Supermarket Field Trip

Sometimes we just don’t know…

It was a hot day, and we gave a friend one of our home-made ice-cream lollies [frozen bananas/almond butter/organic cacao powder/ maple syrup/splash of milk]. He liked it so much he said, ‘If people knew they could get such tasty stuff without chemical ingredients they would be swarming for it…’

And I had to disagree.

I disagreed because:

i] It is more expensive

ii] It is time consuming

As a practical illustration of how difficult it can be to avoid foods loaded with synthetic ingredients, I have sometimes taken students into a supermarket with two objectives. Firstly, I ask them to see what they can pick up as a quick lunch-on-the-go for on a busy day for an office worker with a 30-minute lunch break. Secondly, I ask them to find suitable foods for economical dinners that a Mum could purchase for her family. There were conditions of course. We went to Aldi, as most people can’t afford Waitrose prices, and I wanted this grounded in reality. I also insisted they read the ingredients in full and understood what they meant.

We found only one loaf of bread in the entire shop that didn’t have mono- and diacetyltartaric acids of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids [or similar] and that was a rye loaf, and there was fruit. Even some of the fresh meat and been injected with sucrose, which isn’t that horrific in the grand scheme of things, but, why?

There was not one thing that we found which most children would eat for dinner [except fresh and frozen vegetables] that did not contain additives [except for baby food in pouches]. We looked at burgers, fish fingers, pizza, meatballs, pasta sauces, stock cubes and an array of ready meals.

As for dessert, let’s think about that ice-cream. One of my favourite flavours in a tub is not cheap – so I am not looking at the cheapest option here. The ice-cream that I particularly like contains, apart from skimmed milk solids; sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, glucose syrup, corn, modified starch, caramelised sugar, stabilisers [E412, E417, E410, E407, E415], caramelised sugar syrup, sunflower oil, colour [E150a], flavourings, emulsifiers [E471, soy lecithins, E476].

Next week I am going to look into those additives in more detail and share want they could be doing to our bodies.

Suffice it to say that my ice cream lolly making meant that I had to remember to chop bananas and put them in the freezer, so that the next day I can add all the ingredients together and whizz them and pour them into moulds, Then I must clear up, as this can be very messy. I have made simpler ice cream, but I would say it is still a lot more work than dropping a tub of ‘A blend of velvety smooth popcorn flavour ice cream with a layer of rich toffee sauce, uniquely finished with a topping of roasted corn and a cracking chocolate top and shell’ into my shopping trolley as I walk past the ice-cream isle. It does sounds enticing, which is the problem.

We have got used to having treats every day, of expecting something nice to eat to cheer us up, of giving less time to cooking fresh ingredients – not because we don’t want to, but because most of us don’t have time.

I am negotiating my way around this in my own situation, doing my best without making it the centre of my own life – so I can still visit my friends without refusing all and any of the food they offer me. I don’t want to become ‘precious’.

Although I am a herbalist by trade, and I teach medicinal herbs, and use medicinal herbs with patients, I believe the basic and most fundamental health intervention is to monitor what we eat. In this connection, I have been stunned at the ubiquitousness of additives in our food – especially emulsifiers.

It is impossible to accurately assess the risk to health this chemical soup has on the human body, because everybody is different and will ingest a different ‘range’ of chemicals each day. Nothing is consistent. But it concerns me enough to spend time thinking about it and changing a few new things every week.

As a society we are putting in our mouths synthetic ingredients that are known to promote inflammation, we are consuming foods laden with additives that we don’t know of the effects they could have in the body long-term.

That’s even before we think about shampoo and toothpaste…