When choosing healthy ingredients for cooking and baking, it’s not always easy knowing what to buy. As I come across recipes, I usually see a few ingredients that make my toes curl. The following are some that come to mind, please add any more that I may have forgotten.
As you read through these, please don’t jump all over me saying, “Well, we can’t afford to buy all this stuff!” I’m not saying you’re a bad person or a bad Mom if you don’t follow all these suggestions or if you don’t buy everything local and organic; I still buy some things conventional or from far away, too. These are hard times, and all we can do is all we can do. Not only that, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with all this. This list is just a reference to help you learn more. Do the best you can, and go easy on yourself!
Ingredients that make me squirm:
- Egg Beaters or another fake egg product – real, pastured eggs are so good for you, especially the yolk!
- Vegetable oils – one of the real causes of heart disease.
- Velveeta or the “American” cheese slices – both labeled as a “cheese food product” – ewwww, the opposite of real food. (More about better cheese choices.)
- Canned fruit pie filling – instead use fresh fruits or this homemade pie filling.
- Low fat or fat free anything – it’s just not natural; it’s full of fake ingredients and who-knows-what side effects.
- Sugar free – scary. Use small amounts of more natural sweeteners instead.
- Oleo or Shortening (Yikes!) – use just butter, lard, tallow, coconut oil (or the no-flavor coconut oil), or palm shortening. Read more about fats.
- Bouillon or Soup Base – these usually are full of MSG or trans fats. Real stock is so nutritious (full of minerals!) and easy, too!
- Canned gravy – don’t do it (see above)! The real thing is just too yummy, too nutritious, and too simple to pass it up!
- White flour – I use less than I ever have, but it’s still in a few of my recipes and almost always along with whole grain flours.
- Low fat milk – go back to full fat milk, is so much more nutritious! Which milk choices are best.
- Conventional meats – read about better meat choices, and have you seen this short video?
- White rice – I use organic brown rice, or we also love this extra nutritious and good-tasting germinated brown rice!
Here are a few more substitutions I make, but skip them for now if you’re feeling overwhelmed…
- I use organic vanilla to avoid the rotten ingredients like high fructose corn syrup.
- For Baking powder I use “aluminum free” since aluminum has been strongly linked to certain health issues.
- Peanut Butter – regular brands often are full of pesticides and still have trans fats, so I buy organic.
- Instead of regular soy sauce, use a fermented soy sauce – sounds small, but there’s a big difference in nutrition.
- Wonder which fruits & vegetables are heavy on pesticides?
What are some recipe ingredients that make you squirm, and how do you adapt them?
- More about eating healthy on a budget.
- Are you feeling overwhelmed by all this? I remember feeling the same way! Just take baby steps!
- More Rookie Tips
- Visit Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays for more great posts! Also part of What I Learned This Week, Tempt my Tummy Tuesday and Tasty Tuesdays.
{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
My biggies are any form of vegetable oil and “cream of” soup… YUCK!
I haven’t made tuna and noodle casserole for a long time, and I’ve been craving it. I have a killer recipe, where the “secret ingredients” are parmesan and sour cream. I have some good tuna from Vital Choice, but no chicken stock to make homemade cream of chicken soup. I really NEED to menu plan, so I roast a chicken and make the broth before I want the tuna casserole.
Yay – I navigated your list and found that I’ve stopped using all of them. We eliminated soy because it seemed to raise my husband’s blood pressure. Is fermented soy better in that regard?
Karla
Living A Whole Life
Karla, I don’t know, maybe someone else can jump in?
Kelly
Karla – fermented soy is better, but it probably depends on the source, like many other foods you purchase. I have heard that miso and tempeh are great health food choices, whereas most other soy products you purchase like soy milk, cheese, fake meats, soy mayonnaise, and other substitute products are highly processed and toxic to consume. I don’t really eat any soy at all other than the occasional soy sauce on Asian food, but I always try to buy soy-free tamari sauce for food we make at home. It tastes the same to me and you can have your “soy sauce” fix without actually eating soy sauce.
Raine Saunders
ohhh- was JUST thinking about it this week- I wanted to make strawberry jam… and realized that Certo’s pectin REQUIRED so much refined sugar! blegh. WHITE SUGAR.
Although I can’t seem to find any alternatives to pectin-based agents for jam locally, and I can’t replace the sugar with honey (boo), I’ll probably try to buy fair trade organic cane sugar (still processed, but better than refined white sugar and minus the slave labour and pesticides).
I AM excited about my harvest!
I’m glad to hear that it just keeps getting better 
EcoYogini
Universal Pectin will work with honey–at least they say! I haven’t tried it yet.
