Break It Down

I'm on a Kashi kick lately for some reason. I guess in my quest to eat and be healthier, I'm keeping more of an eye on labels. Now, I've always looked at the calories, total fat, fiber and sugar content, but I've never been one to really read the ingredient list start to finish. But I'm definitely going to start.

Not long ago Southern Fried Fatty took a dive into the ingredients list on a couple of bars/snacks that she had strewn about in the bottom of her purse, so when I took a Kashi granola bar out of the pantry this morning for my mid-morning snack, I thought I'd take a look. I feared "high fructose corn syrup" (as we all should) and a dozen things I couldn't pronounce. But here's what I actually found.

• A seven-grain blend (whole grains) that includes hard red winter wheat, oats, rye, barley, triticale, long grain brown rice, buckwheat and sesame seeds. (I didn't know triticale, but Google informed me that it is "a combination of wheat and rye. It has a much higher protein content and better balance of essential amino acids than either wheat or rye. triticale has a nut-like taste and is great either flaked or milled into flour.")
• Whole almonds
• Brown rice syrup
• Soy protein isolate (simply a concentrated form of protein)
  
• Soy grits
• Evaporated cane juice crystals
• Chicory root fiber
• Whole flax seeds
• Evaporated cane juice syrup
• Rice starch
• Corn flour
• Honey
• Expeller pressed canola oil
• Vegetable glycerin
• Oat fiber
• Evaporated salt
• Natural flavors
• Molasses
• Soy lecithin
• Peanut flour
• Whey
• Annatto color (According to foodadditivesworld.com, "Annatto is yellow, natural food colorant obtained from the seeds of the Bixa Orella tree.")
  

That's it. Yes, it's a long ingredient list. But there's not a single ingredient with more than 20 letters in the word. Nothing "hydrogenated." Nothing that scared me.

Breakfast: cereal: 3 points
soymilk: 2 points

Mid-morning snack: Kashi bar: 2 points

Lunch: panini: 6 points
pretzels: 2 points

Afternoon snack: trail mix: 3 points
(The dynamic duo tricked me during snacktime: T.J. barked at the backdoor, so I went to let him out. At which point Bugsy climbed into my office chair and finished my little cup of trail mix. Reminds me of the PB&J sandwich incident several years ago where Bugsy lured me from the table and T.J. swallowed the sandwich whole.)

Dinner: chicken nuggets: 6 points
(On the drive to see Muffie for a haircut.)

TOTAL: 23 points. I'll take that.