Do You Know What's in Your Food?

Do you really, truly know what ingredients are in your food? When I cook at home I feel like I have a semi-decent grip on what we eat. I buy ingredients that are as minimally process as possible and I try to buy as much local and/or organic foods as I can. I look for no hormones, all natural, etc. because I really do care about what pulses through my family's body. For example, my snack tonight consisted of an organic tomato, rBGH free mozzarella cheese and basil that came from my backyard garden. Breakfast this morning was 100% rolled oats with honey from my friend's father (he keeps his own bees), hormone free/organic yogurt and organic strawberries. To me, these foods are real and healthy and provide nourishment.


In a perfect world my family would eat well 100% of the time. I would be lying if I said we never ate at a fast food restaurant. Some nights we have Boy Scouts, soccer practice and a staff meeting and that makes prepping a good, healthy meal at home next to impossible. We try to eat at healthier restaurants like a Panera Bread, but sometimes true fast food is what we grab. While it doesn't sit well with me (in more ways than one!) I do allow it to happen. Last week we had the nasty fried bug in the nachos incident at Taco Bell and that has really impacted us. Up until yesterday we hadn't consumed a single bite of fast food for seven days. Then I stumbled upon an article written by David Zinczenko (co-author of the "Eat This Not That" book series) that just blew my mind. Once again, I am appalled and downright disgusted by what is dumped into fast food....can we even call it food? I know fast food is not the best option, but I really didn't know how many fillers were added to it. How can a chicken sandwich have 50+ ingredients? Why does it have 50+ ingredients? Needless to say I am once again questioning our food choices. Did you know......


A KFC Chunky Chicken Pot Pie has 82 ingredients?! I have made pot pie before. My pie consisted of a flour crust (homemade so I knew what went into it), some mixed veggies, white meat chicken breast, spices, milk, etc. Apparently the KFC version is filled with gelatin to give the sauce the appearance is viscosity. Gelatin is made from collagen found inside of animal bones and skin. The pot pie also contains red dye #40, L-cysteine hydrochloride and "chicken flavor". Basically the flavor of the actual meat is so overpowered by all of the extra ingredients they need to throw in some artificial chicken flavoring. Yum?


A McDonald's Big Mac has 95 ingredients. You would think beef, lettuce, cheese and bread would be simple, but some of the ingredients include ammonium sulfate, calcium disodium edta and high fructose corn syrup.


A Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich has 83 ingredients. To look at it you would think a chicken breast, a flour bun, some spices and a pickle would do, but boy would you be wrong. Apparently there are 10 sources of sodium in the sandwich along with TBHQ, blue dye #1 and dimethylpolysiloxane. OK, my spell checker doesn't even recognize half of these words!


After reading these alarming additives I am beginning to re-evaluate how I can easily make a healthy crock pot dinner on our "fast and furious nights". I'd rather be a little rushed than fed my boys preservatives that are also found in dog food, perfumes and varnish.