I am still in the process of changing over to more whole grains and I am wondering if you can substitute whole grain flour for white flour on a one to one or if I can do half and half pretty safely or if I need to reduce the whole wheat flour? I haven’t done a lot of experimentation as I’m trying to loose some weight so am avoiding much grain but it’s something I’ll want to add back in in a few months.
Bonnie
Eco, check out the comments at this post – there’s good info on a way to make jam with less sugar! http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/06/strawberries-cream-and-other-recipe-ideas-for-seasonal-fruits.html
Bonnie, I usually use the same with whole grains, but if you’re using sprouted whole grains, you may need more liquid.
Kelly
Kelly the Kitchen Kop
Cream of anything canned soup is my shudder-inducing ingredient. It’s just not right.
Megan
We’ve got a boatload of food allergies and intolerances in our house, we also decided a couple of years ago to eliminate anything with high fructose corn syrup from our lives – so that cut out a bunch of stuff! I avoid HFCS and carbination both because they inhibit calcium absorption – and have bone demineralization issues that I must be consciencious of.
I, too, shudder at canned soups. They are just WRONG in my book. It is just so easy to throw together a roux and make your own – I can’t imagine now not doing just that for anything that called for a cream of!
I think you’re right – it’s the jumping in point where you panic a little and wonder if you’ll ever get your footing. Now it’s just so natural to us that we hardly even consider the cost (and honestly, it’s about a convenience cost – not a $$ cost – it works out cheaper more often than not for us to be choosy!).
dina
EcoYogini, I just used Ball’s no sugar pectin to make strawberry jam and added about 3/4 a cup of honey, which actually was too much (i probably could’ve gotten away with half that), the honey overpowered the strawberries a bit, but it was my first shot. Now i know for next time. So no need for white sugar – woohoo.
I also try to avoid any processed product with “milk powder” in it. It’s surprising how many brands of sour cream will use it, even organic ones. Besides not being a real food, it’s terrible for your heart. I always shudder when people recommend using it as a way to stretch the budget in baking.
Margarine is my shudder inducing ingredient. Really? Why!?! Even store butter (the stuff in sticks, that is just cream) is on the better end of the spectrum than neutral. Margarine is poison. Just say no!
Alyss
Alyss – sorry, *snort* “better end of the Spectrum”… anyway… I have my moments with the “healthy” “vegan” Spectrum spread I see ending up on tables all around me.
(Ahh… it’s late, I’m tired. I’m seeing irony everywhere.)
ANYWAY… My pet peeve is “natural flavorings” and “modified starches”… they are SO sneaky! It’s all MSG, just labeled differently. Nasty buggers.
Oh, and to EcoYogini, KP, and Bonnie – Pomona Universal Pectin DOES work with very low sugar/honey. BeAuTiFulLy… Just put up a ton of berry and apricot jam using it, and it worked wonderfully. (I used the honey with the apricots, and, like, 1 CUP of sugar for a full batch of berries. Amazing. Seriously.)
Meg
That’s why I love really old cookbooks from the time when no convenience food was available.
They tell you all the basic techniques and how-tos of nearly everything.
When there was no isolated pectin people just cooked some apples with the strawberries to put the pectin in the jam.
If you learned real cooking from scratch you can make everything without modern stuff. It’s more work but worth it.
I am in Philadelphia, PA until Sunday (LLL EUS Conference) and wanted to chime in. Before I left, I made a pork chop meal in my slow cooker. One of the main ingredients was a reduced fat cream of chicken soup. Well, I didn’t have it in my pantry. So, I made a cream sauce with butter, flour, chicken stock, and mushrooms. It turned out delicious.
So, there are ways around that stuff, you just need to figure out what you want to do and do it.
I ditto the “powdered milk” comment above. But what I don’t know is how to find a substitute for it or even remember the proportions to sub real milk. I find it in a lot of bread recipes and the recipe looks great…except for the powdered milk ingredients. Suggestions?
Tara
Two toe-curler ingredients that we see quite often in our local southern cookbooks – Cool Whip and boxes of pudding! My daughter’s favorite birthday cake used to be a chocolate eclair cake – very easy to make with all boxed ingredients including the two mentioned above (we didn’t know better then!). We began to make the switch last year to a real food diet, but I decided to make it for her just once more on her birthday. The only milk I had was our wonderful raw milk, so I mixed it into the pudding, then added the cool whip. I could not believe it when I tasted it – it tasted like soap! I thought I had either forgotten to rinse the dish or spilled some detergent into the bowl, but when I experimented some more I realized that it was the combination of cool whip and raw milk! I guess that shows us what is really in Cool Whip. Needless to say, I haven’t bought it since:)
I recently got into making yogurt after tentatively adding dairy back to our diets. I cringed reading recipes and techniques online that suggest adding dry milk powder or pectin to make it thicker (more like store-bought!). There was one website by a young mother who was so proud to discover “the trick” to making thicker yogurt….It is heart-breaking to see that people are going to the trouble to make yogurt from scratch to avoid artificial sweeteners, but using low-fat milk and adding milk powder to the recipe. I left comments but I am all too familiar with the futility of educating someone that doesn’t want to know.
