Jul 23rd, 10
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One of the dietary changes I’ve been trying to make for all of us here at the house is a lessening in the amount of HFCS or high fructose corn syrup that we seem to be constantly consuming. Tonight our supper was HFCS free. We had hot dogs with buns, steak fries fried in natural blend oil from Crisco, Hunt’s 100% Natural Ketchup, Miracle Whip, and Kool-Aid. None of our items that we ate tonight had HFCS in them and none of them tasted badly despite not having the HFCS in them.
I was checking on mayo and Miracle Whip the other day at the grocery store. Most of the brands of mayo or “salad dressing” had HFCS in them. My question is why would mayo or salad dressing need HFCS in it? Miracle Whip & Kraft Mayo are both made without HFCS and taste great. They even have light varieties that taste great and still have no HFCS in them.
Hunt’s has started producing a ketchup without HFCS in it, and I believe that Heinz has also now created a ketchup called Simply Heinz that is also HFCS free. So that is a good thing as well.
I am not completely against HFCS – just in things that it simply doesn’t belong in. There is no need for HFCS in ketchup, mayo, salad dressing, etc. When there isn’t a need for it, it shouldn’t be there. So from now on, we’re reading labels. If we see HFCS in an item, we look for a brand without it. If we can’t find out, we decide if it’s an item we could possibly make for ourselves, if it is, we will. It’s time to remove some of the crap from our diets and we’re starting with HFCS.
Jul 22nd, 10
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One of our favorite meals in our house (well, at least mine and BFL’s, Mom isn’t so into it) is spaghetti. In fact, we usually try to have it at least once a week. That’s how much we love spaghetti around here. We go through a good bit of spaghetti sauce around here and we usually buy the cheapest brand we can find. Usually that brand is Hunt’s.
I have to say that Hunt’s has a decent flavor to it – we’ve used the Meat, Traditional, Mushroom & Onion, and Four Cheese varieties. However we have all been highly disappointed in a few things with the sauce.
- The sauce appears to be nice and thick when poured from the can, but does not “stick” to the spaghetti pasta. Usually it can be found pooled underneath the pasta. This is true whether it is mixed into the pasta or is poured over a serving of pasta on the plate.
- While it does have a decent flavor on it’s own, we have found that we still need to add more spices to it to make it truly taste the way it should.
- They use high fructose corn syrup in the sauce.
While I don’t have a problem with high fructose corn syrup as a general rule, I do have a problem with it being in my spaghetti sauce. There is no need for sweeteners in spaghetti sauce.
All in all, Hunt’s Classic Italian Spaghetti Sauce is basically a get-what-you-pay-for type of sauce. If you’re looking for a sauce that is cheap, has a decent flavor that could be improved upon, sauce that doesn’t stick to your pasta, and has high fructose corn syrup in it, this is the sauce for you. As for our household, we’ll be finding a different sauce to use on our pasta.
