I had a golden opportunity yesterday. My four eldest boys went fishing with my husband and I took the baby –just the baby– to the grocery store. Since the opportunity for food shopping sans five crazy craving machines comes infrequently I decided to drive to a real grocery store (the Wegman’s that is 40 minutes away) to indulge myself during that brief spell of relative freedom. We stopped at stuffmart and stocked up on canning jars as many of my jars have not resurfaced since our grand and chaotic move last year.
Rowan and I scooted over to Wegman’s afterward and enjoyed a leisurely stroll through my favorite grocery store in these parts. (Not my favorite Wegman’s but there are almost no bad Weggies. My favorite has to be the international one in Pittsford!) It was in Wegman’s that I found something that made me very, very happy.
But first I will interrupt myself with a brief harangue against High Fructose Corn Syrup. Am I the only one who is getting irritated/freaked out/depressed at the fact that it’s nearly impossible to find items without HFCS in them? Campbell’s Tomato Soup, Hunt’s Ketchup, Viva Italian Dressing, Dr. Pepper (oh why? why?), and many others have gone down the HFCS road. Without getting into the wheres and whyfores of why I avoid HFCS like the plague (I trust you to google it and make up your own mind on the subject) you’ll agree, I’m sure, that once you start watching for it you’re shocked at how frequently it pops up on product ingredient lists. For instance; BREAD! Sweet crappy pappy- why does this need to be in bread? Don’t tell me it’s cheap. Have you seen the price of corn these days?
I usually make all of our bread, hot dog and hamburg buns included. I find this to be the best way to avoid weird additives (like the above mentioned HFCS) and it just plain tastes better. Yesterday I was feeling flush with my “no one hanging off my thighs or ramming fragile looking elderly people accidentally with the cart when rounding the corner on two wheels” shopping experience. I decided to look at the baked goods to see if I could find some hot dog rolls that were HFCS free. I won’t go into the list of them that HAD the gunk in it, because it is exhaustive. But, lo and behold, Wegman’s Brand Wheat Hot Dog Rolls were clean! Glory, hallelujah! They were reasonably priced (and by reasonably I mean less than $2.00 a package) and best yet? They actually tasted great.
Thank you Wegman’s for once again providing amazing food at a price families can afford. (Did that sound like a politician’s commercial or what?)
Reader's Thoughts...
Cynthia1770 says
Hi,
My google alert for HFCS picked up your post.
HFCS has invaded our food supply. Go to http://www.corn.org/NSFC2006.pdf
p29-30 list all the foods and products that contain HFCS. Some surprises
even for me–lunch meats, cough syrups.
http://www.StopHFCS.com lists foods that are HFCS-free. They welcome additions
and suggestions. Retrosoda.com sells soda made with real sugar.
European import stores are a good bet. Europe prohibits GMO foods which
safely limits HFCS.
Take care.
Rebecca says
Tell me about it. I studiously avoid bringing in the HFCS. I mostly avoid feeding my family stuff with artificial coloring (but I’m not religious about it). And as a personal preference, not a health concern, I don’t eat artificial flavors. I just don’t like them for the most part.
Thankfully, I found a good inexpensive source for organic ketchup that doesn’t have HFCS. You have to buy it in #10 cans, but around here we can eat through that easily- so it works for us. I’m so bummed about the tomato soup, though, because tomato soup and grilled cheese was one of my faves as a kid, too. It reminds me of sledding and snowsuits and hot cocoa. Sigh.
melissa says
HFCS is one of the only things I make a concerted effort to keep OUT of my house. It’s funny you mention bread specifically, as that has been one of my biggest complaints with the bigger grocery chains. You just can’t find a loaf without HFCS in it – it’s pathetic! No kidding – one brand in the larger chains doesn’t have it in their whole wheat and whole wheat with honey and that is Sara Lee. So a bit of a nod to them… though unfortunately, they put it in some of their other products.
Also, I stayed home from work sick two days in a row back in February and thought I would make myself a can of tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch, nostalgic like and all that. Only after I ate and went to clean up did I look at the can and realize it had HFCS in it.
🙁
Need to make my own tomato soup I guess. Hmph.