Finding Real Food

I last went on a rant about hidden ingredients in food last June - remember the sugar in salt? Since then I have found a few more foods that I just assumed contained what was in their name.

Peanut Butter - contains sugar and hydogenated vegetable oil (This list is for Kraft. Jiffy and Skippy contain more ridiculous ingredients like malodextrin, mono and diglycerides and about 6 things other than peanuts).

Cream Cheese - contains Xanthan and/or Carob Bean and/or Guar Gums as 'stabilizers' to make it more dense, uniform and smooth. I'm pretty sure I'd be ok with kinda lumpy cream cheese.

Fruit Yogurt - contains food colouring, carrageenan, guar gum, carob gum. The last three are stabilizers. Again, I'd be ok with lumpy yogurt - I'd just stir it. And the fruit should add the colour.

Whipped (and other types of) Cream - contains carageenan again as well as mono and diglycerides as emulsifiers. Don't care why, this is gross.

Sour Cream -contains modified food starch, sodium phosphate, sodium citrate, guar gum, locust bean gum, carageenan, calcium sulface, potassium sorbate. I don't know what the heck these are used for and I don't want them in my food. 

 Icing Sugar - contains corn starch. I assume this is because no one wants to sift it to get out the lumps anymore and the corn starch makes it 'flow' better.

Garlic Powder - partially hydrogenated vegetable/soy/cottonseed oil. Seriously? 

With each of these seemingly simple foods you would think that they would just contain the main ingredient. Nope. I'm so sad.

But...

These foods DO exist in their pure form!

I managed to find a few!

PC Organics Peanut Butter - We have used this peanut butter for years, because it is organic. Keep it in the fridge after opening it and you won't have to stir it (The grandparents are having a hard time with this one, but bless them they are trying it!). Ingredients: freshly roasted organic peanuts. Natural awesomeness.

Organic Meadow Yogurt - we like this plain natural yogurt. Sunday nights I pour half into a bowl, add some homemade vanilla sugar and frozen blueberries, stir and pour into tiny containers for my Liam to take to school all week. My friend Julie makes her own yogurt and I'm very tempted to try this.

Organic Meadow Cream Cheese ,  Creams and Sour Cream- haven't tried these yet, but the ingredients lists are amazing.

Icing Sugar - Well, I don't much care for the fact that corn starch is in there and if I really wanted to, I'd grind my own fine sugar in the coffee grinder. But since I use it for grinding spices all my sugar would likely taste like cinnamon...which wouldn't be so bad really.

Garlic Powder - if there are no ingredients listed on the spice jar I don't trust it. I look for 'granulated garlic' instead of 'garlic powder' and one ingredient: garlic. Or, even better, I just use fresh garlic whenever possible. So many health benefits to garlic! 

Our family continues to search for REAL FOOD!
I'd love to hear about how you and your family find the food. Any surprises? Leave me a comment!

You may also enjoy reading "Are you there Food? It's me, Carrie."