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Sweet Stuff

May 27, 2009 on 12:30 pm | In Main Category | No Comments

When I was a kid we weren’t allowed to have sugar because it was going to “rot your teeth,” “have you bouncing off the walls,” or “ruin your appetite.”

“Sugar’s” come a long way since then.  Mostly it’s come in the form of high fructose corn syrup which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, probably because it’s in the media and my level of awareness has been raised http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup.htm , but also because there’s a 3 year old in my house and I look at labels a lot more than I used to. 

This stuff is everywhere!  Especially in things that kids most like to consume, like Ketchup, the favorite condiment of just about everyone under the age of 12.   We try to stay away from the overly process convenience foods where the high fructose corn syrup and other scary ingredients usually hide, but convenience is attractive because we have busy lives and things that take five minutes to cook…well, they take 5 minutes to cook, but that’s sort of another post.

Sugar’s not so bad when you make the choice to eat it, it’s when they sneak it in there and don’t go out of the way to tell you, that’s when it feels like a mean game.  And don’t we have enough to worry about already just keeping little people fed in general?

We’ve been working hard to keep the processed, sugary food out of our kitchen.  A major way we’ve done that at home is signing on with Community Supported Agriculture CSA http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ , we get a box of locally grown organic fruits and veggies delivered once a week at about the same price we’d pay at the store.  We always have a fresh alternative in the house now.   There’s still a box chicken nuggets there, too.  Real change happens slowly, but it does happen.

And if you’re curious about just how much corn may be hidden in your diet, here’s a great documentary http://www.kingcorn.net/

Posted by: Jessica