Who doesn’t love cookies? I’m a big fan of the cookie and here’s a cookie that’s been around for almost one hundred years: Mother’s brand Oatmeal Cookies. Well the cookie itself hasn’t been around that long, (though with preservatives these days…) I digress. Mother’s brand cookies have been a staple on supermarket shelves for nearly one hundred years, yet their ingredients are anything but wholesome. (more…)
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a a lot of kids out there like avocados. They are a healthy, nutrient rich fruit (yes they are a fruit) that are often passed off as a vegetable in sandwiches, salads, and of course, guacamole. Seeing as Cinco de Mayo is right around the corner, I realized those easy prepackaged containers of guacamole would soon be flying off the supermarket shelf. (more…)
Food dye. Well there’s the big red-blue-yellow and pink elephant in the room. Artificial food dyes are currently headliners on our food related news. A couple weeks ago Frito Lay announced they plan to give a more natural makeover to some of their snack products like Lay’s flavored Potato Chips, Tostitos, Multigrain SunChips and Rold Gold Pretzels. And a week later the FDA held hearings to evaluate a request to post warning labels on the labels of products containing these artificial colors. You can read three pertinent news articles on these topics here: (more…)
The answer is NO. Repeat after me, No nitrites, no nitrites, NO NITRITES!!! Okay, I just had a flash back to my old cheerleading days.
Turkey deli meat is one of those things that I never really thought too much about. It’s always been the lean deli protein that came sliced, smoked, honeyed or roasted and when piled on whole wheat bread with mustard and veggies became my healthy lunch. Or was it? During this Out of the Box Food journey I’ve been looking more carefully at everything, and that needed to include turkey. I tended to choose turkey over ham because it was supposed to be healthier, right? Well, I’m learning that it’s not just about the product itself, but how the product is cured and what might be added to it that makes the difference. (more…)
I received a comment to the Chicken Stock post a couple weeks ago, with a question about bullion cubes. Chicken and vegetable broths are chock full of sodium, but what about those little cubes of flavor that dissolve into hot water to make soup? Those must be better, right? After all, they are so small. Well, the short answer is no. The censored, passionate answer is…well, let’s leave that one to the imagination. (more…)
How many times do you find yourself cleaning out the produce drawer of your fridge and kicking yourself for not actually using those veggies you were certain you’d use, “this time”? It happens to me a lot. I overbuy the beautiful produce I see at the farmer’s market, use only half a bunch of celery or undoubtedly leave half an onion sitting wistfully softening in the drawer. Don’t beat yourself up. You can use those leftover veggies to replace something you’d normally buy at the market, but without all the added sodium. Something you can use to make soup, risotto, mashed potatoes, sauces…the possibilities are endless. Vegetable broth. (more…)
I can’t tell you how many of the recipes I make call for chicken stock or broth. It’s an ingredient I use more often than I can keep track of, yet I was unaware what I was actually adding to my dishes every time I cracked open a can or poured generously from a carton. Sodium. And lots of it. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends that individuals consume less than 1500mg of sodium per day (that is just over 1/2 tsp of salt). Yet some varieties of packaged chicken stock and broth contain more than 850mg sodium per serving! (more…)
You ready for this one? I’m not even sure if I’m ready to write about it, but it is DEFINITELY a food story that needs to be told. Over the summer I took my boys to a popular indoor playground in Los Angeles. You know the ones where your kids climb, swing, slide and basically wreak havoc for several hours in a padded room while you try desperately to tune out the constant drone of screaming? Yup, that’s the one. (more…)
Last week a friend suggested we take a deconstructed look at breakfast bars. As a working mother of two under four, her mornings are busy and rushed yet she wants to provide a healthy start to her kids’ day. One day in a pinch, she picked up a nationally recognized brand bar for the following morning’s breakfast. Ten minutes after eating the bar, her son was bouncing off the walls. That little self-proclaimed “health” bar, had turned a quiet morning into a wild, stress-filled kickoff to the day.
Aren’t school mornings challenging enough? (more…)
You know ’em, those long, sticky, peel-and-eat rolls of sweet chemicals your kids love? I just can’t bring myself to call them what they do on the package; “fruit” is just too far off what they actually are. Corn Syrup Roll-up could work. Or how about Artificial Color roll-up? To make matters worse, my kids don’t even want regular roll-ups in their lunch boxes anymore, they want the ones that stretch to nearly a foot long! So is it possible to make foot long real fruit roll-ups? You bet. (more…)