I'm Scared of Non-Dairy Creamer.

I saw lots of tweets about how delicious Coffee-Mate and International Delight coffee creamers are. With flavors like Pumpkin Spice, Peppermint Mocha, White Chocolate Mocha, Caramel Macchiato, and Tiramisu, everyone was exclaiming, "No more pricey coffee shop for me! This is just as delicious! Yay!"

My usual grocery stores don't carry the stuff, and I'd never bought a container of it in my life. But one day last week, I found myself in a conventional grocery store (the overwhelming kind with gleaming rows of twelve different kinds of Oreos and 32 flavors of Coffee-Mate) and remembered how delicious they were heralded to be.

I picked up a bottle of yummy-sounding tiramisu and noticed it was labeled lactose-free, which made me wonder just what the heck was in it, as I had assumed it was cream and sugar.

Ooooh, no.

No cream. At ALL:

Water, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, and less than 2% of the following: sodium cassienate (a milk derivative), disodium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides, cellulose gel, cellulose gum, color added, natural & artificial flavors, carrageenan.

So, it's chemically produced cream. Awesome. To learn more about what exactly those ingredients do to you check out this post or this one.

I usually use sugar and half and half - not anything healthy, but at least it's only three ingredients: sugar, milk, and cream. All I've heard of and can pronounce.

I tried convincing myself that maybe the taste would be worth the chemically produced cream. Maybe it really would taste like a caramel macchiato (which: it's the way you make the drink that makes it a macchiato, not the taste. /end rant.).

After five minutes of hemming and hawing, I just couldn't bring myself to put the bottle in my basket. I satiated my need to get some sugary, creamy substance for my coffee by grabbing a bottle of some organic hazelnut coffee creamer. The first ingredient was organic non-fat milk, followed by organic cane syrup - so I felt a bit less apprehensive about the purchase. (Totally not as good as plain old half and half with sugar).

Like flavored yogurt, flavored coffee creamer will no longer find it's way into my fridge. Sorry, Coffee-Mate, but you're creepy.