An Obsessively Curated List of Clean And Tasty Packaged Food Products (Part 1 – A to C)
Claravale Farm Aged Raw Milk Cheese
February 1, 2017
By Lisa Petrison
This is part of a discussion of exceptional food products that may be worth considering by those who would like to really enjoy eating while simultaneously avoiding the large amounts of glyphosate, mycotoxins and various other poisons that are pervasive in the modern food supply (and in particular in the modern U.S. food supply).
Links to all three parts are as follows.
All products mentioned in this article should be assumed to be without ingredients that have been treated with non-organic pesticides/fungicides/herbicides as well as gluten-free, unless stated otherwise.
It is my goal that only items that are GMO-free and glyphosate-free be included in this entire discussion. To my knowledge, the only exceptions are a few meat or dairy products for which a small percentage of the animal’s feed may have consisted of GMO grains or alfalfa; these are marked as noted below.
Items listed at the bottom of each category are ones that I have consumed repeatedly myself and feel comfortable recommending to others, in terms of my belief that they likely will be free of unacceptable amounts of toxicity and that they likely will provide an enjoyable eating experience.
Notations on the lists are as follow
(1) – Item may contain gluten or gluten cross-contamination.
(2) – Item may contain products that were grown with non-organic herbicides/fungicides/insecticides (or where the involved animals may have consumed such products).
(3) – Item consists of dairy or meat from a largely grass-fed animal receiving some supplemental feed, including a small percentage of feed with the potential of having been glyphosate-contaminated.
Alcohol & Mixers
For decades now, I have been buying Wild Turkey bourbon and doing well with it. I usually drink Rare Breed (a somewhat more expensive version), but even their regular version seems fine to me.
Recently, I decided to experiment by buying a bottle of expensive rye whisky made by another U.S. company. Although I liked the taste of it, it felt so toxic to me that I ended up pouring Thieves’ herbs into it to convert it into a cleaning/disinfecting spray. (And I will say it has worked really well for this purpose.).
One relevant fact is that Wild Turkey is one of several brands of bourbon that uses only non-GMO grains, providing a good explanation for why the corn used would not have glyphosate contamination. However, although Wild Turkey is 75% corn (grown near the distillery in Kentucky), it also contains 13% rye (sourced from Germany) and 12% barley (sourced from South Dakota).
Both of those other crops are non-GMO crops that are frequently sprayed with glyphosate in. And glyphosate is used frequently on crops in Germany (with a bunch of German beer samples recently testing positive for glyphosate cross-contamination, for instance).
Whether Wild Turkey is always as free from glyphosate contamination as it possibly could be, I don’t know. Still, it does make sense to me that it would be less toxic than an all-rye whiskey, since a high percentage of rye used in the U.S. is imported from Canada (where pre-harvest spraying of grain as a dessicant is extremely common).
I now am thinking that maybe the best bet with regard to U.S. spirits would be Buffalo Trace bourbon, since it contains 90% non-GMO corn and only 10% rye. The next time I buy bourbon, I am going to try that one.
Sometimes I also drink single-malt Scotch (as well as other European spirits products such as Hendrick’s gin, Stolichnaya vodka, Benedictine liqueur and Lucid absinthe). I’ve never had a problem with it of the sort that I did with the rye whiskey, which is a little surprising since about 30-50% of Scottish grain is treated with glyphosate as a pre-harvest dessicant. Perhaps in many cases, whisky companies in Scotland are buying grains from local farmers who do not use glyhosate in that way.
Now that I have found out what a high percentage of grain in the British Isles is sprayed with glyphosate prior to harvest (30% or more according to some accounts), I am a little surprised at how well I have done
I also have always done very well with pretty much any Japanese sake, presumably because the Japanese are very concerned about the purity of their rice and generally do not use pesticides on it.
Although I am now theoretically concerned about contamination of Japanese products with nuclear radiation from Fukushima, Japanese sake continues to feel good to me across the board.
