Food Revolution

So, item number two on Michael Pollan’s list of how-tos:

*Avoid Food products containing Ingredients that are:  a) unfamiliar,  b) unpronounceable,  c) more than five in number, or that include  d) high-fructose corn syrup.

Okay – so how hard can that be, right?  Riiiiiight. 

All right class, what are the basic ingredients of bread?  Anyone know?  All right, it’s flour, water, yeast, salt.  You can add other things as you bake for flavor or whatever, but you need those FOUR ingredients to have a legitimate loaf of bread at the end of the line. 

Now, have you ever walked down the “bread” aisle at the grocery store and looked at the ingredients list on the items being sold to the average american as bread?  Pollan uses the example of Sara Lee’s Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.  But it fails EVERY part of rule #2 – azodicarbonamide fails in both pronounceability and ingredients I’ve never heard of, it contains FORTY-ONE ingredients (um, that’s 1000% too many), and it contains high-fructose corn-syrup.  YIKES!

So what does this mean to me?  Well, it means that since I didn’t have time to make bread this week, I spent 20 minutes trying to find a loaf of bread the other day that was even REMOTELY close to the 5-ingredient list.  (Turns out Walmart’s bakery sells a loaf of Sourdough with only 5 ingredients … *phew*)

What about other foods?  Even some YOGURT and basic CEREAL fail this test.  I’m going to be eating a lot of oatmeal, I guess.