I would love to make all my children's food from scratch. Sometimes I just can't do it. Something comes up, we lack ingredients, it's later than I realized.... it happens.
For times like that, I keep box sides on hand. The other night, when we had that delicious beer battered fish, we ate it with a box of Horizon Organic Mac 'n Cheese. So no, I'm far from perfect, but I do make certain to at least have the most decent box foods available. We avoid HFCS, we avoid artificial flavours, and we avoid artificial colours. Whenever possible, preservatives, too.
At least, with the above mentioned items, I know there aren't artificial dyes and flavours in them. Is it as good as from scratch? Nope. Is it better than Fast Food? Yep.
...but what about things you expect to be okay?
In the grocery the other day, my husband was getting some pumpkin seeds from the 'trail mix bar' they have. I saw some dried fruits and decided I should get some. I grabbed a container and started putting in some dried apricots. Yum.
Dried kiwi? Oooo! I grabbed some and started to put it in the container when I noticed the ingredients on the label said it had blue colouring added to it. I put the tongs down.
Dried papaya! YAY! I grabbed for the tongs and saw that they added yellow 5 and yellow 6 to it.
Really? I just want dried fruit. I don't want chemicals! Sadly, I left with only dried apricots. I never expected there to be artificial colourings added to dried fruit, especially not dried fruit at the 'trail mix bar'. I guess the fact you scoop your own gave me the false impression it would be 'cleaner'?
Keep your eyes open when you're shopping. Eating clean is harder than it should be.
Disclaimers: Thoughts of Fluff was not compensated for this post. All opinions are my own and my differ from yours.
My daughter loves that mac and cheese. I have been surprised over and over again by the ingredients in a lot of foods. Dried fruit should be so easy to include in a "clean" diet. The artificial colors are so upsetting!
ReplyDelete