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Water, Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed oil, and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavors, dipotassium phosphate, disodium phosphate, mono- and diglycerides, cellulose gel, cellulose gum, color added, carrageenan.
Time again for the mystery “food.” I put food in quotations because packaged food is fake food. Let me know what you think this might be. I will reveal in a few days.
Don’t buy fake substitutes! We learned here what is in Cool Whip. It’s loaded with trans fat. When I was a kid, I had a real thing for Cool Whip. Now that I’m grown and I read my labels, I won’t touch the stuff! It just grosses me out to realize it’s just Crisco that is whipped. Have you ever noticed how it never changes if it’s left out at room temperature? I have noticed it on a spoon in the sink, the morning after serving a dessert, and it hasn’t melted like real whip cream will. And it is hard to rinse off a spoon–because it’s grease!
So make it from scratch instead. It really only takes about 5 minutes and tastes fabulous!
1 cup heavy cream (I use raw)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tb sugar
This make about 2 cups of whipped cream. That is plenty for our family of four (with leftover). If you need more, just double this recipe.
I have learned that cream will not whip very well if it is too shallow. So don’t use a big Tupperware bowl. I use one of those square Ziploc disposable containers. This way, when I whip just one cup of cream, it is deep enough to whip in the air.
I fit a collar of foil around the bowl to catch the splatters of cream.
Whip the cream and vanilla on high until thickened, but not stiff. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and keep beating until it’s as thick as you want. I like my whip cream really thick (thicker than in the photo), but you have to be careful. If you whip it too much, it will separate into butter and whey.
The only disadvantage I see of real whipped cream to Cool Whip is it’s ability to keep. This will keep for a while in the fridge, you can make it ahead, but I’ve noticed it’s a bit runny the next day. Not sure if it would re-whip. I usually make it as close to serving time as I can.
Enjoy!
[Concerned about the saturated fat? Click here.]
I am going to post a list, every month, of ingredients. These ingredients are found in a common packaged food item. Tell me what you think it is and in a few days I will reveal who is right.
Here is our September item:
Ingredients: WATER, CORN SYRUP, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (COCONUT AND PALM KERNEL OILS), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LESS THAN 2% OF SODIUM CASEINATE (FROM MILK), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, XANTHAN AND GUAR GUMS, POLYSORBATE 60, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, BETA CAROTENE (COLOR).
Well, our first challenge has concluded, going without high fructose corn syrup for seven days.
How did you do? Was it difficult? Was it easy? Were there any food items that you were surprised to see HFCS on the ingredients listing?
Well, on day 1, I noticed that the sandwich bread I buy for the family (I don’t eat it), contains HFCS. It’s really hard with sandwich bread. Most of them contain trans fat. This was one I found without trans fat, but they put HFCS in it.
I tried making homemade bread for my family. I even compromised and made it mostly white. (I figured mostly white, made at home, was better than a loaf with HFCS, trans fat, and numerous dough conditioner chemicals and preservatives.) It was delicious! But after about two days, it gets crumbly and stale tasting. It doesn’t stay soft as long as store-bought bread. So my family refused it.
On day 2, I was feeding my kids yogurt with their breakfast. We make our own yogurt from raw milk. I eat it plain, my daughter has recently switched from plain to having it with honey, and my son likes strawberry jam in it. I buy all-fruit jam, specifically to avoid sugar and HFCS. I checked the Yoplait label at the store and sure enough, it contains HFCS. I’m so glad we cut that out years ago. The kids do get it as a treat once in a while. But that’s what it is, a dessert, not a healthy breakfast.
On day 5, I goofed! We were having homemade hamburgers, french fries, and strawberry shortcake. I kept thinking, we’re doing good, because we’re making the shortcake from scratch, no HFCS there! Well, I was in the middle of my meal and it dawned on me that I was dipping my fries in Ranch dressing and I had ketchup on my burger!!!!!! Yes, both of those items have HFCS in them. And guess what else?!? The hamburger buns. It just goes to show how many items contain HFCS these days. It is hard to escape. I am not at the place, yet, of making my own salad dressing and ketchup. Some day, but not yet. Occasionally I do drizzle my salad with red wine vinegar and olive oil. This encourages me to do that more often.
Well, the rest of the week, we were in the clear. Let me know how you did!
This is something new I’m doing. I am going to issue a new challenge every month. The challenge will be for 7 days.