Unfortunately, I do not do nearly as well with spirits from the U.S. as I do with ones from Europe or Japan. I am guessing that the difference is mostly due to the presence of glyphosate in the U.S. grain supply, but more stringent mycotoxin monitoring in these other countries may make a big difference too.
The one U.S. spirit brand that I always have done well with is Wild Turkey. I mostly drink Rare Breed, but even the least expensive products in their line have felt fine to me.
Very recently, I found that Wild Turkey is one of three brands of bourbon that are GMO-free (the others are Buffalo Trace and Four Roses, neither of which I have tried yet). So my affection for Wild Turkey now is making some sense to me.
Also on the mixed-drinks front: although standard mixers are really terrible (due to the presence of glyphosate-contaminated corn syrup and other problem ingredients), I was delighted to be able to start enjoying G&T’s again after discovering Fever-Tree’s line of delicious (though pricey) tonic waters and other quality mixers.
In addition, Manhattans started tasting much better to me after I substituted Urban Moonshine’s organic bitters for the Angostura bitters usually used.
Vodka often is a pretty clean alcohol, and Happy Girl Kitchen sells some outstanding tomato juice (either plain or spicy) that makes amazing Bloody Marys.
Although I have tried a variety of craft beers, for some reason I tend to do better with Blue Moon (which is owned by the huge Miller Coors Brewing Company) than most of the others. Why that might be, I am not sure. However. one rumor that I have heard is that since glyphosate can kill the yeast needed to produce beer, some breweries are testing for glyphosate in grains and rejecting crops with high levels. I wonder if high-end breweries who have more financial resources may be especially likely to do this.
The brown spots on apples used for cider are caused by a fungus making patulin, which is a pretty bad mycotoxin, and in general I don’t feel very good about most bottled apple juice or hard ciders. I’ve nonetheless done okay so far with Angry Orchard hard cider.
It has been many years since I have done well with wine, which is unfortunate since wine tasting used to be one of my favorite hobbies. I suspect that much of this is related to mycotoxin contamination, but I also have heard reports that vineyards often use glyphosate to control weeds between the rows of the vines. Although French wines tend to be a little better for me than California wines, even they are inconsistent.
Dave Asprey recently began promoting a product called Dry Farm Wines, which is labeled as organic and stated as being low in mycotoxins and other problem substances. I would really like to try it.
I also have received some positive comments about the organic and sulfite-free wines produced by Our Daily Wines and Well Read.
Happy Girl Kitchen Tomato Juices
Animal Fat
Clean lard, tallow and other animal fat has become a hot category in the health world. I’ve been using my leftover bacon grease and chicken drippings to cook with for a while, but now there are quite a few smaller individual farmers and larger food companies who are selling various kinds of animal fat to use for cooking.
It’s important to note that because many toxins tend to be especially stored in the fat rather than in the lean meat, using animal fat for cooking should only be done if there is certainty that the animal was raised in exceptionally clean ways. Fat from animals raised in non-optimal ways will be especially toxic and should be discarded, even if the lean meat is being eaten.
I recently tried out the beef tallow and the pork lard from Epic, a natural meat snacks company purchased a little over a year ago by General Mills. I also bought a jar of beef tallow from Fatworks, a smaller company specializing just in the production of animal fats.
In looking at the Fatworks website, I would like to give them an A+ in terms of transparency about what the animals are eating. For the beef tallow, they state clearly that “Our beef tallow is crafted from 100% grass fed, pasture raised cows.” For the lard, they state: “Fatworks only uses Pasture Raised non-GMO, hormone and antibiotic free pigs. Please note that this is the case NO MATTER IF THE JAR SAYS PASTURE RAISED OR NOT!!!” On another part of the website, they state: “We only source our pork and beef, lamb and buffalo from pasture raised farms and we receive receive affadavits from each farm stating that they are pasture raised and that they do not feed GMO feed to their animals….So what’s in the feed you ask? It’s a high quality NON-GMO mix of grains and soy…Conceptually we would love, love, love to rid soy and even grains from all animal food supply, but this would literally starve the animals on pasture. It is currently possible to feed without grain supplementation only on very, very small farms, most of which are not USDA certified.”
