10 Cooking & Baking Products That Should Never be in Your Kitchen

Baking products that I think should never be in your kitchen are listed below. I think that these are the absolute minimum we can do–do you agree?

This post may upset some readers, because they may have one or more of these baking products in their kitchens. However, this is solely my opinion, and I think it’s important to voice it because I don’t believe in going through life with blinders on.

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This is my site and this is my opinion.

If you think I’m condescending, opinionated, rude or judgmental, I apologize in advance, because that is not my goal. I’m not claiming to be a health guru, far from it. However, there has to be a baseline of products and ingredients where we should all be able to say, “I can easily do better than this”. With all the GMOs, pesticides and chemicals going into our real food, why do we want to add to the list of poisons that we’re ingesting?

I am shocked at the continuously rising number of people whom I know, or friends of friends who have died of cancer,  Alzheimers, MS or some other terrible disease. It’s not that I don’t realize that I may not have any control over whether I get cancer one day; sometimes cancer reaches the healthiest person we know. However, why not try to avoid unnatural products and chemicals as much as possible?

I know many people who put their hands over their ears and stick their heads into the ground when they start to hear these facts. Truthfully, it’s easier to stay in the dark about beloved baking products they have been using their whole lives. I know what it feels like to find out that something I’ve been using has changed their ingredients and have added something I’ve made my mind up not to use–it’s maddening, frustrating and disappointing all at once.

Making positive changes a little at a time.

Making changes in the kitchen is not always easy, but I think we have to be open about listening to the information, doing our own research and making a decision based on as many facts as we can gather. I am on a journey to try to become healthier day by day, and think we all can make an effort, even if it’s with baby-steps.

Years ago, I used to use cake mixes now and then, but one day I read the ingredients and was horrified; from that day on, I never bought another box. Is it significantly more time-consuming to make homemade rather than using a box? Honestly, it’s probably an extra 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the recipe, but homemade cakes also taste so much better.

Wrigley’s gum was what I grew up on, but since they added aspartame to all of their products (almost all gum contains aspartame now) I just completely stopped buying it, and all other gum. Sugar is bad, but aspartame is worse.

Although I can’t make gum, the same doesn’t apply to other products. For example, I used to love Mounds candy bars, but the ingredient list now looks more like something you might see in a high school chemistry experiment.

Mounds bars ingredient list

CORN SYRUP; SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE ( CHOCOLATE; SUGAR; COCOA; MILK FAT; COCOA BUTTER; SOY LECITHIN; PGPR, EMULSIFIER) ; COCONUT; SUGAR; SALT; NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR; HYDROLYZED MILK PROTEIN; SODIUM METABISULFITE, TO MAINTAIN FRESHNESS; SULFUR DIOXIDE, TO MAINTAIN FRESHNESS; CARAMEL COLOR; MILK

Do I have to do without? No, I make them myself and they taste fantastic! Click the photo for the recipe.

My prediction on comments that this post will receive~

I can already predict some of the comments that I will probably receive on this post :

“We’re all going to die, so what difference does it make?”

“I know someone who ate really healthy, but got cancer, and my grandpa who smoked a pack a day lived to be 90.”

“For every study that says x, there is a study that says y.”

I’m sure there will also be comments from the other side:

“Your cooking isn’t healthy, you use sugar and white flour.”

“You use a lot of butter and cream, and that’s not healthy.”

“You’ve got recipes on your blog that are deep-fried! How healthy is that?”

All I am going to say is please use some common sense. I’m not at either extreme, and I do try to buy as little processed and packaged food as possible. I know that if I make french fries at home from homegrown organic potatoes and fry them in an organic oil, I’m going to have significantly healthier fries than if I ate them from McDonald’s. You do realize this, right? Sometimes I think people think “apples are apples”, and that is definitely not the case, even with apples!

Get the recipe for steak au poivre if you like the look of this combo!

What constitutes “homemade”?

And let’s talk about the words “homemade” and “scratch” and the actual ingredients. For me, homemade and scratch contain no processed ingredients, for example: butter, sugar and flour for shortbread qualifies as both homemade and from “scratch”. This is a three-ingredient recipe using real baking products.

If you are using a cake mix, with oil and eggs, to me, this is not from scratch, and not homemade (the majority of your ingredients, the cake mix, was not made at home). Also, this is not a three-ingredient recipe, because if you use a Duncan Hines cake mix, there are 16 ingredients in the mix, plus butter and eggs, which equals 18 ingredients.

Please don’t be fooled by recipes claiming they only have three ingredients when they are
cake mix, a pudding mix, and non-dairy whipped topping, for example.

Without further ado, I’d like to share a list of 10 products I think can easily be removed from kitchens and replaced with something much healthier. They are just products I often see in popular recipes. I could easily add another 10, but I just want to focus on these right now. Hopefully, this will inspire you to think about these ingredients in future, and try to stay with as many unprocessed ingredients as possible.

Even if we are not being told the complete truth about these products/ingredients or they actually may not be as bad for us as some research claims, do you still want to risk your health. Or better yet, do you want to roll the dice on your children’s health when there are other much simpler alternatives?

Also remember this important fact when reading labels. Ingredients must be placed in descending order on labels, so that consumers will know that the first ingredient is the highest quantity of all the ingredients, and the last is the least. Here is my list in no particular order.

