Life in the Cheese Drawer

i asked my sister liz to write a guest post! here it is!
omg, this got long. i hope you actually read it. i try not to be boring.
kate wanted me to guest blog on her blog. i tend to blog about boring stuff that happens in my daily life that only those who know me could possibly be interested (and sometimes not even then). i needed a prompt. it’s only fair; she’s been using prompts for awhile now (note the awesome semicolon action – meee oowww). so she suggested i write about how her quest for a corn syrup free life has influenced mine.
thus, a blog post was born…
prior to kate’s anti-corn agenda, i was on my own anti-partially hydrogenated soybean oil (henceforth known as phso) agenda. why, you ask? well, it all started back in middle school when i was visiting extended family…
the daughter of kate’s and my crazy aunt (of whom kate has referenced many a time) is a nutritionist. she bent the ear of my dad and me over b-fast one day about trans fats and cis fats. this was back in the day before trans fat became a buzz word and everyone knew about it. cousin was telling us that phso has trans fats and it basically mutates human cells to become more susceptible to cancer and other crap. that didn’t sound good to me.
so i started reading ingredient lists and worked to avoid phso. it’s hard to do that when you’re not buying the groceries. when i was old enough to do so, i avoided phso at all costs. i would put things back on the shelves. i’d look at different brands. i was crushed to find out crisco is basically all phso… that was the one exception to my vendetta since a lot of baking calls for crisco.
but saltines! for ages i thought i couldn’t eat saltines because of phso. until i started looking at other brands. lo and behold, other brands didn’t use it! thank you zesta! i could still eat saltines and cream cheese!
oh, you haven’t tried that? you should. it’s delicious. nom.
so when kate started her anti corn syrup agenda, i paid attention. i like having a nerd for a sister who will do all the research work and tell me just the pertinent parts. saves me a lot of work.
i already knew hfcs was bad. regular pop makes me sick. literally. i have a can of pepsi, and i need the bathroom pronto. gross.
so i was onboard with paying more attention to what had cs and hfcs and cs solids (can i just say that the idea of corn syrup solids sounds really really gross?) in it.
since i had experience reading ingredients, it wasn’t a hardship to pay attention to whether or not there was cs in it too. but my oh my, cs is waaaaayyy more prevalent than phso.
phso mainly shows up in packaged food items that need a longer shelf life – cookies, crackers, etc. it’s in food in all those aisles you’re not supposed to shop in anyway.
cs is in eeevvveerrrryyyyythiiiiinnnngggg. omg, it’s so annoying to avoid.
we had to buy andouille sausage the other night. the only stuff available at target has cs in it. we bought it anyway.
i will read labels, i will avoid it where i can, but if it’s the only option and i really want it, i will get it. but i try really hard to avoid it in my groceries.
eating out, however, is whole different ball game. i still eat sandwiches from mcdonald’s. i really should not be eating there. i know this. but sometimes, it’s an easy, quick option. especially since i’m not the cook in my house. and when my cook is working at school or asleep because his schedule is crazy, i will sometimes splurge and get mcd’s. it’s cheap, they have coke zero (NOM), and they have drive through which is extremely handy when you have a 3 1/2 month old as long as she’d not crying.
i don’t read ingredients lists of the restaurants i frequent. i probably should, but i don’t.
i did have to change my bread habits. there is cs in a lot of the bread on the market. i bought a fresh loaf of italian bread from target the other day without reading the ingredients. it’s fresh! it should be okay. today i looked at it and found out there are corn syrup solids in it!! wtf?? that’s annoying. i’m still eating it. it’s a perfectly good load of italian bread and makes great french toast.
okay, this blog post has become ridiculously long. kudos to you if you’re still reading this. 🙂