So life is life here in the valley of Washington state. Life is finding us with a tight pocketbook these days as well. I still work to keep my food & all purchasing choices as good as possible.
As any of you who read this know, I strive to remove all HFCS from my diet. I'd love to also remove corn syrup in general but that is quite a bit harder to do than just removing the high fructose corn syrup. I am encouraged tho, that as of late I am seeing more labels telling us consumers that their products are now made without HFCS. Makes me smile!!
Bull's Eye BBQ sauce is now HFCS free. This is fantastic since all the other labels I checked of the big brands have the HFCS as either the first ingredient or pretty close to it.
Another cool thing was finding the no HFCS label on Log Cabin syrup. All the others have it so now we finally have a choice besides buying pure maple syrup which is quite pricey!
Along with the HFCS I am finding myself trying to get rid of so much MSG in my food. Wow, thats a tough one. Not only is there all kinds of salt in so many foods, but the MSG on top of it all.
I was really bummed to see the MSG on all the sausage & keilbasa labels. The fancy funky flavored ones are made with all sorts of good stuff but sometimes i just want plain old sausage or keilbasa. Today I found one that was MSG free. Yes! Ask & you shall receive.
With summer coming I am starting to look at salad dressing labels. Amazing how many of them have the HFCS. Why? Ugh! It just gets so irritating. But, there are a few brands that are free of it.
I'm working on making a "safe list". Mostly for my own benefit, but I will gladly share it here as well. I plan to list products that are HFCS free & MSG free. Granted it will be tailored to what we eat, but it may help out some of you as well. It'll be a work in progress for awhile, but when it's done I'll make an entry for it.
On the non food front ... I'm going to have to do some more looking on laundry cleaners soon. My last bottle of Era is less than half full. Currently, I'm using the smallest amount of that along with baking soda, vinegar & hydrogen peroxide in my loads. I'm pretty happy with the way the hydrogen peroxide works in place of bleach. The vinegar works as a decent softener & along with the baking soda, they remove odors pretty well.
I'm happy with the Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds for my hand dishwashing needs. adding a little vinegar helps cut heavy grease too so thats cool. Baking soda works good as a non abrasive scrub too. I'm not sure what I plan to do to replace my dishwasher tabs tho. I currently use Electrsol 3 in 1. We'll see what I can find to replace that.
A solution of vinegar & water in a spray bottle has worked great on my stove top cooktop as well as on windows & mirrors for cleaning. And all we use is a clean microfiber cloth. No paper towels!
Guess that's it for the moment. Just wanted to get an update on here of real life. As always, all your comments are most welcome!
It sounds like your choices are more oriented to mainstream stores. While the expense of organics can be a problem their benefit can outweigh the cost. We buy pure maple syrup and mix it with alternatives. I've recently discovered a syrup made from birch. There is a movement on your side of the border to such things as grass fed with no anti-biotics and if you make time to locate smaller sources, I'm sure you will find alternatives to much of what the big chains offer. I have made our BBQ sauce from scratch and found it a delight. Did you know that something in the area of 70% of fertilizers manufactured were or still are used in the production of cotton ? I read somewhere that once the soil was stripped of its nutrients, ( about 3 seasons) all that would grow therein is peanuts......makes me wonder if this contributes to the sensitivity to peanut products we constantly hear about. As far as MSG goes there is a movement up here to severely limit its use.
ReplyDeleteYes, my choices are based on mainstream stores, as that is what we have here. We have 2 healthfood stores & one mainstream store that has a great natural section. But, those prices are high in all places. So, trying to find good products in mainstream stores is what I'm doing.
ReplyDeleteI'm also trying to help anyone else who is trying to do better. Not everyone has the health food stores in their area. And not everyone can afford to go there. I totally understand that these better products are worth their cost, but many of us just can't afford it these days. I know some will say "but how can you afford not to" ... when it comes to buying the better stuff. When it comes down to eating or not eating ... most choose to eat.
And I feel that even if you can't change all the food you eat, everything you can change, makes a differance. Thank you so much for your comment!!
I awarded you the Lovely Blog Award! Visit my blog http://www.marlasfunstuff.blogspot.com for more information. Congrats!
ReplyDelete