Ah...hello. It's Monday and the 2nd day of "Spring Forward" I love the spring and summer months. I just love them so I was glad to wakeup Sunday morning one hour earlier and start the day. Before I get into everything here are some cute photos of the kids sleeping. Chris thinks I'm a little crazy because I absolutely LOVE taking photos of the boys when they are sleeping. They are so peaceful and so sweet. I can promise you that when they are both awake there isn't a moment that they are not running around or talking like little chatter boxes. Carter loves to play with Cole and he will chase him around the house and tackle him. So much for my quiet baby.
Both of the boys have had an absolute fascination and love for Ragedy Ann dolls. Here is Carter sleeping with Cole's "Big Ann" and he just loves here. Cole has a Andy doll that we have taken all over the country with us. Andy has flown from Virginia to California and all the stops along the way
with Cole.
Cole is a bit of a wild sleeper....and he kicks the covers off....the lady bug next to him is his nightlight. Carter has a turtle nightlight that is exactly the same (the shells light up and cast shadows of stars and a moon on the ceiling). (Thanks Grandpa Coke and Tamara for the turtle night light. Carter loves it!)
Sooooo what I want to blog about today is my last trip to the grocery strore. I made a fast dash into
Fred Meyer's on Friday night to pick up some basics for the weekend and as I walked by the meat section a package of bologna caught my eye. It's been YEARS since I've had a bologna sandwich and being extremely hungry as I was I picked up the yellow package and put it in my carrier. I remembered the summers eating bologna sandwiches with ketchup and cheese and thought of how great summer was. This was a perfect memory to share with Cole. In my optimism I was hoping it would be nice enough for us to have a picnic outside on Saturday (it snowed in reality) so I checked out and paid with these wonderful ideas floating around in my head.
Zoom to Saturday afternoon. We were getting ready to have some lunch and then we were heading to the Museum of Idaho to spend the afternoon there. They have a great exhibit about wolves and their connections to dogs and of course Cole and Carter both love the children's room.
I took the yellow package of bologna out of the fridge and turned it over. I was curious. What was bologna made out of? I vaguely knew it was a combination of meat but I figured it was a simple mixture. Oh....how I was wrong. This is how the package reads:
(my comments are in the parenthesis....sarcasm included)
INGREDIENTS:
Mechanically separated chicken, (not capitalized) Pork (why is it capitalized) Water (again, why?) Corn syrup, Contains less than 2% of Salt (?) Sodium lactatee, Flavor, Sodium phosphates, Autolyzeded yeast, Sodium diacetate, Sodium ascorbate, Sodium nitriteDextrosese, Extractives of paprika, Potassium phosphate, Sugar (because lunch meat needs sugar) Potassium chloride.
I stood in the kitchen for a few minutes #1 trying to read all the ingredients and #2 in shock.
Asking myself, "Have you lost your mind---why in the world did you buy this?"
I had NO idea this is what was in bologna.
One word for you: APPALLING
Another word: FRIGHTENING
This is cheap meat. What that translates into is this is easily produced and produced in mass. I'm sure many parents are feeding this meat to their children and by all means I understand that all parents are doing the best they can but after all the processing it has undergone....is it even considered meat let alone a source of protein?
The most unsettling part of the ingredients (besides I have no idea what all the different 'Sodium' ingredients are and why. so. many?) is the MECHANICALLY SEPARATED (lowercase) chicken. That is insane. Apparently Water can be capitalized on the ingredient label but
chicken=no capital letter C.
The yellow package of whatever it is bologna so-called-meat was put back into the fridge and the kids had peanut butter and jelly for lunch. I am not sure what I'm going to do with the yellow package of whatever it is bologna so-called-meat.
I think I may drop it off at my office. My kids are absolutely not eating anything that contains those ingredients. I understand there is an entire industry that is fueling parts of the economy and making bologna is the key to that successful engine....however....my opinion on this matter is that this is not food we should be feeding out kids. Our rule of thumb at the house is if we can't pronounce the ingredients we don't eat it. If we aren't sure of where the food came from or how the animals were treated to produce the food-we don't eat it and it certainly doesn't find a place in our fridge.
Me: Food snob, maybe. However, it's only responsible to consider where our food is coming from before we put it into our bodies....and growing little bodies of the Smith boys.
