64 Days of Michael Pollan Day# 6

Day#6 Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is. Note 1: A long list of ingredients in a recipe is not the same thing; that's fine. Note 2: Some products now boast, somewhat deceptively, about their short ingredients lists. HaagenDazs has a new line of ice cream called "five". Great-but it's still ice cream. Same goes for the three-ingredient Tostitos corn chips advertised by Frito-Lay-okay, but they're still corn chips.

64 Days of Michael Pollan Day# 5

Day #5 Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.
Labels list ingredients by weight, and any product that has more sugar than other ingredients has too much sugar. Complicating matters is the fact that, thanks to food science, there are now some forty types of sugar used in processed food, including barley malt, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, cane juice, corn sweetener, dextrin, dextrose, fructo-oligosaccharides, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, surcrose, turbinado sugar, and so on. To repeat: Sugar is sugar. And organic sugar is suar to. As for noncaloric sweeteners such as aspartame or Splenda, research (in both humans and animals) suggests that switching to artificial sweeteners does not lead to weight loss, for reasons not yet well understood. But it may be that deceiving the brain with the reward of sweetness stimulates a craving for even more sweetness.

Handmade Aprons!

New to our store are handmade aprons made by me! Created and sewen at my moms kitchen table, there are several different fabric choices at the store, different lengths, and are all half aprons. They make a great gift for the home baker!

64 Days of Michael Pollan Day#4

Day#4 Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Not because high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any worse for you than sugar, but because it is, like many unfamiliar ingredients in packaged foods, a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed. Also, high-fructose corn syrup is being added to hundreds of foods that have not traditionally been sweetened-breads, condiments, and many snack foods-so if you avoid products that contain it, you will cut down on your sugar intake. But dont fall for the food industry's latest scam: products reformulated to contain "no HFCS" or "real cane sugar". These claims imply these foods are somehow healthier, but they're not. Sugar is sugar.

Newcastle Produce Holiday Food & Gift Party!

Join us Tuesday, December 13 from 5 to 8 pm, for our best evening event of the year! We’ve joined forces to bring you our best gift giving ideas for your food loving friends and family, the party planning expertise of our kitchen staff, sampling and shopping all in one evening!

•Drinks featuring Holiday Monin Syrups with Gale
•Chestnut Roasting and Tasting with Tim Boughton, Amber Oaks, Auburn
•Brie Bakers and Dip Bakers with Sue
•Holiday Appetizers and Wine Tasting with Chelsea and Kate
•Gift Basket Ideas and Gift Baskets to Go with Karen
•Mandarin Valley Candle Box Art Signing with Paula Amerine
•And More!