Kelly, do you know if a soy sauce is fermented if it says “naturally brewed” on the bottle (Kikkoman is what I bought hoping that was the case!)? The ingredients are better than the cheap stuff – no hydrolyzed soy or HFCS – but I guess I don’t know if it’s fermented for sure…any help?
Katie @ Kitchen Stewardship
I wonder about the soy sauce too. I know in Nourishing Traditions it says “naturally brewed” is good. I was happy to see that on my bottle of Kikkoman, but I’m doubtful. I bought a bottle of Ohsawa Organic Nama Shoyu to be safe. It’s pricey, but really good and is lasting a long time.
Margerine!!! (grrr). Because I keep kosher, I see this a lot (can’t eat lard, and can’t eat butter with meat). Most Jews who keep kosher REALLY jumped on the margerine bandwagon (no help from loads of marketing to them of course). What’s wrong with good old chicken fat? (well, I guess the fact that chickens don’t have enough fat…. lol, always feeling short on natural schmaltz).
Re: soy sauce. I buy san-j tamari and shoyu (depending on price. I like the tamari slightly better, but they’re both fine, and money saved is money earned). Its on the WAPF shopping guide as good (fermented but pastureized so you don’t get any good bacteria from it). The raw ones are hard to find though.
Caroline
I make freezer jam with 1 1/2 cups of honey to five cups of berries. Mix that with the pectin and freeze. Tastes better than cooked. Kelly, thanks for the tip about palm or coconut sap sugar. I ordered some from Tropical Traditions and made some cookies with it yesterday. It’s great! I also have been making kefir with pasteurized milk (non-homogenized) and it helps my husband with some digestive issues.
Thanks for all the great articles and your blog!
Wow, Kelly, I could have written this post, but I’m glad you did. Sounds like my kitchen and pantry, for sure! Must have my pastured eggs, meat, and lard. Spending more on fresh ingredients is important and as Michael Pollan says in FRESH: The movie,
“Cheap food is an illusiion
I wanted to mention that I make my own butter from organic, grass-fed, vat pasturized cream (just cream, nothing else added.) It’s $5.15 for a quart and I it seem to make quite a bit – 1lb perhaps. I made it for the first time last week and I didn’t get all the buttermilk out so some it spoiled because I left it on my counter. I’ll have to try and get all the buttermilk out next time. It was super easy to do. I just blended it in my blender until it was butter. It saved me plenty since Kerrygold butter is $4.99 for 8 ounces.
I wonder what others do to save money and still eat nutrient dense foods. I’m sure it’s in the archives. I’ll look there…
It was fun to get home from our mini-vacation and read all your comments, thanks everyone!
OK, I think the only question was about my soy sauce, I’ll go look…
I also buy the San-j tamari (fermented soy sauce and it also says, “naturally brewed”), but yikes, I just realized it’s not organic, so it’s probably GMO, dang it! I’ll watch out for THAT next time, now!
Kelly
Tina, check the links at this post:
http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/03/nourishing-frugal-healthy-meals.html
Girl. Every single one of your posts refers me to about 10 other posts to read. It’s addicting!
I have always hated artificial anything. Artificial sweeteners gross me out. I am just learning that low-fat means more junk and fewer nutrients, and I have switched my fam to organic whole milk. I am wondering if it’s necessary to buy organic butter, though.
I love brown rice and I always buy it.
There is so much to learn. Right now I’m educating myself on tallow.
Thanks SO much for this site!!!
Musings of a Housewife
Great information. Thanks for a very comprehensive list.
Janel
Could anyone tell me where to buy the non-pasteurized and / or fermented soy sauce? Soy really makes me squirm–I avoid it in as much as I can, but I am still used to having soy sauce in my cupboard as a “staple” for marinades, Asian food, etc…what do you recommend as the most reasonably priced alternative? (Our budget is REALLY tight right now).
Also, I always used to use dry milk powder to thicken my yogurt. It worked great. I still have it in my cupboard but don’t use it much now. (Why is it so bad for us again?) Now I use gelatin to thicken my yogurt…is that better / okay?
I am interested in knowing so I can make the best choices for my family!
Thanks for the help, Rebecca K
Rebecca K,
I use Ohsawa Organic Nama Shoya unpasteurzed soy sauce. This is the only unpasteurized soy sauce I’ve found. I’ve been to three different Asian markets and two health food store. It is expensive. I paid $7 for 10 ounces. I have it for months though. I bought mine at a health food store but I think you can order it online but then you pay for shipping and handling.
