ingredients Archives - Carma's Cookery

Do you read the ingredients when you buy processed, packaged or prepared foods at the grocery store? If you’re interested in eating a wholesome diet, like I am, you might do a lot of research into nutritious meals and healthy ingredients to make sure you’re getting your daily vitamins and minerals. Maybe your research let you to Carma’s Cookery!

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But, no matter how much research you do, can you be sure that your meal completely healthy? Unfortunately, food manufacturers add some dubious ingredients to preserve their food and give it a certain taste, color, or texture. Some of those additions are harmless, but others are not. The next time you go food shopping, scan the labels for some of these ingredients.

Ingredients Highlight #1: Carrageenan

Carrageenan comes from an edible seaweed known as Irish Moss, and it is widely used in the food industry for its gelling, thickening, and stabilizing properties. The problem with carrageenan is that it’s not digestible and has no nutritional value.

Carrageenan is particularly destructive to the digestive system, and it causes inflammation, leading to ulceration and bleeding. Other carrageenan side effects include leaky gut syndrome, cancer, and it has been linked to diabetes. Unfortunately, health enthusiasts are likely to have a lot of carrageenans in their kitchen, as it’s commonly found in almond milk, coconut milk, most organic foods, and some Starbucks drinks with soy milk.

Ingredients Highlight #2: Palm Oil

When a regular fat like corn, soybean, or palm oil is blasted with hydrogen and turned into a solid, it becomes a trans fat. This might not mean much to you, but essentially it means that food with palm oil can sit on a supermarket shelf for years without rotting or growing stale.

If you’ve ever eaten food two years after you first bought it, you should be suspicious if it still tastes fine. Take a good look at those instant noodles. Also, eating junk food with trans fats raises your “bad” LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and lowers your “good” HDL. These fats also increase your risk of blood clots and heart attack.

Ingredients Highlight #3: Yellow #5 (Tartrazine/ E102)

Yellow #5 is a synthetic lemon yellow dye widely used in the making of potato chips, jams, candy, drinks and even pet food. It is also added to shampoo and other cosmetic products.

The Food Standards Agency in the UK issued a warning in 2008 that certain food colorings, including Yellow #5, caused behavioral changes in children that included loss of concentration and impulsive, hard-to-control activity. Yellow #5 has also been linked to asthma, migraines, thyroid cancer, anxiety, clinical depression, blurred vision, purple spots on your skin and unexplainable itchy skin.

Ingredients Highlight #4: High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

High-fructose corn syrup is a sweetener made from corn starch that has been processed by glucose isomerase to convert some of its glucose into fructose. It is sweeter and cheaper than regular sugar, and therefore it has become a staple ingredient in most processed food.

In fact, some studies have linked HFCS to the increasing obesity rates in America. Although households trying to eat well may have purged their cabinets of foods like soda, candy, salad dressing, and frozen junk food, HFCS can also be found in juice, bread, breakfast cereals, and even cough syrup.

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Take Charge of Your Health!

Changing your eating habits can be tough. But it doesn’t have to be if you take a little time to think it out and create a plan.

This Healthy Eating Worksheet will walk you through the process of creating a healthy eating plan. All you need to do is print it out, set aside some time to complete it, and then fill it out. Then you can create your plan, knowing that you have addressed potential obstacles and came up with some creative ways to handle them.

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Saving with Baking Ingredients

Buy in bulk. Get ingredients like cocoa powder, rolled oats, flaked coconut, nuts and spices in bulk. These ingredients are easy to store and have a longer shelf-life.

Don’t be afraid to use things that are about to spoil. Do you have some bananas which are past their edible state? Use them in some banana bread. Do you have some leftover cooked rice? Turn it into rice pudding. Even leftover mashed potatoes can be used in your baking by making potato fudge.

If you have bananas about to turn but don’t want to make banana bread or muffins, freeze the bananas peel and all so you can use them for baking in the future.

Use your pantry. Just the basics from your pantry can be transformed into a great sweet treat. Here’s where you can be creative. Look at what you have in your pantry and refrigerator, look for recipes on the internet that use some of those ingredients and you’ll have a home-baked treat in no time!

For example, some peanut butter and brown sugar give you the basis for a peanut butter cake. Add some oats, flour, baking soda, shortening, egg, vanilla and chocolate chips and you’ve got what you need. Or what about peanut butter cookies that don’t even need flour? Just add some egg and vanilla and you’ve got a simple peanut butter cookie. Do you have some canned pineapple and some raw carrots? Then you can make a Pineapple Carrot Cake.

Use substitutions made from ingredients you do have. For example, if you don’t have buttermilk for a recipe, you can make your own sour milk (a good substitution for buttermilk) by pouring a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in a cup of regular milk. Let it sit for a few minutes. Check online for more substitutions when you’re missing an ingredient.

Use seasonal foods. During the fall and winter months when apples are in season, use them in your baking. Don’t forget pumpkin! You can get a lot of tasty sweet treats in the fall and winter out of pumpkin. In the summer, adding strawberries to things makes for a tasty treat. An angel food cake with strawberries is divine. Think strawberry shortcake — either traditionally with biscuits (you always have Bisquick on hand, right?) or with a quickly baked yellow cake (buy boxes at your local dollar store and keep them for last-minute treats).

Budget Baking Technique

Save energy. If you don’t need a huge amount of cookies, then use the toaster oven instead of the regular oven to bake it in. It uses much less energy. On the other hand, baking in bulk and freezing for later can be energy efficient too. Do all of your baking at once and have dessert from your freezer for months to come.

Baking on a budget can really be quite simple. It’s so easy to save by doing all of your own home baking, too. And don’t think that just because you haven’t been able to bake before that you can’t do it now. The more you give it a try, the better you will get. It’s like anything else that is learned – practice makes perfect. So keep trying; you just might find that you can make some really sweet treats.