lolly pop, lolly pop, o lolly lolly pop!

Caroline came home a couple weeks ago, asking me to add a bag of lollipops onto the grocery list. Of course I said no. Usually they are just HFCS sugar and dyes, and just a prescription for cavities. I don't know what even spurred this on since we don't eat a lot of candy around here (well, I'm not including chocolate in that statement!).

I was shopping at Lemon Street Market and lo and behold, this bag of lollipops jumped out at me. I thought the vitamin C part would be good for this winter... and then I looked at the rest of the ingredients: Organic Evaporated Can Juice, Organic Brown Rice Syrup (Okay... these are still sugar so this is by no means healthy!), Non-GMO Citric Acid (from beet sugar-- not corn), Natural Flavors, Organic Black Carrots, Organic Black Currant, Organic Apple, Organic Carrot, Organic Pumpkin, Asorbic Acid.  No artificial dyes or High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Organic Pumpkin and carrots? Sounded great to me but disgusting for a lollipop-- then I noticed that Phil Lempert, food editor of the Today Show said "The BEST Lollipop I've ever tasted". It was worth a shot, even though I have no idea who this guy is!  Well, the verdict is that these lollipops don't taste any different than any other good lollipop-- they are sweet and the flavors are good : very very cherry, too berry blueberry, strawberry smash, sour apple tart, pomegranate pucker, rassmatazz berry, mango tango, and wet-face watermelon.  And no health food-adverse child would know the difference!

So who is eating most of these? Me. Because they're sitting next to my laptop {must move them}. They are still sweets but definitely a better choice than the regular ones. (Avoid if you have any sort of yeast issues or are diabetic... but they are gluten free!).

They are made by YumEarth Organics and you can google where to find them. I think even Rachel Ray had them on her show, so I know they must be around and available.