HEART BEAT: Are You What You Eat?

Felicia Mitchell

I have these two little hamsters that like to eat and drink and sleep and play.  Mostly they eat seeds and nuts, with the occasional piece of fruit or vegetable.  I love these hamsters.  I even filter their water. 

As for me, I eat a little more than they do, though I guess I could subsist on their fare.  I try to remember to filter my water from the tap, too, but I don’t always.  As much as I try, I don’t always follow nature’s lead

Even so, I’m pretty careful.  I’m so cautious about food additives, for example, that some family members and friends, hamsters not included, think I’m a little strange because I’m extremely careful about what I put in my mouth and what I offer to others. 

While I’m particularly emphatic about avoiding peculiar additives, I do buy some processed food. The other day,  in a never-ending quest to make a pasta dish that my son’s friends will actually eat at a pasta party, I used old-fashioned white macaroni, a jar of prefabricated Alfredo sauce that passed muster once I studied the label, a cup of grated parmesan (all natural, no antifungal natamycin whatsoever), and a generous sprinkling of smoked paprika. 

The teenagers did indeed eat more than usual of my contribution: most of it, more than from dishes made from gluten-free pasta, whole wheat pasta, and all kinds of wholesome sauces. While I’d like to think that the secret ingredient was the smoked paprika, it was probably the deliciously rich Alfredo sauce.

You can make Alfredo sauce from scratch.  In fact, it’s very simple.  You just mix butter, cream, parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper, and cook, patiently, stirring, patiently.  So why didn’t I the other night?  Why did I buy some that contained not only those ingredients but three other cheeses, egg yolks, and a combination of spices?

True, I was in a hurry, but how much more time would it have taken?  Perhaps more than I had.  It was easy, I guess, to open a jar between coming home from work and rushing back out the door to the pasta party.  And it did taste good.

When I was in the store this weekend, I thought I might stock up on one more jar for the next pasta party.  Another brand caught my eye this time, one that was a little cheaper.  This jar also seemed to be competing silently with the one above it.  Its label was bold:  “Authentic Alfredo Pasta Sauce.”

It was time for comparison shopping.  I was stopped short, though, as I scanned the list of ingredients in the “authentic” sauce.  While I could have guessed that high-fructose corn syrup was responsible for the cheaper price, that was the least of the surprises.

The industrial lubricant propylene glycol?  Ethanol?  Very strange.  If it’s not something hamsters can eat, it’s can’t be good for humans.  I’ll stick with the more expensive jar containing real food, if that’s all the same to you.