Christina’s List: 10 Cooking & Baking Products That Should Never be in any Kitchen

1. Margarine.

With all the research showing that butter is better, one would think that the margarine industry would be out of business by now, but old habits die hard. I use butter in and on these Cream Girdle Scones.

2. Corn syrup (especially high fructose corn syrup). 

I had cut corn syrups almost entirely out of my family’s diet until I read an article years ago that explained the process of how corn syrup is made. After that, I was completely finished with corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup, not only in my kitchen, but in any product I bought or served my family.

I do occasionally use Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which is derived from sugar as a substitute for corn syrup. In addition, the flavor adds so much to whatever I make with it! Click the photo for my World Famous Sticky Toffee Porridge recipe.

3. Aspartame

And all other artificial sweeteners. When I was in college, my friend’s father who was a chemist for a large pharmaceutical company forbade her to eat or drink anything containing Nutrasweet (aspartame). That was good enough for me, so I never did either.

I’m not even going to post a link here because for every link I post, there can be one found refuting the information and that really goes for anything on the internet. Large corporations pay for their own research, and those studies are deemed reputable. Do the math yourself. Do you really trust the FDA? I prefer to use organic sugar whenever possible.

4.  Any hydrogenated (partially or otherwise) oils and palm oil in baking products (or others).

A word of advice on hydrogenated oils from the Mayo Clinic. Besides the health issues of using palm oil, there are many other reasons to stop buying products which include palm oil in its list of ingredients. Coconut oil is a better substitute. Also, don’t be misled and think that canola oil is on the “good” list. I mainly use extra virgin olive oil.

5. Crisco.

Ingredients:  Soybean oil, Fully hydrogenated palm oil, Partially Hydrogenated Palm and Soybean oils, Mono and Diglycerides, TBHQ AND Citric acid (Antioxidants). Do you really want to ingest this stuff after reading #4? Instead of Crisco, I use butter or lard, yes lard, from a reputable butcher or source that I know hasn’t added preservatives or other questionable ingredients.

6. Cool Whip (any non-dairy whipped topping).

Why anyone would continue to buy and eat this chemical concoction is beyond my understanding. Even if I couldn’t eat dairy, I still wouldn’t eat this. The only thing I can think of is that many consumers have just continued to put it in their shopping carts like their parents did without ever giving it a second thought. Please give real cream a try and leave the Cool Whip on the shelf  (or freezer or wherever it is kept in the grocery store) the next time you go shopping.

Just look at this list: water, hydrogenated vegetable oil (including coconut and palm oils), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skimmed milk, light cream, and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, and beta carotene (as a coloring).

7. Packaged cake mixes, baking products, & frostings.

I thought it was interesting that I could not find one single ingredient list for any Betty Crocker cake mix as every link I clicked on took me to a page that said “page not found”.

However, here is the list on a Duncan Hines cake mix. Wheat Starch, Salt, Dextrose, Polyglycerol Esters Of Fatty Acids, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Cellulose Gum, Artificial Flavors, Xanthan Gum, Maltodextrin, Modified Cornstarch, Colored With sugar, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil Shortening (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Propylene Glycol Mono- And Diesters Of Fats, Monoand Diglycerides), Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate). Contains 2% Or Less of  Yellow 5 Lake, Red 40 Lake. 

Now, what if I had these ingredients listed on one of my cake recipes: Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids, Cellulose Gum and Artificial Flavors? Wouldn’t you think I was mad?

However, when you pick up that cake mix off the shelf and put it in your shopping cart, you don’t even think about it. You bring it home to make your son cupcakes for his 5th birthday party and you still don’t think twice, right? However, you are feeding your son and his kindergarten classmates those horrific sounding ingredients. Please DO think about it, because these are facts. It’s in black and white on that cake mix box.

Here’s an easy recipe for homemade yellow cupcakes which are so much healthier than boxed mixes.

8. Faux “maple” syrups. 

The number one ingredient is usually corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup-see #2. It never pours or tastes like real maple syrup, either. Click the photo for the pancake recipe.

9. Processed cheese products.

Just the fact that the word “processed“ is in the name should be a red flag. These are not allowed to be called cheese by law, so you are NOT eating cheese. Why not just eat real, unadulterated cheese? It’s so simple.

10. Hershey’s Genuine Chocolate Flavor Syrup.

I need to hold back on what I really would like to say about this product. Let’s say its name and the use of the word “genuine” and “flavor” in the actual description of the product make me crazy. Please realize that this tastes nothing like real chocolate.

Once again, take a look at the ingredients. High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water, Cocoa, Sugar. Contains 2% or Less of: Potassium Sorbate (Preservative), Salt, Mono and Diglycerides, Xanthan Gum, Polysorbate 60, Vanillin, Artificial Flavor. The fourth ingredient is cocoa, which could actually be less than 10% of the product.

Watch this space, as I’m planning on making my own homemade syrup and will put the link here. In the meantime, you can make your own homemade magic shell!

I wonder just how many of you made it all the way down here? How many of you now hate me, will stop following me? Who thinks I’m absolutely wrong about all the baking products I just posted?

I think it’s sad that it’s come to this. I don’t think anyone in history ever had to argue about the quality of their food the way we now do. There are discrepancies in what the facts truly are. We have no sense of reliability in how our food is grown, processed and labeled. Unfortunately, we are also cooking less whole foods and buying more prepackaged, processed and instant products.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, I’m afraid.

I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Christina’s Cucina is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees. This is done by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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