Sugar

A few years ago I started cutting out high fructose corn syrup from my pantry. I read lots of articles about processed foods - which I didn't think we ate much of anyway - and just in general started to pay more attention to what was on labels.

Lately I've been hearing and reading about sodium laureth sulfate and sodium lauryl sulfate in soaps and toothpastes and have been semi-trying to cut them out too. Hormone disrupters seems to be the bottom line for them. I have read that the FDA says the amounts of each in products is safe, I just wonder when it's in so much of everything... So I spent $5 on Burt's Bees toothpaste for both the kids and me. ( I didn't tell Sean why it was there and I think he likes his Colgate and he's just in general not as picky about it as I am.) I've been searching for shampoo without the stuff in it too, and did get a little sample bottle of castile soap but I haven't used it yet. Plus I've swapped out some of the liquid hand soap around the house.

So today I went to Walmart for groceries while my mom stayed with the kids. I was hunting for a cereal that I thought the kids would eat for breakfast and also be one that I felt was nutritious and filling and all that. I wish they ate oatmeal better, but really Alan is the only one who touches it without hesitation. Last week we were eating a lot of shredded wheat. They like the frosted kind, I like the plain kind. The frosted kind had 12g of sugar, the plain had 0g. That seemed like a big difference, and so my plan was to mix the two bags. Which I did. And they still ate it as well and liked it. Only I noticed as I played with the containers that the frosted variety had a lot more iron and other minerals and stuff in it than the plain kind. So I guess with all the added sugar the company at least is adding in extra nutrients. Then I almost didn't feel so bad about it.

I grew up eating regular plain Cheerios. Maybe with a spoon of sugar on it. Even Honey Nut Cheerios were a special. And the sugary cereals were a real treat only to be had at Grandmother's house. I'm not sure where Frosted Shredded Wheat falls in the sugary cereal categories. Maybe in the middle. But even the Honey Nut Shredded Wheat I settled on today had 12g of sugar in a serving.

So then I joined the thousands of other people waiting in line at the checkout stands. And I started to get hungry as I stood in front of a display of Chips Ahoy. And I thought that by the time I got home everyone would probably be hungry and a store bought cookie might be good to hold them over until I could make some sandwiches. So I looked at the ingredients. 12g of sugar in 3 cookies. And it seems really odd to me that a serving of cookies would have the same amount of sugar as a serving of breakfast cereal.

Which makes me think of shopping for a quick pasta sauce the other day. I usually like to make my own tomato topping for pasta, but when I want to make a quick dinner I'll buy a jar. The jars were pretty much split evenly at either 12g of sugar or 5g. I picked a 5g jar.

There's just too much to keep up with. Too much stuff in stuff. Too much information about all the stuff in stuff. But I guess at least it gives me something to think about while I shop.