This month’s challenge is to cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup. Now this is only for 7 days. You will want to start checking your labels to see what foods have HFCS in them.
Why? Why do we care if there is HFCS in our diets? Isn’t it just sugar? A little sugar does no harm, right?
Well, all sugars are not equal. The closer a food is to how God created it, the better it is for you. Natural sugars contain enzymes, vitamins and minerals. Refined sugars are stripped of all that and rob your body of those things as they’re digested. If we’re going to chart things on a Great-Good-Bad-Worse chart, sugar would be bad, but HFCS is worse. You can’t make this stuff in your home kitchen. It actually takes battery acid to make and is reported to contain levels of mercury. Read this article on that subject.
Most of the junk food my generation grew up on was loaded with sugar, but the same foods today are loaded with HFCS instead. Could there be a link with this change and the rise in obesity rates?
So check your labels. I challenge you to cut this one ingredient out for just 7 days. Let me know if you have questions. Get creative. Remember, I didn’t say you had to cut out all sugar. If there is a food that you like that contains HFCS, make it from scratch with sugar instead.
I will report back here at the end of the 7 days and let you know what I’ve had to cut out. (Yes, I’m sure I’m ingesting some HFCS, too!) See you then!
I have heard that most honey sold in the stores is cut with corn syrup, but I had NO idea that olive oil is often adulterated, too!
I read this post by Cheeseslave, that details how olive oil manufacturers are cutting their oil with other oils, possibly soybean oil, hazelnut oil, and who knows what other oils.
One way to test your oil is to place it in the refrigerator and see if it solidifies. A true olive oil should become solid. If your olive oil doesn’t solidify, it could mean that it has been cut with other oils, OR had the waxy portions of the olive oil removed. Read the post by Cheeseslave and also the comments, too. Someone mentioned that Bragg brand didn’t solidify when cold. I think that Bragg is a great brand overall and they are probably selling pure olive oil, but they are just removing the waxy portion of the oil. (I personally want my oil as unadulterated as possible, including all the components of the first pressing.)
I started buying Star brand from Walmart because it was labeled “organic”. Well, I put it in the refrigerator and it did not solidify. I knew it had to be too good to be true. It was such a great price. I will be looking elsewhere now.
I am going to start a series called Why? In it I will select a few things I do/supplements I take/food I eat and explain why.
While I was mulling over things to include in this series, I ran across this post on Cheeseslave – Top Ten Reasons to Drink Raw Milk. This post is wonderful! It includes all the reasons why I love raw milk. I love all the Powerpoint slides, especially the one regarding food-borne illnesses. Thank you, Ann Marie, for putting this together!
I am making caramel sauce this weekend. I buy raw milk, cream and cheese from a local dairy, but I wasn’t sure that I needed anything this week so I didn’t order. Then I realized I needed cream for this caramel sauce. I thought pasteurized cream wouldn’t make a difference since the sauce is cooked anyway, so I went to my local Walmart to buy some. I picked up three different brands and was very disappointed to find that none were pure cream–they all had additives. Here is the listing of ingredients that I found–cream, skim milk, less than 1% of each of the following: mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 80, and carrageenan. I thought this was ridiculous that I couldn’t just buy plain cream, so I told myself I would go to our local Braum’s (local dairy and ice cream shop). I thought SURELY they would carry pure cream. They do advertise that their products are hormone-free. Well, sad to say, their cream was the exact same as all the others. So, lesson learned, If I can at all help it, I will never buy cream at the grocery store again. Only pure unadulterated cream for my family, especially after researching those ingredients!
If you are just now joining this blog, you will want to read Part 1 and Part 2 of My Food Journey.
Here I pick up with what I learned from my research into lowcarb dieting. I learned many things. I learned about how our body releases insulin and about the insulin rollercoaster. I learned more about how important protein is. I learned about the glycemic index and how we can lower the glycemic index of the carbs that we eat by including fat and/or fiber. But the thing that was most enlightening was that fat is not evil!!! This thrilled me, to say the least—I do love my butter! I learned that there are good fats and bad fats and I learned what trans fats are.
