What's in YOUR cookies?

I was watching Oprah a couple of weeks ago and she had author Michael Pollan on discussing the new food documentary - Food 101.

He talks a lot about our food and what is in it or how it's made. It really makes you think about the junk we eat. He always says that if your grandmothers wouldn't recognize a food, than you shouldn't eat it.

Think about this for a second. Our grandmothers ate meat, potatoes, vegetables and home baked goods. All of the foods we have been conditioned not to eat over the last 40 years.

I adore baking and have gone back to baking from scratch over the past few years. Recently, I decided to whip up some no bake chocolate oat cookies. They have very few ingredients that I always keep on hand.

Seeing how few ingredients my homemade cookies had, I took out the processed pre-packaged cookies I had picked up for my husband. I flipped them over and took a look at the ingredient list. Holy cow! There were so many ingredients and most I didn't recognize. What's really interesting is that they have to add this warning: " May contain milk, wheat or soy." Isn't that odd? The ingredients I do recognize are the ones they warn people about.

What has happened to our food? It's really frightening and I cannot believe we have not been really ticked off by what our government passes off as food.

Michael made such a good point on the show when he talked about making your own junk food. He said that it's okay to your favorite foods as long as you know what's going into them. He's not saying to eat home made fried chicken every day, but once in awhile it's fine. Just eat natural foods that are closest to their natural state.

I adore my baked goods and have a real thing for pancakes. However, I rarely get them at a restaurant or out of a box. I make them from scratch and I have even come up with my own high protein recipe that I love and can eat most days.

Start thinking about what fast food restaurants and food companies are putting into your food. Would you really feed your child something dangerous on purpose? Well, we are ingesting unhealthy and dangerous ingredients all the time by eating this junk.

If you rely on packaged foods right now for most meals, try switching to one home cooked meal a week and then, two and so on. We have come to realize that my home cooking is much tastier than anything we can get out of a box or through a drive through and it doesn't take any more time. It just takes a little planning ahead. I will go into this more in another blog.

In the meantime, go to this link "The Truth About Food with Michael Pollan"
Read up! I think you will be amazed.