Recently I was reading a book on gardening and learned how easy it was to grow peanuts. I then thought, if I grow peanuts what can I make with them? How about peanut butter? So I looked up a recipe for natural peanut butter and I was surprised, the only ingredient - peanuts! Of course it did say you could add salt, sugar or honey to taste, but even that wasn't necessary. That got me thinking. Why is store bought food loaded with tons more ingredients than necessary? I will tell you why in one word- SHELF-LIFE. Maybe you could also consider making sure to pay tribute to the corn, soybean or palm industries, by including hydrogenated soy bean oils, high fructose corn syrup or palm oil. Then maybe Monsanto/giant farms would get their cut. However, if you make your food yourself and plan to eat it in short order, then shelf-life does not matter and you can make your food healthier and less complicated. Lets take a look at some traditional foods that most of us buy and compare them to homemade versions and compare ingredient lists.
Regular Peanut Butter vs. Homemade Peanut Butter
Roasted Peanuts Roasted Peanuts (Organic is even better!)
Sugar Sugar, Honey or Maple Syrup (Optional)
Salt Salt
Molasses
Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (Mostly Soy)
Mono and Diglycerides
(Here is an article that explains fairly well what these last two are and whether they are healthy or not)
Regular Apple Butter vs. Homemade Apple Butter
Apples (most likely not organic) Apples (I insist on organic, because non-organic apples have a lot of pesticides in them. Apples are notorious in absorbing pesticides. Non-organic apples are about as bad for you as a can of soda in one report I read in a consumer magazine.)
Sugar Sugar (I use about 1/2 the sugar the recipe calls for, apples really do not need much or any sugar with them. The sugar free apple butters have a nice tart apple taste that I love. I sometimes use organic sugar here.)
Cinnamon and Cloves Cinnamon and Cloves (Organic is even better!)
High Fructose Corn Syrup A pinch of salt (probably helps in the cooking process)
Apple Cider Concentrate
The question here is why we need the extra sugar in HFCS? Isn't regular sugar enough, more than enough? Apples as I said before, have a lot of natural sugars that are healthy, why all the extra sugar then? I mean almost all apple juices, organic or not, are no sugar added for this reason. Then you say, why HFCS? I know there is some debate about it being just a bad for you as sugar, so why should you care whether your food contains that or real sugar? Because you should care about the amount of sugars period in your food, no matter what source they come from. They ARE all bad for you in large amounts over time. Look I am guilty of eating a lot of processed sugars, I know I need to improve in this area. I do not want to be part of the growing numbers of Type 2 Diabetes cases in this country. And finally if you do not want the possibility of your money going to Monsanity (Monsanto) then do not buy products with HFCS.
Regular Ketchup vs. Homemade/Organic Kethcup (also Spaghetti Sauces)
Tomato Concentrate Tomato Paste
Distilled Vinegar Distilled Vinegar
High Fructose Corn Syrup Cane Sugar
Salt Sea Salt
Spices Allspice and Cloves
Onion Powder Onion
Corn Syrup Water
Tabasco Sauce
Natural Flavoring (Unspecified)
So whats wrong with the ingredients in traditional ketchup on the left side? Lets go down the list shall we? All is good until we hit HFCS. Not the best way to get your sugar as I mentioned above. Cane sugar is still sugar, but its a better source of sugar. Besides you cannot have the ketchup flavor you know and love without sugar. They also use onion powder instead of real onions, who knows where the onion powder onions come from. One can only hope they are made from real onions. I guess that part is not so bad. Then the extra corn syrup. Why? Why more sugars?! Honestly? Oh, thats right we need as much corn product in there as we can. It may be ketchup but it still owes a large part of its existence to Monsanto/the corn industry, lol! Ok Tabasco sauce, no big deal. Natural flavoring, thank goodness not artificial, but we still don't know what it is, so we still have to call it mystery food. I don't know about you, but I don't like mystery foods.
Traditional Spaghetti Sauces vs. Homemade/Organic Spaghetti Sauces
Tomato Paste Tomato Paste
Water Water
Sugar Sugar
Salt Sea Salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Dehydrated Onions Onions
Spices Fennel, Basil, Oregano, Black Pepper
Romano Cheese Garlic
Soybean Oil
Natural Flavor
The recipe I found was for making your own pasta sauce with garden tomatoes and a canning supplies. I compared that to a name brand pasta sauce that is consumed by many regularly. Not too bad here. However, here the things in the name brand sauce that concern me (other than the obvious not organic). Soybean oil: why soybean oil? Its a widely grown plant that is used in everyday products. There is a huge soy industry, just like corn. However, when one thinks of soy, their first impression is not always bad. I mean you can buy organic soy milk and that is supposedly good, right? Well now there is a lot of research to suggest soy is not really good for us. You could read lots of papers on the subject, but here is one article that suggests why. A little bit of soy may not be bad, but if we are finding in food product after food product in our diet, then we should really start to get concerned. After that my only concern again are those mystery natural flavors.
Traditional Store Bought Grape Jelly vs. My Homemade Grape Jelly
Concord Grapes Organic Concord Grapes (my garden)
Fruit Pectin Ball Fruit Pectin Powder
High Fructose Corn Syrup Sugar
Corn Syrup
Citric Acid
Sodium Citrate
Wow what a difference in the ingredient lists here. First, let me say I used to consume a lot of the most common store brand of jelly. However, a few years ago I finally taught myself how to make jelly from my grapes, that have been growing on my family property for ages. Don't ask me why it took so long. However, when I made my first grape jellies, although they were bright pink instead of purple, they tasted exactly the same. Imagine that. I know its a lot of work to make jelly, but you do not have to make it yourself, if you do not want to, just find someone who makes them locally or look for store organic brands with as few ingredients as possible.
Problems with the common store bought jelly:: lots of sugar in the form of HFCS and CS. You know what I have said earlier about these two, so no need to repeat here. The last two ingredients seem to be present for shelf-life purposes, but they do not have to be included in homemade jellies and jams. Although, I could not find any real evidence to suggest they might be harmful to your health. I didn't think there would be, but I looked anyways. Thought I might learn something new, but I did not. My suggestion, to avoid the last two ingredients, simply to eat more simply. Why does our food need to be full of so much extra stuff?
I just looked at a few sauces and spreads here, but you could go on forever on this topic and do tons more research. I will not do it all for you here, but at some point we all need to become our own health advocates and do some of this research ourselves. Find something you buy often and compare it to an organic or more natural version or a homemade recipe and see how it stacks up. That might be a good place to start making a change, then move on to another item. These kind of changes can seem overwhelming, but just start small and work your way up.
The point of this post is to get you to understand the basic point here. A lot of our commonly consumed grocery items have way too many ingredients, more than they really need. Many of them are for shelf-life, which is useful I admit (unless you make it yourself in small batches), but some are just for appearance (like Subway and their yoga mat breads). These extra ingredients do not often benefit our health. We may not see it right away, but we can see it in childhood obesity epidemics and in the rise of cases of certain diet related diseases (mostly in older folks). So, yes this IS IMPORTANT! Take charge of your health and diet now!
If you are like me you will start making more of your own food and maybe start gardening more, so that you can have a hand in knowing where your food comes from, it will be local and organic (if you choose).
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