This information made me feel great that I was raised on the good fats, butter, cream, and red meat, so I wanted to know more. I picked up a book called, Know Your Fats, by Dr. Mary Enig. This is the definitive guide to fat. I learned about Omega-3s, Omega-6s, saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated oils; and much more. Everything you wanted to know about fatty acids can be found in this book. Dr. Enig was pushing the FDA to include trans fats on food labels YEARS before they actually did. She is a champion of healthy fats. It was all starting to make sense to me. As a child I was told that hydrogenated oils were bad, but now I was learning why.
This started an obsession for me. I kept reading and researching and learning, I couldn’t get enough! This is the point that I started to make changes to my diet. I threw out all the margarine, Smart Select butter, shortening, trans fat peanut butter (Skippy, Jif, Peter Pan), and starting scrutinizing labels. At this point trans fats were not labeled on food labels. I checked out the book, The Trans Fat Solution by Kim Severson and Cindy Burke. This is a really short informative book that tells you why trans fats are bad, but also how to tell if food contains it. With this knowledge, now I know the REAL way to tell if an item has trans fats in it and guess what? It’s not by looking at the gram listings.
Some time after this I found the book, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This book is really big, most of it being recipes. The first time I checked it out from my library I just read the nutrition information, it was really eye opening. I kept checking it out from our library and kept reading new things in it. After borrowing it from the library about ten times I decided it was time to buy it. This book opened my eyes to phytates, the substance that is in grains that leaches minerals from our bodies. I then started playing around with whole-wheat sourdough. I learned all about raw dairy in this book and then quit buying pasteurized dairy products and started making my own yogurt. From this book I learned how important animal protein is so I started making my son eat meat at dinnertime. He never liked meat very much and I convinced myself he was healthy if he had peanut butter and eggs. Not so after reading Sally Fallon’s book. (He enjoys most meat now.) J
About a year ago I joined the Yahoo group discussingnt; these are all folks that have read Nourishing Traditions. This really helped me along in my changes. I started making a lot more changes when I joined that group. There is something to be said for support, whether that is a friend, or an Internet discussion board, or even a private journal (this at least helps with accountability). Anyway, I saw that there are so many real foods that we’re missing out on because of mass marketing. According to FDA safety guidelines, food must be sealed in order to be shipped and sold on a mass scale. This is good because it prevents rotten food from being sold, but the bad news is that this process kills the nutrients in those items. (Moral: We should be getting our food locally.) So I started making my own naturally fermented sauerkraut, dill pickles, ginger carrots, and beet kvass. When these items are let to naturally ferment and then stored in the refrigerator instead of heat-sealed through traditional canning methods they are alive and full of nutrients and beneficial bacteria. Also while I was a part of that discussion group I started making Kombucha and still drink it practically every day.
Other changes I have made include less cooking with olive oil, I do use it on salad, on pasta, and to dip bread in. It is a very healthy oil when it is cold, but it will get damaged when heated. I do most of my cooking with butter and some with coconut oil. When I switched to lowcarb eating I learned to like a lot more veggies, since veggies have a lower glycemic index than breads and pastas. Thankfully when my husband went on his diet we cleared the cupboards of the snack cakes and boxed macaroni and cheese. He had quit drinking soda and Kool-Aid many years before. He switched to Baked Lays in his diet days and I have since got him to switch to plain corn chips (Baked Lays are about as processed as you can get). I have since got him off the granola bars; I now make him muffins to take to work for breakfast. I now make our own lunchmeat from boneless, skinless chicken breasts, rather than buying processed lunchmeat. He lost his weight by really watching his portion intake and cutting most fat out. Since I learned all about healthy fat, I now feed him lots of fat in his meals and he hasn’t gained any of the weight back. He still watches his sugar intake. I take coconut oil daily now. I started taking cod liver oil last fall. I occasionally take a probiotic supplement, but I feel I am getting a lot of beneficial bacteria from my homemade yogurt, Kombucha, and naturally fermented veggies. I started making my own sour cream and buttermilk (more beneficial bacteria). I have switched to aluminum-free baking powder (Rumford). About a year ago I stopped using commercial shampoo, conditioner, bar soaps, shower gels, lotions, and facial cleansing products (I’ll give more details in a later post) because of the chemical content. I switched from drinking distilled water to filtered water (spring is best, we’re just not there yet). And I use plastics a lot less now, I’m not completely away from them, but I am taking my babysteps.
Now keep in mind that all these babysteps I took were over a period of years, this really all started about 6 years ago. I’m just hoping that my list will inspire you and encourage you in your changes.
