Life on the Road

John and I are not big on eating a lot of bad-for-you junk food. We eat chips and things that aren’t the healthiest, but our big dietary choices boil down to only eating things we would classify as “food.” We have something of a list of common ingredients that are “not-food”:

• High fructose corn syrup
• Partially hydrogenated fats and oils
• Monosodium glutanate (MSG), or as it’s more commonly presented on labels: “artificial flavoring” or “natural flavoring.”
• Artificial sweeteners
• Anything I am unable to pronounce out loud.

The first of these, HFCS, is the doozie. First, high fructose corn syrup is not a natural product. It’s produced industrially in a process that cannot be described as natural. It has many properties that food companies like. It has the same sweetness as sugar, but it’s in a convenient, easily-measurable liquid form. Unfortunately, it has one property that is very, very bad for you and your waistline: it does not trigger the nerve in your stomach that says “I’m full.” Thus, when you drink a 64 ounce Big Gulp (chock full of HFCS!) you feel just as full as if you’d had 64 ounces of water. Maybe even less full, because of all the sodium.

But avoiding HFCS is very difficult. Try finding bread at the supermarket without it– you’ll find that certain sour dough breads, a few potato breads, and the breads labeled “organic” are the only ones not made with this substance. Our most common solution is to buy an organic bread. If that’s not available, I make a small loaf of bread in our bread machine, a West Bend Just for Dinner breadmaker (sadly, no longer in production). Yes, it’s one of the only single-purpose items in the RV, but it’s worth having. The bread made is small, just enough for 2 people, but it’s delicious and can be made with very simple baking ingredients.

Partially hydrogenated fats and oils are nearly impossible to avoid in tortillas, which is a real tragedy. A yellow corn tortilla really only needs corn, water, and lime as ingredients. That’s it– you don’t have to have all the other stuff in there! West of the Mississippi and in Florida, we’re able to find plain yellow corn tortillas in every grocery store. In the Midwest and East Coast, we’ve had a much more difficult time finding them– clearly the traditional corn tortilla is not in high demand in Vermont. When we can’t find healthy tortillas, we buy taco shells, which may have preservatives, but usually have fewer nasty chemicals than white corn tortillas. Sad, isn’t it?

MSG abounds in mostly pre-packaged items (mainly savory/salty ones, like Chex Mix) and spice/flavoring packets. It’s a neurotoxin, which means it heightens flavor by poisoning you. After about three weeks of avoiding it, you’ll be able to taste all the other flavors in your food, and you’ll realize when you’re eating something with MSG in it. We get spice mixes like Mrs. Dash, or mix our own from the well-stocked spice cabinet.

Artificial sweeteners…. every diet food out there substitutes fat with sugar, and sugar with an artificial sweetener. First there was saccharine, which turned out to cause cancer. Then there was Nutrasweet/aspartame, which can trigger headaches in migraine-prone individuals. Now we have Splenda. Everyone loves Splenda. Except me. It’s an artificial flavor, folks. It’s chemically similar to Nutrasweet. And also, I haven’t exactly been wowed by the flavor. When you look at how many extra calories a little bit (not a LOT!) of sugar adds, I would rather have the sugar. If it’s real sugar, of course.

Although we look for organic store brands (and sometimes find it), there is one brand of healthy organics we find in nearly every grocery store, and I for one am relieved. Kashi makes delicious cereals, crackers, cookies, granola, granola bars, frozen meals, breakfasts– all without a bunch of chemicals and crap. They needed to add some “yellow” to their cereal at one point, so they added turmeric, a healthy Eastern spice that has a little bit of flavor and which helps prevent cancer. Can you imagine Nabisco switching to turmeric instead of Yellow #5?

The recent food price crisis means we’re paying even more for these groceries than we were before. People cut costs all over, but our food budget is not something we limit. Diet is one of the main factors in nearly every medical condition out there– why would we skimp on something that has as big an impact on our health?