I decided to go through the cabinets in our house and get rid of things that contain toxins. You would be surprised at what is toxic in your cabinets.
First up is Food Coloring, more specifically, unnatural food coloring. All of them. This includes things like FD&C Red #40, or FD&C Blue #2 and the like. These are all artificial colors and are bad for our health.
Sugar Sprinkles
This one bottle of sugar sprinkles contains:
Sugar, Cornstarch, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Dextrin, Soya Lecithin, Carrageenan, natural flavors, artificial flavors, tragacanth, plus a host of colors, FD&C Red #40 Lake, FD&C Yellow #5, FD&C Yellow #5 Lake, FD&C Blue #1, FD&C Blue #1 Lake, FD&C Red #40, FD&C Yellow #6 Lake, FD&C Red #3, FD&C Yellow #6, FD&C Blue #2. Did you know that FD&C Red #40 is the more common name for disodium 6-hydroxy-5-((2-methoxy-5-methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo)-2-naphthalenesulfonate? These colors are known to cause cancer and other health issues?
So besides the bad colors, it contains partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, or trans-fats, which is known to cause heart disease.
That rules out these bottles of sprinkles as well. Ok. Moving on…
Little Glass Bottles
These three little glass bottles contain some interesting ingredients. Polypropylene glycol.. more common name, antifreeze. Propylparaben… is a preservative. Propylparaben can irritate eyes, skin, intestinal and respiratory tracts upon contact, ingestion, and inhalation, respectively. Wow. What about aldehydes? or “other organic acids”? Well, let’s just toss these out as well. The only “little glass bottle” that I kept is the Real Vanilla Extract. That is made from Vanilla Beans, and alcohol.
How about Caribbean Seasonings?
This one is not so bad. It does contain Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil for a double-whammy though. Partially Hydrogenated, as I mentioned above, is a trans-fat. This leads to clogged arteries, and heart attacks. The other half of this one ingredient is Soybean Oil. I wrote about Soy earlier, but it merits repeating. Soy is bad for us. It inhibits the ingestion of vitamins and minerals.
What else is in this seasoning? Well, Soybean Oil is also in there, as well as Yellow #5 Lake, Cornmeal which is probably from GMO corn, Paprika extractives (why not just paprika?), and Silicon Dioxide (or more commonly known as… Sand).
Liquid Smoke
I’m not really sure why I bought this. I knew it had to be artificial of some sort, and it kind of is. It says “Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor” but what that really means is that they took something from nature, maybe an eye of newt, extracted a chemical compound from it, and created this product. It also contains Caramel Color. Caramel Color, in case you didn’t know, can cause cancer. Coke and Pepsi are reformulating their sodas to not contain Caramel Color to avoid having to put a warning label on their sodas. In that article, they state the CSPI is wrongly accusing caramel coloring, and there is no evidence that it causes cancer. Well, why are they reformulating then? Let’s toss this one out as well. Oh well, it tasted good while it lasted.
Cake Mix
This particular cake mix has some things that are not so good for our health. Let’s take a look.
First ingredient is Sugar. That’s refined white sugar, and that’s bad. It probably is from GMO beets as well.
Next ingredient is enriched flour bleached. Again, bad. Carbohydrates lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and more.
Partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil. I covered this earlier in this post, but this is a trans-fat.
Modified Corn Starch. Corn starch is usually made from GMO corn, since it is cheaper. But why modify it? They modify it to swell better without breaking, or to retain more moisture. Either way, it’s out of here.
Corn Syrup, Corn Starch. More GMO ingredients that I’m avoiding.
Propylene Glycol. Again, this is what we use in cars as antifreeze.
Mono and Diesters, Mono and Diglycerides, more items that I can’t pronounce.
Yellow #6, Red #40, again, carcinogenic.
Corn Starch
Why include corn starch in this list? Because it most likely is from Genetically Modified Corn, which of course, is bad. GMO corn contains several things in it that can be bad for our health. For instance, GMO corn is modified to produce BT Toxin directly in the plant itself. This means the farmers don’t need to spray the plant with BT Toxin as a pesticide. The plant grows it.
Next, the GMO corn also is probably “roundup ready,” which means you can spray the plant with roundup and it won’t die. They do this by modifying the plant to withstand glyphosate, or roundup. Then the farmers can spray the entire field with glyphosate and the corn lives on. This means that it may have more glyphosate on or in the plant.
I’ve replaced corn starch with Arrow Root Powder. It does the same thing, and is the about the same price.
Baking Powder
Well, for one, it contains corn starch.
Another reason to avoid it is that it has aluminum added to it. We all know aluminum can cause Alzheimer’s. There are aluminum-free baking powders, and I am now buying Rumford Al-Free, GMO-free baking powder. It’s not more expensive than this brand pictured.
Soup
This soup is Mmm, Mmm, bad for our health. It contains Partially Hydrogenated Soybean oil, which is trans-fats. It also contains Soy Protein Concentrate. Both of these soy products are bad. Modified food starch? I also covered that earlier.
