Tag Archives: cooking

Should You Avoid Food Additives and Coloring?

As a rule, I like to cook from scratch. Mostly because I enjoy it, but also because I like knowing what goes into the foods I feed my family. That’s not to say I don’t allow any packaged foods at all; my husband remains hooked on boxed mac n’ cheese, and so the kids love it too. We also enjoy boxed cereals. But I do what I can to avoid convenience foods and prepared foods.

Frankly, I find obvious food coloring to be pretty gross and unnecessary. We eat so many things that are a very different color from what they would be naturally and have been trained to think that that is how they are supposed to look. Kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

There’s a lot to be said for trying to get away from food coloring. There’s some evidence, after all, that getting certain types of food additives and coloring out of a child’s diet may help with ADHD. Not in all cases, but sometimes there appears to be a connection. If I had a child with ADHD, that is certainly one possibility I would test before using medications.

ADHD isn’t the only problem. As noted in Healthy Child Healthy World , which I reviewed recently, MSG is associated with reactions such as headaches and changes in heart rate. I remember my grandmother being very careful to ask at restaurants about MSG because it gave her so many problems.

I do notice that I feel better when I eat food I made from scratch, and I don’t think that’s just due to liking my own style of cooking. No doubt that’s a part of it, but I firmly believe that there is also something to do with the freshness of the ingredients and lack of preservatives, food colorings and other additives.

I don’t even like to use premade spice blends. Too many of those have too much salt or other ingredients I don’t want.

It doesn’t matter to me that my kids don’t have ADD or ADHD or any other conditions that might be made better by getting additives out of their diets. I don’t need most additives in my food. My kids don’t need them. Neither does my husband, but it doesn’t bother him like it does me. Can’t win all the battles, know what I mean?

I’m Enjoying Crockpot Cooking Again

The further along I get on this pregnancy, the better a friendship I’m developing with my old friend, the crockpot. I really love that thing.

It uses less energy than the stove or oven, doesn’t heat the house on warm days (it’s southern California, we are still getting warm days here), and I can fit pretty much all of dinner in it, except anything we want raw.

When baby is big enough, anything made in the crock pot is likely soft enough for the food mill, so she’ll be able to join in.

Then there’s being able to start dinner at whatever time works for me that day. In the morning when I have the energy, up to early afternoon when I realize my energy levels are sagging. I just have to pick a high or low cooking temperature.

As I drag through this last month of pregnancy, retaining far, far more water than I ever had before, this really helps. Lucky for me, far, far more water still isn’t an actual medical problem. I just didn’t retain much water at all in past pregnancies. Now my sandals barely go on.

Cooking with One Power Source

Cooking at home is one of the best things you can do for your family. As a rule it’s healthier, and encourages family time, especially if you get the kids involved.

One of my favorite things is to cook with just one power source. The classic is the crock pot, of course. Very easy to make a one dish meal in one, and the power consumption is low. But you can do the same in the oven.

I can start a meal with whatever meat, and maybe some potatoes. Towards the end, start a pan of vegetables to roast. If you don’t try roasting vegetables, you may just be missing out on a treat! They can be wonderful. Very different from steamed veggies.

The trick, of course, is finding foods that can be cooked all at the same temperatures. Time is easy enough to handle just by figuring out when to start things.

If you can cook in this way, you’re minimizing the power used, and using it as efficiently as possible. It won’t work all the time, but when you can swing it, great!

Why Not Try to Eat Less Meat?

Cutting back meat consumption can be a difficult thing to do, at least in the United States. Eating meat is so much a part of how I was raised that it’s really hard to break the habit or slow it down. But there are a lot of good reasons to do so.

1. Better for your grocery bill.

This is a reason that many of us can get on board with these days. Beans, lentils, brown rice, barley and so forth cost much less than meat and are great sources of protein. They’re also nicely filling. All you have to do is learn to cook them in ways you enjoy.

2. Better for the environment.

Another great reason, even if it’s less of a motivator for many people who are far more concerned with their budget. Grains have a much lower environmental impact than meat. Animals eat a lot of grain, but the amount of meat you get from them is much less.

You will also significantly cut your carbon footprint. Meat production overall is very hard on the environment.

3. Less handling of raw meat.

While the big salmonella stories recently have related to foods such as spinach, the mishandling of raw meat is a very common source of food poisoning. Just think of how quickly you reach the ‘use by’ date of any meats you buy, versus how long grains last. A part of the food poisoning risk with meat is how fast germs can grow in it.

4. How many farm animals are treated.

If the ethics worry you, then the treatment of farm animals is a big deal. There are farms that treat their animals far better than the factory farms that produce the more affordable meats. And of course there are all the hormones and antibiotics used on factory farm animals.

5. It can be healthier.

This one really depends on you. It’s possible to eat unhealthy without meat, but if you’re trying to eat well and eat less meat, it’s pretty healthy. You’ll probably have less fat in your diet, for one thing. You can cut the odds of getting many health problems simply by eating less meat. It’s not a guarantee, just lower odds.

If you want to cut back on meat but still like to have it every day, just work on how you serve it. Go heavy on the vegetables when you stir fry, for example. I’ve found chopping the meat into pieces can make it look as though there’s more on my plate as well, so I eat less of it.

You can also try just having meat no more than once a day. I enjoy vegetarian lunches many days, and just rarely take the time for any meats with breakfast. I don’t miss it most of the time.

Plan regular vegetarian dinners too. My husband isn’t much of a fan of vegetarian meals, but I have some recipes he enjoys well enough, despite his regular suggestions of meats I could add in “to make it better.” He eats them, so that’s good enough. My kids aren’t big meat eaters, so some vegetarian meals go down much faster that ones featuring meat.

It’s really not as hard as it seems to cut back on meat. Just pick steps that you are comfortable with and go from there.