Know What You Eat

[Smokin Don]

Aug 08 2014

I am not posting this for any discussion on the politics of the FDA; just for your information to help decide what you eat.

If you are like me for my first 60 years I ate what I liked and what I wanted. I did not worry much about the additives in processed foods. Being a meat lover I have eaten my share of processed meats over the years. Most of the meat I have eaten the past 20 to 25 years has come from a local butcher just a 3 minute drive away.

The best way to eat good sausage is to make your own. The next best way is to buy from a local butcher like Kah Meats who only adds a minimum of additives to their processed meats.

We like brat patties and I have removed the meat from the casings a lot to make patties. I think some of the better sausage and brats from a grocery are Johnsonville and have eaten some over the years. I recently bought some of their frozen Brat Grillers to fix.

After I looked at the ingredients that were in the grillers I was not sure I wanted to eat them. Looking at their Chorizo I had bought, they were a little kinder in their additives.

Below are some photos of the ingredients in the Johnsonville sausages and some from two packages of Kah’s frozen brats. Which would you rather eat?

I don’t mean to pick on Johnsonville, probably any other brand bought from the grocery would be the same on their additives.









Kah's Brats




Smokin Don

[Pappymn]

Yikes. The grillers list an ingredient called "bacon flavor" that just feels wrong

Great post and reminder.

[teesquare]

Nice post Don.

And you are right - it should not be seen as a "rail" against an agency whose chartering is all connected to food and drug safety.

But - it should cause us all to think about the contents of our food.

After all - if you dumped gasoline that has water and dirt in it...then what should we expect from our car in terms of performance and reliability?

Like the code monkeys in the computer programming biz say...GIGO! ( Garbage In Garbage Out ).

[sliding_billy]

More information (as long as it is honest) is always better than less.

[aliengriller]

The biggest "side effect" of my pre-diabetes dx was being MADE to read labels on just about everything with any amount of pre-prep that we buy   Have been down on preservatives for years, but SO much of the newer stuff has FAR too much in the way of additives.   Agree, the best sausage is that which one makes him/herself.   Just read the label(s) before you buy most of that pre-packaged stuff--even frozen vegetables--make sure there is nothing in there but flash frozen vegetables.   They load SO much of that stuff with salt so we'll think it tastes good!   Salt it yourself.

[Las Vegan Cajun]

The biggest "side effect" of my pre-diabetes dx was being MADE to read labels on just about everything with any amount of pre-prep that we buy   Have been down on preservatives for years, but SO much of the newer stuff has FAR too much in the way of additives.   Agree, the best sausage is that which one makes him/herself.   Just read the label(s) before you buy most of that pre-packaged stuff--even frozen vegetables--make sure there is nothing in there but flash frozen vegetables.   They load SO much of that stuff with salt so we'll think it tastes good!   Salt it yourself.

Same here, as a full blown T2 Dx with an A1c of 8.5% and an FBG 192mg/dL, I read every label in the grocery store religiously.   Sadly all BBQ sauce has either HFCS or sugar listed as the first ingredient, that puts it off limits for me.   

[spuds]

All very true.