| Editorials |
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| Wednesday,
February 20, 2008 Random Thoughts by Marlo Benning Growing up on a farm my family ate a lot of what was raised either in the barnyard or in our large garden. I'll never forget the many beef roasts and fresh peas I ate while growing up. You really can't beat the flavor of fresh foods and the feeling of satisfaction it can bring knowing you provided for yourself. Anyway, to my point of my ramblings-While there are still farmers and avid gardeners out there, many of us work jobs that don't allow the time to produce our own foods or there are many who may not care to devote the time to do so. The convenience factor of getting what we need for our supper tables at the local grocer is very much the norm for our present time. But, time and again, when I read the ingredient lists on some foods I have to shake my head. What is constituted as food these days has certainly changed. Here's an example. The other day at one of our usual Monday staff lunches, someone grabbed an item to top her salad with from the fridge. As she read the ingredients, I wondered if anyone would even be able to guess what this item was. Here are the ingredients, see if you can guess: Defatted soy flour, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, water, salt, sugar, natural and artificial flavor, artificial color and red 40, maltodextrin, dextrose and tocopherol (a perservative). When you read this, does it make you say "Num, sounds great?" Does it make your taste buds water as it would at the mention of a grilled steak supper? I highly doubt it. This is the ingredient list of "bacon flavored bits" and there's nothing remotely "meaty" about it. And how can you "defat" flour anyway? Here's another that you may want to venture a guess at. I'll give you a hint-It's something you are supposed to add to a drink. The ingredients are: Water, sugar, palm oil, corn syrup, contains 2% or less: sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), dipotassium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, mono and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl, lactylate, carrageenan, salt. This one may have been a bit easier to figure out than the first one. It is a non-dairy coffee creamer. Both of these "foods" have virtually no nutritional value to them which you may have guessed from their ingredients. I think that with a lot of the food products on the market these days a bad message is being sent to the younger generation. I feel that they won't know what real food is. There are so many processed convenience items for them to purchase that it may just seem easier to grab them rather than to make a real meal. When I tell my kids to eat something that says "natural" on the label, they hesitate to eat it thinking that I'm trying to push "health food" on them. I wouldn't call it health food, I'd call it "real" food-No artificial anything to camouflage the true flavor. What bugs me is that we shouldn't have to read the word "natural" on any packaging, all food should be just that-From nature. |