colorings such as Blue#1 and Red #40. The following video is a mini-documentary (only 7 minutes) conducted by award-winning investigative journalist Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as part of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center, which provides nutrition grants for children’s education programs around the world. The non-profit “blueberry deception” video can be viewed below.