Food Entry #5: Weird stuff about dairy products

I can accept that yogurt is probably going to contain high fructose corn syrup.  I don't eat enough yogurt to care.  Yet. ;)

But my friend Jeannie told me about all the weird stuff they do to milk.  I'm not talking about the hormones, I'm talking about the stuff they do to process your milk and make it whole, 2%, 1%, or skim.  Whole milk is just homogenized milk from the cow.  With 2%, they take out some of the cream.  But when you get to 1% or skim milk, they do a whole bunch of weird processing crap to the milk and you end up with something that is almost a Frankenfood.  You might be able to Google it?

Sure, skim milk is fat free, but honestly, is the fat in your milk the devil? the culprit of obesity?  I doubt it.  Kids need fat in their diets to grow their brains, and things like fat and protein keep us sated.  So I will keep eating my avocados because I believe that over time they will keep me more full than fat-free crackers.  When I eat fat-free stuff I get hungry and want to eat more of it.

Anyway, apparently when they make skim/1% milk, they have to add stuff to the milk to make it whiter.  That sounds a lot like sawdust in my food to me.  I can't quite bring myself to drink a lot of whole milk because I've been drinking a LOT of milk lately and don't feel comfortable drinking that much fat personally, but I've switched from skim to 2%.  Maybe that's why I drink so much more milk now than I used to - it actually tastes good!!!  Skim milk tastes like cardboard!

Last November, I was shopping for something like sour cream at the grocery store.  Since I had made my discoveries about peanut butter and ketchup, I decided to check the ingredient labels for the national and store brands.  I don't even REMEMBER what was on the ingredient list for the store brand sour cream, but it was like twice as long as the more expensive natural brand, so I ponied up the extra 20 cents or whatever to buy the sour cream that had the ingredients "cream" and "enzymes" and not a bunch of other things I think they labeled "fillers" or "stabilizers" or something.

Part of me wonders if I can even trust ingredient labels anymore.  Wasn't there a time where the HFCS producers wanted their product labeled just "sugar" because there's such a huge stigma associated with the name "high fructose corn syrup"?  Well, yes, because high-fructose corn syrup is not C6H12O6.  In fact, I'm not even sure "sugar" is still essentially C6H12O6.  I can only hope. O.o Does anyone know?

Long story short?  Check the ingredient labels again.  When I buy Sugar Blasted Cocoa Bombs from the grocery store, I know what I'm getting.  I know the chocolate syrup I buy for Carmen contains HFCS.  But I was surprised when I found it in most of the ketchup at the store, and most of the applesauce, and ... and ... and.  I was also surprised to see a long ingredient list for one brand of sour cream and not another.  So get yourself informed and be mindful of what you're buying and eating, because all brands of types of food products are not necessarily similar.  Sometimes they are food-like substances instead of food, even when you're not looking at something that is obviously processed.

One last thing: Use butter, not margarine, even though margarine is so cheap and tempting. ;)

Watching ingredient labels ...

I grew up thinking, "Usually when it comes to national versus store brand ... if you can't taste the difference, there's not a difference, right?"

Then I started watching things like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and Food Inc, and various other shows that made me
A) thankful I don't eat Frankenfoods (my affectionate nickname for things like hot dogs, Twinkies, and other processed things that are more from a laboratory than nature) and
B) kind of ticked off at the United States' food industry.  Maybe if I feel comfortable (and if I stop freaking GETTING SICK and BEING BRAIN DEAD) I'll write more about that.  Hoo-boy, I have a lot to say about the government's involvement in our food supply.
C) curious about the quality of the produce I'm eating due to genetic modification.  For example, tomatoes have been modified so they have higher yields, but there's the same amount of nutrients in the soil for a higher yield, so our tomatoes pack less nutritional punch than they used to.  (suck!!!)
D) curious about what's in REGULAR food.

So I haven't switched to organic yet or anything, but I'm really missing the garden I had back home in Utah.  We had a little strawberry patch that was starting to grow TONS of berries, a raspberry bush that had finally matured (my grandma gave me a few raspberry starts when Carmen was born.  One died but the others were okay!), and this peppermint plant I regretted planting because I was constantly cutting it back (even more than the strawberries) and it was trying to sneak through the fence into my neighbor's yard. =p  Then every year we'd plant some tomatoes and some zucchini and other random plants.  Now I go to the grocery store and the produce is generally okay, but honestly?  NOTHING can beat homegrown tomatoes and strawberries.

You know what I just realized?  This entry could easily get really, really long.  Since I have such a bad track record of writing entries, I'm going to split it up into smaller entries about food and spread out the posts over the course of a week or something.

I've done lots of research and have learned a lot of things in the past several years (since I graduated college?)  It's hard to get out with little kids in the home, so I spend a lot of time watching documentaries on Netflix (if someone asks, I could totally write an entry about my sources, but I think you might find that boring?) and reading things on the Internet to develop my opinions about everything.  So if anyone asks questions in the comments section of my entries, I can go back and edit my entries (with an ETA at the end, or the new stuff in bold, or something) to answer any questions anyone has.  Okay?  And if you have all given up on me and nobody reads my blog any more, I guess that's fine ... I'll just blog to the ether and leave my entries untouched. ;)

Oh my goodness, I just discovered the "Schedule" button on the sidebar.  Now I can write a bunch of stuff and set it up to be published later!  Why did I not do this before?!