Real Food January: Additives

{Sustainable Kentucky contributor Rachael Brugger is eating only real food in the month of January. Here’s her second post on this fun challenge!}

Despite a rocky start to Real Food January, I’m getting back into my routine after the holiday schedule and have been fairly successful in keeping true to my preservative-free mantra. (I even turned down delicious-smelling empanadas made with pre-shredded cheese and peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies made with refined flour and sugar. Folks, if you know me and my taste-anything-edible-in-sight eating habits, you know I’m serious!) After the Jan. 1 grocery run, which left me feeling hopeless in my endeavors this month, a well-planned, list-in-hand trip to the co-op was in order.

Biding my time on homemade turkey soup and preservative-free hummus, I finally made it there on Jan. 3, when I loaded up on local and organic meats and cheeses, organic canned beans and other staples to get me through the month (or at least part of it). I even found preservative-free soy sauce. Score! One problem I did run into, though, is that a lot of foods, such as the coconut milk I used in this Coconut Ginger Chicken recipe, contain guar gum. This doesn’t sound like a real food, but what exactly is it?

This is what I found out:

Guar is a real food. It’s actually a bean that’s tolerant of drought and came to the U.S. from India in the early 1900s. (So far so good.) Guar gum is the fiber from this plant that is extracted through a dehusking, milling and screening process. (Starting to sound uber-refined.) According to WebMD, the product is used as laxative; for treating diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity, and diabetes; for reducing cholesterol; and for preventing hardening of the arteries. It’s used in food products (like the coconut milk) as a thickening, stabilizing or binding agent. Many people on gluten-free diets use it and xanthan gum, another naturally derived though processed additive, to replace gluten, but rumors on the inter-web say it’s been linked to intestinal issues in people who have trouble processing beans.

So what do you think, does guar gum pass the Real Food Diet test? Here are my thoughts:

I’d prefer not to have this non-whole food in my diet, but as you will recall from my Real Food Commandments, I need to “limit refined grains and sweeteners.” I’ll go ahead and lump refined guar gum into this category. As this seems to be the only non-real ingredient in the coconut milk and I’ll be using it in a recipe loaded with other real foods and it’s not a chemical preservative, I’m going to let it slide in this instance, especially since I don’t use coconut milk often. However, I have seen guar gum on the labels of other things, and I’d like to limit it in my diet as much as possible because I probably won’t be growing guar in my backyard anytime soon.

As eaters, it’s important that we give consideration to what we’re putting into our bodies. Given the current state of our food system, it might be difficult—even impossible—at times to eat completely preservative-free (more on that later), so we have to think critically about our best options. This is not only so we can be as kind to our bodies as possible, but also so we can keep from going completely insane in the process.

So what do you think? Do you think my reasoning for allowing guar gum into my diet is legitimate? I’d love to hear your perspective, so please leave a note!

Bread Update

After a few takes, I found a recipe for high-protein bread, which I rather liked. It includes high-protein whole grains and seeds, including quinoa, oat bran, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. I also found some whole-grain bread flour, which I used in addition to whole-grain flour to help make the loaf a little fluffier. I’ll probably make this recipe again, but I’m still on the search for other tasty loafs to compete for my breakfast toast.

In addition, to the high-protein bread I also made these Homemade Healthy Energy Bars from HobbyFarms.com. They make a great breakfast on-the-go and double as a snack when I have a taste for something moist and sweet.