Hidden Additives

Last night my neighbor (and friend), Jane stopped by with a bag of homegrown tomatoes and onions. Today or tomorrow she promises cucumbers and zucchini. She grows fabulous tomatoes, but she doesn't eat them. Tomatoes are not her thing.

Now see...I can't seem to grow anything except cactus and I'm not always successful at that. However, I DO like tomatoes and all that other stuff so we have a deal. I can make zucchini bread in exchange.

Today I'm researching about canning the veggies. Commercially canned veggies don't agree with me so I'm very excited about the prospect of having home canned veggies. A great friend from Facebook gave me a few tips. If any of you out there have tips I'd appreciate your help.

I remember when home canning was a standard part of summer. My plan is to phase out commercially canned goods (except those in glass jars) and use only the stuff I've canned myself. I suspect there are hidden additives (totally unnecessary!!!) that are making me sick. For instance...

Corn syrup (bad for diabetics)
Aspartame (gives me migraines)
Salt (bad for my blood pressure)
Food coloring (do I really need red dye?)
Preservative chemicals (aren't we already preserved well enough?)
Soy derivatives (bad, bad, bad for folks on thyroid meds)

I look at labels all the time. Soy, especially, is in EVERYTHING. Corn syrup, too.

What's in YOUR food?

Conundrum Two

Obesity is a HUGE problem in our country. And diet products sell like hot cakes. Diet advice is everywhere you turn. Eat this. Don't eat that. Count calories. Run. Pump iron.

I keep a food diary, weigh and measure, and read labels. And the pounds come off VERY slowly.

In my perusal of labels, this is what I've learned. Even the most innocuous of foods is loaded with chemicals.

Check out that carton of milk. Vitamin D and A. Yeah. What's that other stuff in there? It's chemicals to make the milk WHITE. Cause low fat and skim milk would otherwise look watery. Riiiiiight.

Peanut butter. When my kids were young, peanut butter had one ingredient--peanuts. Now? Go on, check. I'll wait. What's that other stuff? Sugar, you say? Why do we need sugar in peanut butter?

And see if you can find something without corn syrup in it. That's right. Check your cupboard. Let me know if you run across something without corn syrup. I'll go buy it.

And I bet whatever it is will contain SOY. Soy is in everything! I take thyroid medication. And one of the big things that interfere with thyroid meds is SOY.

And then there's all the grains added to stuff. Did you know cheerios (that cereal touted for the OATS in it) contains other grains? Like corn? Um, isn't corn what they feed cows and pigs to make them fat?

Yeah. No wonder people struggle with weight loss.

And all those FRESH fruits and vegetables? This week alone I read three articles about how dangerous the chemicals sprayed on them are. The uninformed individual would yell "organic". A) They cost more than most budgets can afford. B) That doesn't guarantee they weren't grown from GMO seed.

What's GMO? Genetically modified. Frankenseed. We have an entire generation of young ladies hitting puberty years earlier than they should be because of frankenseed and hormones used on our meat supply. Remember that corn that's fed to all the animals in our food chain? Well it's GMO corn.

Those who have the space for a garden and the determination to use only heirloom seed, can get around some of the problems. But many of us don't have that advantage.

Here's what I wonder. How much of the initial problem--obesity--is rooted in the hidden ingredients in our food?

anny