Tina
Tina
Thanks for your interesting perspective and healthful tips. I am glad you joined us for TMTT this week.
Lisa@Blessedwithgrace
Rebecca K,
I don’t have an answer for you about gelatin but the yogurt I make (from a cultures for health starter) is pretty thin and I like mine really thick so I just drain it. I line a strainer with a piece of cotton (I cut up on old tea towel) and let it sit for a few hours. It ends up as a nice creamy yogurt, plus I get whey left over.
MacKenzie
MacKenzie
I totally agree with you on the supposedly “healthy” ingredients and don’t use them. Especially now that I am on chemotherapy, I cannot tolerate anything that is not 100% natural. Its like my body craves only the pure, good stuff.
Brenda
Tara, from waaaay up there, I just saw your question about what to use instead of powdered milk when a recipe calls for it. It usually calls for a small amount, so I just either eliminate it all together, or add a little regular milk.
Rebecca, read about powdered milk here: http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2008/02/healthy-milk.html
JoLynne (Musings of a Housewife), you asked about organic butter. Normally that’s what we use, but when I’m feeling strapped that’s the first thing that goes. I buy a non-organic bright yellow butter from a local farm instead.
Forgot I wasn’t done.
Rebecca, honestly since I don’t use that much fermented soy anyway and one bottle lasts me a long time, I just bite the bullet and pay whatever for it. (Get it at your local health food store.) Instead of using gelatin or powdered milk to thicken your yogurt, use MacKenzie’s great idea above (to strain it), or you can also buy a different TYPE of yogurt that gets more thick from here: http://kellythekitchenkop.com/resources#starters
Brenda, good for you for listening to what your body truly needs right now. I’ll say a prayer for your total healing and a peaceful heart.
OK, I guess I’m done now. Night everyone!
So I lied. Still not done after all.
There’s more good info about thickening yogurt at this post and in the comments: http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/04/how-to-make-raw-milk-yogurt-cream-cheese.html
I MIGHT be done this time…
Oh my gosh, I promise I’m not trying to be annoying, I really do keep thinking of one more thing…this one is a biggie. A confession: I still buy ORGANIC creamed soups…don’t hate me!
What to do with your box of powdered milk that you don’t want to consume: Mix with baking powder and sprinkle on soil around tomato plants = blight and bug defender! Gelatin is made from cow hooves and hides (straight from my uncle in the food business), so if you gotta thicken, that has to be “natural”, yeah?
Katie, I’m just not sure what ELSE might be in store-bought gelatin…? I’ve never bought it, so I don’t remember ever seeing an ingredient label.
Kelly,
Great, great list! Looks like my pantry too.
Have you tried Bragg’s Liquid Aminos in place of soy sauce? Very good stuff! We’ve been using it for a few years now. My mom has used it for several years, probably like 15 or 20 or longer.
It’s very light tasting, not heavy like many soy sauces and contains 16 naturally occurring amino acids, has no trans fats, nothing artificial, no alcohol, chemicals or colorings, certified non-GMO, and no cholesterol. It has a small bit of natural salts, 310 mg of protein and 100 mg of carbs. That’s it.
Bragg’s Liquid Aminos is soy that’s not fermented. I knew there was a reason I didn’t use this type of soy sauce when I was researching soy and tamari sauces months ago. It’s so unfortunate that products that we think are good for us are apparently not.
Tina, thanks for clarifying.
I’m researching fermented soy sauce, and it brought me back to this post. I’m LOLing that you use organic creamed soups! Thanks, that keeps you real.
Incidentally, I found this recipe and used it once in place of cream soups. it worked fine; it’s basically gravy. I think next time I’ll add some cream to it to make it creamier, but it worked out okay.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4574597_cream-soup-substitute.html
Jo Lynne, thanks for that link – looks easy!!
It’s pretty awesome having nutrition as my life. I always tell people when they ask me what kind of supplements to take. Start with the basics and get some whey protein as a body building supplement then if you want, try an EFA stack for weight loss. As always throw in a multivitamin.
Ashlee,
If you mean whey protein powder, try an unprocessed protein shake instead! http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/04/want-a-real-food-protein-shake-real-food-wednesday.html
I’m not sure what an “EFA stack” is, but if you mean fish oil, most of those are highly processed these days, too. We take one that is naturally processed so it has TONS of nutrients still there. (http://www.kellythekitchenkop.com/2008/10/fermented-cod-liver-oil-series-part-1.html) It’s a food, not a supplement, which I’ll put more trust in everytime.
It’s not easy figuring all this out, I know!
Kelly
You’ve got to be kidding me-it’s so tanrspraenlty clear now!
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