Looking back over my food journey shows me 1) I ate pretty good as a child, but there was a high level of phytates, which I think accounts for my dealings with mineral deficiencies now and 2) it is SO important to teach your kids about healthy eating and why you choose to eat what you eat. I wasn’t taught and had to educate myself as an adult after eating poorly for about 10 years. It may look like I have come full circle and now eat the way I did as a kid, but there are a few differences. I watch my carb intake; I don’t eat a lot of breads and pastas. Even if you’re choosing all whole-grain bread products you can still go overboard, remember, balance is key. We ate a LOT of grains in our family; my blood sugar just can’t handle that now. I feed my kids more carbs than I eat, but I do make sure they are getting animal protein every day.
The journey doesn’t end here—it goes on and on. We all should never stop growing, never stop learning, and never stop changing!
Update: I forgot to mention that I have started soaking some grains, we eat soaked old fashioned oatmeal once a week and soaked multi-grain pancakes on occasion.
Since I asked you all to tell what babysteps you have taken, I thought you would want to know what I have changed.
Before I go into my changes, I will show you where I came from. Let me take you back to the beginning. I was raised on homemade whole wheat bread. All our pasta was whole wheat. We had to take cod liver oil and blackstrap molasses. We ate a lot of wild fish and game—trout, salmon, halibut, caribou, and moose. We had plenty of treats, they were just all sweetened with honey. There was never a box mix or canned item to be found in the house. Everything was made from scratch, from the pudding to the pies to the Thanksgiving dinners. We ate plenty of butter and cream.
We ate plenty of everything. I don’t remember moderation being taught in our home. I guess the thinking was that most of what we ate was healthy, so what was the reason to limit it. We were a family with high metabolisms. The limiting only came when the cost was high. We were a family of six and would occasionally go out to Burger King. We would share a couple orders of fries and all get waters. At Christmas time we would get a carton of egg nog and each get a small glass. I think it was just this combination that resulted in some over indulgence on my part once I reached adulthood. I remember when I was first married, I bought a carton of egg nog all for myself and then made myself sick because I drank too much of it. I admit that this is still a weak area for me, overeating. I am blessed with high metabolism still, but it’s not as high as it was in high school. J
When I was about 9 or 10, my younger sister and brother were found to be allergic to dairy products, so the whole family went on soy. We had soy milk in the house for the next 10 years or so. I never liked it too much so I remember choosing to do without whenever milk was called for. We had tofu and plenty of other soy products, as well.
Once I reached my teenage years I was embarrassed when friends would come over and all our food was weird. Whenever I was away from home, I would seek out the “good” food every chance I got. I would bring my lunch to school every day and throw it in the trash because I was so embarrassed. Years later I found out my sister did the same thing! I went to a small private Christian school with no cafeteria so I would just eat whatever the vending machine had to offer for lunch, a candy bar and can of pop or a bag of microwave popcorn. We weren’t allowed to leave the campus, but sometimes we would anyway, then I would get fast food for lunch. Little Caesar’s was a favorite, being right across the street from school. Loved that Crazy Bread!
I started cooking at nine years old. My mother was often gone, being a midwife. She called one day and told me to make some meatloaf for dinner. She told me to write down all the ingredients, dump them into a bowl and mix with my hands. Then throw it in a pan and bake. I kept that “recipe” that I had written down for years and years. I guess that was the beginning of my recipe collection. It now includes many years worth of cooking magazines, many cookbooks, and various clippings and printouts. Anyway, I did a lot of cooking for the family while living at home. Most of the things I learned to cook were from either watching my mom or just having to do it. This is why it is second nature for me to make everything from scratch.
Enter my husband. When I met him, he subsisted on KoolAid, soda, pizza rolls, ramen noodles, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and Little Debbies. When we got married I started trying out foods I had never had before. I worked fulltime so I wanted things that were convenient. We tried some Hamburger Helper and I can remember regularly making chicken and rice—the dish that calls for a can of Cream of Mushroom Soup. One of our favorites was a store-bought angel food cake with strawberries (with that strawberry sauce you buy in the tub) and Cool Whip. I made things from scratch at first, but slowly slipped into buying more and more packaged food items, like spaghetti sauce, granola bars, Yoplait yogurt, instant oatmeal, frozen fries, etc. I EVEN started buying Crisco for cookies and pie crust!!!!
To be continued…
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