Quick question. Do you know what’s in your food? 🤔
Let me tell you why I am asking…
Last week, it was my turn to host my book club (and as you know, last week was a doozy for me). Since I was a tad unorganized, I popped into the grocery store to pick up some salad dressing (a seemingly healthy condiment, right?). 🤷🏽♀️
Here are the most common salad dressing ingredients I came across: soybean oil, canola oil, high fructose corn syrup, ‘natural flavors’, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate and calcium disodium edta (to protect flavor), and caramel color.
Many even had sugar AND corn syrup as the 4th and 5th ingredient, right after vinegar, water and refined oil. And this was just the Italian! The Catalina actually had SUCRALOSE, RED 40 and BLUE 1, I kid you not. 😭
There was literally NOT ONE salad dressing with ingredients in it that I would want to put on a salad, even the ones that screamed olive oil on the front of the package (and even the fancy brand names)! Uuuuuugggggghhhhhh. The food industry hurts my brain. 🙄
I’m a label checker though. It’s my thing. And I recommend you make it yours as well.
Any time you see letters and numbers, it’s probably not something you want. Nowadays, monosodium glutamate goes by MSG, E621, Yeast extract, hydrolyzed vegetable oil and others. Here are some of the top additives that you want to avoid (but also beware of anything you cannot pronounce):
Aspartame (AKA: E951)
Food Dyes (AKA: E133 E124 E110 E102)
Sodium Sulfite (AKA: E221)
Sodium Nitrate/Nitrite (AKA: E250)
BHA and BHT (AKA: E320)
Potassium Bromate (AKA: E924)
Propyl Paraben
Aluminum Additives
Sulfur Dioxide (AKA: E320)
The good news is, if you’re stuck, here is an easy salad dressing recipe for you to make your own. 🙌🏽
You can make it as fancy or simple as you like. I usually make a bottle at the beginning of the week. I don’t actually measure mine but I’ve attempted to put some measurements below.
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1 – 2 tsp mustard powder (optional)
1 tbsp Nuthin’ But Herbs by UMAMI
*The Middle Eastern by UMAMI (optional)
Raw honey to taste (optional)
*I rarely use the Middle Eastern in mine unless I’m entertaining, because I season my salad directly (with The Middle Eastern of course. 🤣 This is my way of ensuring I get a little turmeric in my system each day. Between the UMAMI Vitality in my Smoothie and my ‘seasoned’ salad, I think I’m ok.) ☺️
I hear people so often talk about how tired they are, the weight gain, and brain fog. The toxins in your food are directly related to this. (Know where toxins are stored? In your fat cells… 😲)
This is why label checking is so important. These toxins are forcing our bodies to work overtime to detoxify, and draining our energy.
Anyhoo, that’s my unpopular opinion for the week.