Apple sauce and maltodextrin

There you are, at the store, choosing the best possible apple sauce for yourself or your children. You look for organic, which must be good because that means it was organically grown, and therefore has no pesticides. Then you notice that some sauces are more expensive than others. What is going on? My instinct is to go with, of course, the cheapest one, so I grab it and check the label. It lists "maltodextrin" as one of its ingredients. Since I don't recognize what "maltowhatever" is, I think "this has no sugar, it's fine". 


But you see, "maltodextrin", as well as "glucose", "dextrose", "maltose", "xanthan gum", ''sorbitol", "mannitol", "fructose'', ''high-fructose corn syrup'', ''citric acid'', ''lactic acid''...''modified starch'', ''unmodified starch''... MSG... they are all made from corn molecules. Chemists have actually learned to break corn down into molecules, and then rearrange them in order to form compounds. Whatever substances they need for the different products that you see in the supermarket shelves, they can make. Citric acid in apple juice and tomato sauce, maltodextrin in apple sauce, xantham gum in ice cream... 


Those are all artificial, processed, cheap food additives that create texture, volume, taste... whatever needs to be created so that you or I will buy packaged, processed food that without the additives would have no taste to start with. Anything made of corn (or soybeans, for that matter) is extremely cheap to make- because corn (and soy...) is subsidized by the U.S. government and produced in unbelievably huge amounts . So... when you add corn, or any corn derivative to your food- say, apple sauce... you make that food cheaper to create, and therefore make more profit on it when you sell it- even if at a lower price than your "better food" competitor down the aisle. Because more people will buy it, since most people don't even check the labels or, if they do, inore the words they don't know. Like when I first started to bake in America: oh, I don't know what this "flour" means... I don't have a dictionary to look it up... I'll just leave it out. 


So, if you wonder why one chopped tomato can costs double than the other, your answer will probably lie in the ingredient list. And this is not a difference between organic and non-organic that we are talking about here- this is within the organic realm! Just go to, say, Publix, and check out their cans/jars of tomato sauce. A lot of the organic stuff now has all those corn derivatives, and you will most likely not see the word "organic" next to them. That means that the corn is probably genetically modified and, even though you are paying double for "organic", you are still getting plenty of non-organic stuff with it. And then people wonder why so many big companies are getting into packaged organic food. People trust the word organic and don't even check the labels to see what else is in there. 


Best advice is: stay away from packaged food. It's expensive, it's not fresh. It's processed. if you must have it, check the labels very carefully and, as Kelly Slater says, ''don't eat anything that you cannot pronounce''