Around here - Additive Free Lifestyle - 7 days of Podcasts

Around here I have been thinking more about the food we put in our mouth.  We all get time poor, lazy or can't be bothered sometimes that things slip.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago I listed to a podcast called "Whole Circle Podcast" by Tracey & Jo who are Mums and live in Tasmania.  Their website is called "Additive Free Lifestyle" and they have a program to help families meal plan and get more preservatives and additives out of their food whether they cook it themselves or learn how to select the right brand from the supermarket shelves.

Jo's story about why she went additive free truly makes sense.

Here's a few episodes that might be of interest to you. Personally I think all of them are amazing and you should work your way through them.

How to save money whilst eating additive free.

Top 5 Questions from our additive free challenge.

Top 5 episodes.

This week the girls are running a free 7 day challenge to help you become additive free which I'm in the middle of.  It focuses on one thing a day and the first day it's about preservative 282 found in supermarket bread, wraps etc. to extend their shelf life and stop mould from growing.   It has reminded me to get back into making our own bread on a weekly basis as my kids love it.  This bread is the Thermomix 5 Seed Bread recipe which you could easily make even if you don't have a Thermomix as most food processors these days have dough settings.  I can highly recommend an electric knife [mine broke a while back and ended up throwing it out] and then someone was selling theirs for $5 on our local FB buy sell page so I snapped it up.  So along with your electric knife I also have a D.line Bread Slicer Cutting Guide which is fantastic to get uniform slices of bread that fit into the toaster.  I can highly recommend this item if you make bread all the time.

I listened to these podcasts a couple of weeks ago and it was very eye opening.  The 7 day challenge is happening now and each day there has been an information sheet sent to your email address and a little task to complete ie check your pantry to see what things contain Caramel 150c or try making this home made ice cream recipe.  Or give bread making a go.  A bit like "That Sugar Film" where manufacturers put things on the front of boxes so you think you are selecting the healthier option the labeling really is a mind field with numbers and things listed we don't even understand.

With all the time in the world we would all love to make everything from scratch however sometimes that's not an option.  When it is, you are doing your family a great service, however it's even more important to understand how to purchase things if you don't have time, run out of time or aren't that way inclined.  Listening to these podcasts was such a reminder and eye opener for me to be more organized.  On labels when the words "natural flavours" are used what does that mean - it covers a lot of "unknown" things to the consumer and we assume "natural flavours" must be okay.

Here is a quote about spinach wraps you buy in the shops.

 "You will notice that the reason they are green is from a combination of blue and yellow food colour and they use spinach ‘seasoning’ (no real spinach!)"

This is the ingredient list from the store bought spinach wraps [as per Additive Free Lifestyle blog]

Ingredients: Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Vegetable Shortening (Interesterified Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil and/or Palm Oil), contains 2% or less of each of the following: Seasoning (Spinach Powder, Onion Powder, Spice, Salt, Garlic Powder, Soybean Oil, Artificial Colors [FD&C Yellow #5 Lake and FD&C Blue #1 Lake], Natural and Artificial Flavor), Salt, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Corn Starch, Monocalcium Phosphate and/or Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Calcium Sulfate), Distilled Monoglycerides, Enzymes, Wheat Starch, Calcium Carbonate, Antioxidants (Tocopherols, Ascorbic Acid), Vital Wheat Gluten, Cellulose Gum, Dough Conditioners (Fumaric Acid, Sodium Metabisulfite), Preservatives (Calcium Propionate, Sorbic Acid and/or Citric Acid).

Here is a recipe to make your own spinach wraps using real spinach, flour, baking powder, salt, butter, water and olive oil. These 7 ingredients we all know what they are compared to the list above.  It's quite frightening and if you were buying wraps generally you would think spinach wraps are healthier than plain wraps so again our perception of healthy is buy the spinach ones when in fact they are probably all the same.  It's a bit of false sense of security about buying the healthy option for your family as we think we are doing the right thing.

Here are the podcasts that relate to the 7 day challenge that is truly eye opening and a good reminder about why products are able to sit on supermarket shelves for a long period of time.  It's simple they use lots of "preservatives an additives" that we shouldn't really be consuming.  Some of these things cause lots of health and behavioral issues in children and adults.  I can highly recommend you listen to at least one of the podcasts below once a week until you get through them.

Day 1 - Preservative 282

Day 2 - Annatto 160B

Day 3 - Perservative 220

Day 4 - Caramel 150c

Day 5 - Take Away Foods

Day 6 - Swapping it up

Day 7 -  Embracing the Change

Years ago we swapped from Margarine to Butter as it's a natural product so that's one step already done.  I am wanting to stop buying store bought Tomato Sauce, BBQ Sauce and Sweet Chilli Sauce and am going to try the following recipes and see if I can keep up with using these instead of relying on the supermarket sugar preservative ones.

Tomato Sauce
Easy BBQ Sauce
Sweet Chilli Sauce
Tomato Paste

My kids reminded me the other day about how fabulous this sauce was and we also used it on pizza's which is what we were making at the time the kids thought about it.

Big changes can be so overwhelming and the idea of the 7 day challenge was look at one thing at a time.  Just like anything making your home made laundry powder or cleaning products just do one thing until you get that right and then move onto trying the next thing and pretty soon you'll have a whole lot of things you do on a regular basis.  Baby steps and do one thing at a time.

I recently purchased this little ceramic butter crock so I can make some butter and have it spreadable.  I did try and make some spreadable butter a little while ago by whipping it up in the Thermomix with olive oil however all I could taste was the olive oil and it was so horrible I ended up throwing it out.  My sister has been doing this with her butter for years however she said you need a "light" oil not extra virgin olive oil like I used.  It put me off after my first attempt so I'm going to make some butter in the Thermomix and store it in this little container.

A description about this.  The Butter Crock works by storing up to 170 grams of butter in the bell and placing water in the crock. This keeps the butter airtight and controls the temperature of the butter. All you need to do is to change the water every 3 or 4 days for soft, spreadable butter year round.