Partially Hydrogenated What?

Midnight craving: the blueberry muffin mix that's been siting in the cabinet for the last two years, maybe longer. The only hurdles to successful midnight baking: no egg, no muffin pan. Thankfully, the neighborhood 24-hour CVS pharmacy provided both.

It's Jiffy brand muffin mix I'm using. The box says "quality and value since 1930." Coincidentally, I think that's the last time they updated their box design, and their recipe. In this blurry picture it's tough to read, but the black text right under the "Jiffy" says, "artificially flavored with imitation blueberries." Imitation blueberries?! Is it really that much cheaper to make fake ones rather than throw in a handfull of freeze dried ones? Anyway, I was curious as to what constitutes an imitation blueberry so I checked the ingredients list expecting it to look something like this:

flour, sugar, imitation blueberries (flour, corn syrup, blue 1, whatchamacallit)...

Of course, that's not what I was met with, else I'd have nothing to write about. There was nothing on the ingredients list that I could directly ascribe to the imitation blueberries other than blue 2 and blue 1 which were both listed in the "contains less than 2% of the following" category. Instead, what I found was far more interesting:

flour, sugar, animal shortening....

Woah woah woah...animal shortening? Now I'd heard of vegetable shortening before. Everyone's mom had a can of Crisco, but animal shortening! What could that possibly be? Oh yea...here it is:

flour, sugar, animal shortening (lard, hydrogenated lard, partially hydrogenated lard)...

Well, I guess they've covered all the lard bases. Ew. Silly me for thinking blueberry muffins would be blueberry-containing, animal-free food. I got to thinking a bit more about this animal shortening business. "Animal" isn't really very descriptive. You'd think the Jiffy people would need to be more specific. What animal are they getting this shortening from? It's important information. Sure, all the vegetarians of the world need to know is that it comes from an animal. That works for them. But what about the millions of people whose diets are dictated by the laws of their faiths? If it's pork shortening, then it's not Kosher. If it's beef shortening, Hindus can't eat it.

Shame on Jiffy. Imitation blueberries, and animal shortening. Time for an update. I think I'm switching to Krusteaz wild blueberry muffin mix. I hear they use real Maine blueberries. That's a start. I'll check into the whole shortening business before making my decision. Of course, it may be a while since I only make muffins once every 2 or 3 years.