Do You Know What’s in There?

I was shopping yesterday and I picked up a container of heavy cream, and all I have to say is do you know what’s in there?  I didn’t take a picture of the container, and I’m sorry I didn’t because on the front of the container was a disclaimer that there is no known difference between milk from cows treated with RGBH, and those not (which may be true from a strictly nutritional fat/calorie evaluation, but really!).  When I saw that I decided to check the ingredients, and I thought I would just see one, but in fact there were several.  As I said I didn’t snap the container in question, so today I went to another grocery store to check out their cream, and there were more ingredients than you’d expect.  The real shocker was that even the organic heavy cream had one added ingredient—carageenen.

I have done a bit of looking, and carageenan is a natural product—it is derived from red seaweed, there has been controversy about it since the 1960s.  This post is not intended as an exposé, but rather a heads up.

I have been reading an interesting book called Pandora’s Lunchbox and though I haven’t finished it, I am learning a great deal about how our food supply developed from farm to table into what is now. Lately there has been a lot of press, and information going around the social media world about not washing your chicken.  I think I have included this link more than once, but I will again; don’t wash your chicken!   Many of us learned our kitchen practices from our mothers, who learned from their mothers, aunts and grandmothers.  We all do any number of things because ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’.  So much has changed in the last fifty years, that it is no longer safe to subscribe to that philosophy, and this goes way beyond chicken!

We’re busy, we shop in a rush, and many times just grab things we know our family will eat, we don’t stop to read labels, or see what’s in our food.  I know I just assumed that if something was labeled organic I didn’t have to read the ingredients, but I think I was mistaken.  My organic heavy cream has an ingredient that isn’t found in milk!

I am fortunate not to have any food allergies (that I know of) nor does my daughter, we make most of our food, and I tend to shop at natural grocery stores, so I trust that they have done the research and I don’t have to—another mistake I guess.  The world we’re living in and the food supply that we rely on is run by profit driven businesses.  I have no issue with for profit business, but I can’t forget that I have to be responsible with where I spend my money, and whose pocket I fill with my consumer dollars.

I thought I was careful, but I have not been careful enough.  I have been lazy about reading ingredient lists.  I have been following a blog called 100 days of real food which started in May 2010, and for which the entire family gave up all highly processed food initially for 100 days, and they are still doing it, in the real world.  You should eat in whatever way you choose, and I would not dream of telling what you should or shouldn’t put on your plate, I am only posing the question; is what you think is in there what is really in your box of cereal, or the milk?  Do you know what’s in there?

8/28/2013