The FastDay Forum

Thought this NYT article would be of interest. Lots of links to new books, Pandora's Lunchbox sounds very interesting.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... market/?hp

"For instance: Warner writes of your food being “constructed from powders,” and uses as an example the Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich. (The name alone feels like it took five geniuses two weeks of brainstorming to devise.) “Of the 105 ingredients,” (you read that right) “55 are dry, dusty substances” whose names sound familiar only to those who read labels, names like disodium guanylate, calcium disodium EDTA, and other things you probably don’t have lying around your kitchen."

Thank you - I did find that interesting.

A couple of years ago when we returned from vacation, our local supermarket in Nevada had been remodeled and made a little bigger and brighter. Great, would say, but as I looked around for the things I normally purchase, I realized that relatively unprocessed foods had been replaced by heavily processed foods. It was shocking!

One of my criteria for buying and consuming anything is that it has only a short list of ingredients, all of which I recognize as real foods as opposed to fake foods. I look to see if sugar in any of its guises is in there gratuitously (and it's almost always gratuitous). One day I stormed out because all of the boxed chicken broth brands had sugar in them.

A brand of canned ranch-style beans that I had bought for ages used to have some beef fat in it. It was usually congealed a bit when I opened the can--no problem, I just scraped it off. The sauce in the beans was dark, liquidy and flavorful. I usually stretched it with some plain beans. The other day, I opened a can (it comes from ConAgra)and it was a suspiciously thick uniformly lighter-coloured liquid. It tasted gross! On the label, it now lists partially hydrogenated soybean oil as an ingredient. Disgusting!

Just try to find ears of fresh sweetcorn that is yellow and not super-sweet! It is almost impossible. The thought of the same cynical business-types controlling my food (just like their buddies did with banking) is very disturbing!

I'm seriously cooking almost everything from scratch!

My complaint is principally palm oil...almost impossible to buy any premade food without it in. Then when you try to avoid sugar as well...nightmare! Like you I cook pretty much everything from scratch these days just so I know what went in it!