Food Label Phobia

Posted by Shirley Siluk Gregory Dec 8, 2006

One thing you discover when you start living green is a new tendency to study, really study, food labels.

The next thing you discover is how appalling the list of ingredients in most foods is. Sweeteners, additives, preservatives, artificial this, artificial that ... this is food?

The absurdity of how we've come to eat struck me yesterday while shopping for a simple jar of raspberry preserves. All I wanted was something with real raspberries and as few other ingredients as possible to spread on whole-wheat bread for my 3 1/2-year-old son's daily lunch of "jelly sandwich."

I started with one promising choice that claimed to be all fruit. Check the label: high-fructose corn syrup is the first ingredient. The next "all-natural" one ... same thing. The reduced-sugar variety? OK, raspberries came first on the list, at least, but the ubiquitous sweetener was still second. Most of my choices, it turned out, were moer corn-syrup/chemical/raspberry cocktails than all-fruit, natural raspberry preserves.

I finally settled on an imported variety (I know, too many food miles, but I had taken a stand against junk ingredients at that point) whose label at least started with raspberries and ended with nothing more offensive than citric acide.

All this for a simple attempt at a healthful, kid-friendly bread topping. Shopping for good food -- real food -- shouldn't be this difficult.