DIY -- emulsifiers

An interesting report last year showed that just as purchases of sodas dropped, the Type II diabetes epidemic came to a stand-still and so did the obesity epidemic.  Now we can turn things around and bring those numbers crashing down.

It's not conclusive, but you can save a lot of money by drinking water instead of sodas, save wear-and-tear on your teeth from the acids in sodas, avoid DNA-altering BPA that's in the lining of the cans, and probably also lose weight and fat.

Here's the next target.  Food preservatives.  Specifically, emulsifiers.

Where do  you find  them?

Chocolates.  This includes everything from expensive Godiva down to Reese Cups and Hershey's bars.  It's not the sugar or fat; the experiments delivered the emulsifiers in the  water supply, not the food supply.

If you need your chocolate, make brownies, chocolate cake, DIY chocolate buttercream frosting (not the canned crap, that's mostly chemicals) and make truffles according to the on-line recipes.  They won't have preservatives in them; freezing them works pretty well.

Polysorbate-80.  Check the ingredients listed on your ice cream and your Jello pudding.  Both these product types also contain fat and sugar, which you should be cutting down on anyway.

Iced tea is just as cooling as ice cream -- I've been testing this for two summers now using Constant Comment, and in 2016 I made sun tea almost every time.  So is lemonade.  Try making ice cubes from fruit JUICE, the ones with no sugar on the label.  But if you have to have your ice cream, invest in an ice cream maker and you won't get the chemicals.

Ditch the Redi-Whip and Cool Whip.  These are mostly chemicals anyway; what isn't chemicals is fat and sugar.  And yes, they both contain polysorbate. 

DIY with some heavy cream if you have to have a whipped topping -- but mostly you put it on sweets, don't you?  And you're cutting back on sugar for your health, right? 

So when you are indulging -- hey, you MUST indulge once in a while -- make it from scratch, not from a box or a can, and avoid the emulsifiers.  WE CAN DO THIS.

Chassaing, B. et al. Nature http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14232 (2015).

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved