February 1, 2010, 10:17 pm
updated Mar 11, 2010, 8:30 pm

SERVING up a SMILE 2/02/10: Shall We Shop?

To the grocery store we go. Sorry, if you were looking for skinny jeans and mile-high designer shoes, you have the wrong girl on the wrong day (though I, too, would love a chance to do THAT kind of shopping with Kel!).

I am always murmuring something about reading labels, not trusting food pimps, blah, blah, blah… But I don’t have time for this you might think. Or it’s too difficult to sort through all of this stuff. Well, let’s take a stroll together, shall we? I only have one real rule and that is:

Whenever possible, choose the farm over the factory.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, I’d like to keep to the outer ring of the store as much as possible. Vegetables, meat, seafood, dairy and fresh breads.



Beautiful! This is exactly the kind of thing I had hoped we’d be buying together today: fresh produce. Have I mentioned that my children like peeling the leaves off of cooked artichokes and scraping the “meat” off of them with their teeth as a television-time snack?




Do I ever eat butter? Of course I do! Not a lot of it, but yes, I enjoy a small amount of butter from time to time. If you look at the ingredient list for the substitute on the left, it is very long. The real butter lists only sweet cream and salt. Go for the real deal, just use less of it.




Here we have some Fat Free Sour Cream. It has 9 ingredients, including corn syrup solids. Regular sour cream has one ingredient: cultured cream. If you really wish to have a sour cream texture but really cannot spare the calories, consider eating a low fat or non fat Greek yogurt in the place of sour cream. It is great in dips and even on tacos. Plus it is a cultured milk product so it is much closer to the real thing than that chemically contrived mix that is calling itself sour cream.




Really, the ingredient list is so long, I don’t care if it has winning lottery ticket shavings in it; if I have to eat a list this long of who-knows-what to get in my fiber, omega-3s, iron, etc, than it’s just not worth it. The cost of one of these boxes is equivalent to an entire, ripe pineapple. Plus, the pineapple is naturally high in fiber and vitamin C.




The bad stuff in these makes it worse than if I ate a full fat treat. Many years ago, there were these zoned out hippies from Vermont that made some rich, delicious ice cream with a few, simple ingredients. It is higher in fat and calories but it is also higher in real food ingredients (in fact, all they use is real food ingredients). It is much higher in satisfaction levels, too, so a little bit goes a long way.

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If it’s found on the front of the box, RUN AND HIDE! And don’t believe it either (In bold are actual claims that I found today on the front of the package of various foods):


• Made with Natural Ingredients. Because 100% artificial ingredients would be 100% inedible. Fisher Price makes an entire artificial line that my kids love.

• Contains 100% Orange Juice. And some other random things. But somewhere in the mix, IT DOES contain 100% orange juice.

• Trans Fat Free! Dear manufacturer, if you put this on your label, you almost certainly have trans fats but have made the serving size small enough to get away with this ridiculous statement. By the way, if it really has no trans fats, it would most likely say “Made without Partially Hydrogenated Oils”. Even if it says this, check to see what oils it is made with. Cottonseed oil, for example, is a byproduct of textile production, is not regulated as a food crop and is one of the most heavily pesticide contaminated crops out there.

• More of the Whole Grains Your Body Needs and even more of the engineered food products it doesn’t. Seriously, this one had high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, red dyes and at least a dozen chemically created ingredients that I could not identify.

• Made with Real Fruit. This was on the same package as the bullet above. Need I say more?

• Naturally Cholesterol Free. A mere inch away from this claim on the package, a small statement read: *Adds a dietarily insignificant amount of cholesterol. A small booger is still a booger (and not, so much, welcome in my food).

• Reduced Fat and/or Fat Free: Was it already a reduced fat food? If not, what the heck did they put in it to substitute the fats? Sugar? Corn syrup solids? Natural and artificial ingredients? Also, will eating this fat free ice cream leave me feeling satisfied or is it something I am eating to fill a void? For me, a half cup of Ben & Jerry’s is a rich, satisfying treat that makes me glad I budgeted it in from time to time. A 100 calorie “slim” ice cream sandwich in my gut and a half our later I am already looking for a snack.

• Not in regular ice cream. Hmmmmmmm. What?

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The Egg Beater or The Egg?

When a manufacturer feels the need to improve Mother Nature’s packaging, ask yourself why? Is it to make money? Is it to use up leftovers? As a child I always despised eating leftovers but as adults we do this just about every time we buy something in a cardboard box. If you are buying egg whites in a carton, rest assured, that someone, somewhere needed those yolks and the manufacturer decided they could sell us on the convenience of bottled egg whites. Besides the facts that they contain additives that make them stick to the pan (causing you to add more fat) they also don’t puff up when you cook them. This will not help your baked goods any and seriously, how long does it really take to crack an egg? And if you compare the cost of buying a dozen eggs and throwing out a yolk or two, you probably aren’t saving anything by purchasing egg whites in a carton.

If you really don’t want to part with that yolk, they can be single layer frozen on a cookie sheet and transferred to a more permanent storage container once frozen solid. Use them later for an egg wash or to make a smoother, creamier, homemade ice cream. Or skip eating them altogether and turn them into some tempera craft paint for your kids.

Or just eat a whole egg once in a while. Egg yolks are full of vitamins, minerals and a lot of protein. Also, who says that a regular serving of an egg has to be a large egg? A small egg only has 51% of daily cholesterol (verses 72% of a large egg). Consider purchasing some “just for eating” eggs for the fridge and some larger if you bake. Eggs left in the shell are usually good for at least a month if kept properly refrigerated.

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Will I forgive the food industry for lying to me? Most likely. I may even buy their products again from time to time. Because my palate continues to evolve toward whole foods, I will continue to buy less and less of most packaged items. And because manufacturers are regularly changing their formulas and recipes, I will continue to check and recheck the same items each time I purchase them. With the rapid rate of growth of this obesity epidemic, every label deserves a second, third, even fourth glance. For a sobering glimpse into our Nation’s obesity epidemic, please visit: U.S. Obesity Trends and check out that map in motion. This alone should be enough incentive to encourage more people to more closely scrutinize labels and question what we are putting into our bodies.

If you get nothing else out of today’s piece, I hope that you learn to look beyond the packaging and sales pitches. Mother nature is there taking care of us already. She is knocking at the door. Won’t you please let her in and love the foods that love you back?

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