Thanks to all of you who came to my class today. I had a good time and felt good venting a bit of my food frustrations out! For those of you who missed out, our main topic was what we are eating and how to identify the poisons in our food. I made a list of some of the biggest contaminates. There are so many more but this list is some of the more common and most unhealthy additives out there. It is so hard to find foods without these nowadays but it can be done. Even some of the foods I thought were safe are not. For instance, the Annies cookies I just blogged about and some of their other products are great except for they contain Yeast Extract. Sounds fine, however, it is a form of MSG. I had no idea yeast extract was a bad ingredient until I really started studying additives. Believe me, you don't want MSG. I do believe that in moderation you would be fine and in combination with the good ingredients in Annie's it is not as bad as many of the other snacks out there, but there has to be something better. Most of the time, the answer will be to make it yourself. Then you will know what is in the food and know that nothing is hiding under the mysterious label like "Natural Flavor". Some of the ladies in the class suggested that we start a "safe food" list. I think this is a great idea. Whenever you find something, anything that is free from the junk we don't want, shoot me out an email and I will create a list. I will blog that list every friday. I will keep a master list so that eventually I can get a great collection for you all. Sometimes the things we think are safe change. For instance, the whipped cream I bought at costco now contains many bad ingredients. Darn. I will have to keep looking. I suggest you type the list below and keep it in your purse. If you are signed up for a class, I have this list laminated for you. The basic rule of thumb is, you should be able to know what the ingredient is and pronounce it. It should be like a recipe that you would read out of a cook book. You never will add Disodium EDTA to your recipes! Don't let them add it to yours food!
Anything Aluminum
Anything ammonium/ammonia
Artificial colors/flavorings
Aspartame
Autolyzed yeast
Benzoate of Soda/Sodium Benzoate
BHA
BHT
Calcium Caseinate
Corn Protein
Diphenyl
Disodium EDTA/Guanylate/inosinate
EDTA
FD&C Colors
Free Glutamates
Gelatin
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Hydrogenated Oils
Isolated Soy Protein
Maltodextrin
Modified palm oil/maltodextrin
Monosodium Glutamate/ MSG
Natural Flavors/flavorings
Nitrates/Nitrites
Partially Hydrogenated Oils
Pea Protein
Potassium bicarbonate/bromate/sulfite
rBGH
Shortenings
Sodium bisulfite/caseinate/nitrite/nitrate
Soy Isolates
Sucralose
Sulfites
Vanillin
Whey Protein
Yeast Extract
4 comments:
Shari
Loved your class! What an eye opener. Thank you for doing all the research and passing it along to us.
Robin
I also heard that MSG can be counted as "spices" as long as it is under the regulated amount by the FDA. So, it can still be in a product, but just not labeled as MSG. Do you know if there is any truth to that?
Yes, It can be labeled under spices. I didn't list that because I didn't want to scare everyone too much. Even if you call the companies , they will not tell you what the spices are. There are products out there that don't list spices but it is hard to find. We just have to do our best!
Hi, I'm new to your blog and I am loving the information that you put out there... so thank you! Any ideas or tips on how/where to buy sandwich meat without the nitrites/nitrates?
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