Reading the ingredients list
Sep. 10th, 2006 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99I went shopping yesterday for the ingredients of my mother's spaghetti sauce. It takes about 3 hours to make, but if I make a big enough batch and freeze most of it, I can have sauce for spaghetti, lasagna and pizza for months.
My problem came on the canned vegetable aisle. I was in a typical, large HEB. I was searching for "whole canned tomatoes" and "stewed tomatoes." These seem pretty easy... And there were many cans of each. But when I read the ingredients lists... they all seemed to have extra spices. I'm not anti-salt, but would prefer ingredients lists with one item (tomatoes), perhaps two at most (tomatoes, salt or tomatoes, water). These had basil and oregano and onions and other things... when I read past the first few ingredients, I realized that they had sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Why on earth would my canned tomatoes need sugar or high fructose corn syrup?! I searched for 20 minutes to find one with healthy non-spiced, non-sweetened ingredients before giving up in frustration.
I ended up buying gourmet "organic" cans of things that contained basil and oregano that I didn't want, simply to avoid the sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I need to dig out my mother's instructions for doing this from raw tomatoes alone. *glower at the people canning food these days* What are they thinking?!
This is one of the reasons why Americans are so over weight.
My problem came on the canned vegetable aisle. I was in a typical, large HEB. I was searching for "whole canned tomatoes" and "stewed tomatoes." These seem pretty easy... And there were many cans of each. But when I read the ingredients lists... they all seemed to have extra spices. I'm not anti-salt, but would prefer ingredients lists with one item (tomatoes), perhaps two at most (tomatoes, salt or tomatoes, water). These had basil and oregano and onions and other things... when I read past the first few ingredients, I realized that they had sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Why on earth would my canned tomatoes need sugar or high fructose corn syrup?! I searched for 20 minutes to find one with healthy non-spiced, non-sweetened ingredients before giving up in frustration.
I ended up buying gourmet "organic" cans of things that contained basil and oregano that I didn't want, simply to avoid the sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I need to dig out my mother's instructions for doing this from raw tomatoes alone. *glower at the people canning food these days* What are they thinking?!
This is one of the reasons why Americans are so over weight.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 09:46 pm (UTC)My recipe has tomato sauce, tomato paste, tomato puree and diced tomatoes. It's easy to find all these with just tomatoes and salt, with the possible exception of tomato sauce, which may also have spices. (I also shop at HEB.)
I have had trouble finding pre-made spaghetti sauce without various kinds of sugar. And fat. If I want sugar and fat, I'll have ice cream or cookies.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 10:32 pm (UTC)To make matters worse, non-fat things tend to be higher in sugar to make up for the loss of fat, so I've given up on that crap.
I can't use artificial sweeteners either--they affect my moods (and medication), especially aspertame because it reduces the amount of seratonin in the brain.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-10 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 03:08 pm (UTC)if you can find them, muir glen organic diced tomatoes are a really good choice - you can even get them with no salt added, if desired.