What's IN that?

Last night Mr. Blueberry Pancakes and I went shopping for dinner items at our local grocery store. "Local" meaning "near our house" - not a locally owned place or anything. It was rather commercial.

In any case, we saw this great deal on Eating Right soups... 10 for $10! Mr. BP was all set to fill up the basket with them, but I wanted to take a look at the ingredient list first. Some of them had a really short list of ingredients, every one of them I knew what it was. Others... Butylated-hydro-huh? Propionates? Hydrolized soy protien... what IS all this?

So those soups (and their crazy ingredient lists) didn't make it to the cart. BUT it got me thinking, I should find out more about what is in food. A quick google search on common processed food ingredients yielded me all KINDS of info. A lot of those big fancy words on the label are just things used for preservative purposes - some are even antioxidants! So just because I don't know what it is (or can't pronounce it) definitely doesn't mean it's bad.

I can say that I will be making an effort here on out to choose eating LESS processed foods overall (I have already committed myself to NEVER eating Betty Crocker frosting or commercial pancake/waffle mixes again!!) This choice is not because I think all processed foods are bad. The time-saving factor of processed food is a HUGE bonus, especially in a world where a lot of households have both people working too many hours to be able to go to the market daily and regularly prepare meals from scratch.

I would like to be a bit more educated about what I'm eating. I do want to know what's in that! Did YOU know Frosted Mini Wheats have gelatin in them? Do you have any idea where Chipotle gets their chicken? Are the veggies in my stir fry from Thai Basil all pesticide and hormone free? If I can find the answers, maybe I'll find that the extra time it takes to cook meals from scratch is worth the benefit of having a long, healthy life. :)