5. Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener listed among) the top three ingredients.
For my ninth birthday party, I had begged my parents for Crystal Pepsi. Remember Crystal Pepsi? I was obsessed with it. It tasted like Pepsi! But it was totally clear! Amazing! I was dying to try it, but my parents, health nuts even in the 80's before it became du jour, forbade it. They made an exception for my special day, though, and I could not wait. The first thing I did when my first guest, a sweet mousy girl named Shannon, arrived was foist a tall glass of Crystal Pepsi upon her.
"Does this have sugar in it?" she asked. "My mom says I'm not allowed to have sugar. It makes me too hyper."
"I don't know," I said. "Let's check." We read the ingredients together; I didn't understand a full two-thirds of them, but none of them were sugar. "Good to go," I said, and handed her her glass.
Needless to say, she went bananas.
That was the moment when I learned that lots of labels say "high fructose corn syrup" when they mean to say "sugar." It eventually became filed under the list of the villianous, unpronouncable ingredients, like potassium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate, that my mom constantly denounced but that still popped up in most everything, so I came to understand as unavoidable evils, like cancer, or homework.
It wasn't until I read the Omnivore's Dilemma in college that I got an idea of just how disruptive the ubiquitousness of high fructose corn syrup is both to the environment and to our health.
And, even my mom, the devoted health nut, had a whole slew of offenders lurking in her refrigerator.
Lots of these items, like the chocolate syrup and the Oreo-bits were bought for special occasions and then squirreled away for years, I'd be willing to guess, until I brought them to light for this photo.
Others, though, are everyday items, and it appears as though the worst offenders are the condiments. Ketchup, barbecue sauce, pickles, etc. I actually remember the day I bought those sweet pickles. I searched the entire store thrice over, and could not believe that I could not buy a single jar of pickles that didn't contain high fructose corn syrup.
How cruel, as condiments are just about the hardest to replace with homemade or at least person-made equivalents. In fact, that's probably exactly why condiments are the last bastion of high fructose corn syrup in our refrigerator. There's no simple alternative.
Case in point: I got super-excited to share a family recipe for homemade barbecue sauce that is utterly delicious, until I realized that the first ingredient is ketchup. Womp-womp.
This isn't necessarily a problem for this project - worst comes to worst, I can live without ketchup for six weeks. But what if I want to get away from the processed over-sweetened goop they sell in the supermarket post-Lent? Well, you can buy these newfangled "all natural" versions of ketchup they sell now, but they still break the other two of the three rules listed today, and about a million other rules as well. And you can certainly try your hand at homemade ketchup, but it only keeps for about a month, and I use ketchup maybe once every two months. Also, to be blunt, it looks like a real bitch to make.
What does one do here? I'm a big believer in voting with my money, and I'm a little irked that there's no way for me to cast my vote here, even if I wanted to. Part of me, the rational part of me, says, Ya know, you can't win them all. You don't even eat ketchup that much, so when you do, just buy the crap in the bottle.
But then the other part of me, the part that thought this project was a good idea in the first place, says, Don't let the man win!!!
What do you think? What would you do? Would you stick to your guns, no matter how it might affect your ketchup consumption? Or would you accept the fact that as long as the food industry exists as we know it, long lists of "edible foodlike substances" will eventually worm their way into our lives - an inevitable evil, like I once believed?
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