Epic, on the other hand, does not provide any definite information about exactly what the animals used to create the fat in the jars ate. For the beef tallow, the jars and the website state that the cows were “grass fed,” but there is no reassurance that they are 100% grass fed. The information about the pork lard just states that the pigs were “pastured,” without making any specific mention of feed.
On the FAQ page of the website, Epic states its belief that 100% grass fed is best without ever committing to the idea that any of its products (except for a certain percentage of its bars as marked) actually are ever going to meet that standard. There is no mention on the website that I can find suggesting that Epic products are organic or that the animals that are used to make the products received only GMO-free supplemental feed – only the repeated assertion that wild is better than organic.
Moreover, Epic suggests numerous times on the website that the company is committed to using animals “from nose to tail,” which would seem to suggest that all animals that they are using for some products would have the potential of being included in other products as well. That is a concern for me because for a least one pig product – the pork skins – Epic acknowledges that some of the meat that it is using has received feed that is not GMO-free: “A blend of organic, non-GMO, pastured and antibiotic free pork combined with simple seasonings is the foundation for this simple yet nourishing approach.”
I tried writing to Epic to get further information on exactly what the animals used for each of their products eat, bringing up my concerns about glyphosate, but did not get a response back.
Now, all this being said, I thought that the two jars of Epic fat that I purchased were fine. I used them to fry potatoes and to add some extra flavor to grass-fed burgers, and I compared the Epic grass fed tallow product directly to the 100% grass fed Fatworks tallow product. The Epic tallow looked different than the Fatworks tallow (it actually was closer to being liquid at room temperature and was more yellow), but in terms of feeling clean and taste, the Fatworks product and the Epic product were very similar. The Epic lard was very good too, resulting in potatoes that I thought were even tastier than the ones fried in tallow and that also seemed clean to me.
But still, based on my very negative experiences with regard to feeling that several of the other Epic products that I tried were really toxic, and based on the lack of transparency from the company in terms of stating clearly what the animals that they are sourcing have eaten, and based on the mix of positive and negative reviews of the Epic fat products on the Amazon website, I am feeling concerned enough about this issue that in the future I am going to be inclined to buy animal fat products from other companies rather than from Epic.
A couple of other companies who are supplying what seems that it may very well be very good animal fat are Massa Organics (which started raising pigs solely to provide clean fertilizer for the fields on its ultra-organic rice farm) and Proper Foods for Life (which states clearly on its website that none of the animals used for its tallow or lard products receive any GMO feed).
My experiments did reinforce my belief that cooking with good animal fat is a real pleasure and that it is worthwhile to seek out really high-quality products to use for that purpose.
Also, although I have yet to try duck fat, in some respects that seems to be the best fat of all, and so I’m looking forward to experimenting with it soon.
Massa Organics Rendered Pork Fat
Baking Mixes
For the most part, my experiences with baking mixes have not been very rewarding. I believe that is because most manufacturers feel that they need to keep costs low in order to gain widespread distribution and therefore have a big incentive to cut corners with regard to ingredient quality.
This especially seems to be the case with certain almond-flour baking mixes. These would be really expensive if made with quality ingredients but are being sold at pretty low prices in mainstream grocery stores – a good tip-off that substandard ingredients such as ones contaminated with mold may be being used. Although I typically enjoy baked goods made with good almond flour, that has not been the case with these mass-marketed products, unfortunately.
Also, I should note that my experiences with this product category have been limited mostly to taste-testings. (I wasn’t able to do any baking at all when living in the RV, and have been disinclined to start up again even though I have an oven now.)
I do make pancakes once in a while, but with an approach similar to the one described by Mark Bittman – a single egg mixed with a spoonful of flour plus just a tiny bit of water, used as binder to hold together various filling ingredients. Since I am cooking the pancakes in good fat (usually a mix or coconut oil and butter), this results in a dish that seems pretty healthful to me, as opposed to the overly heavy and starchy pancakes that the recipe on the package always would have me make.
The baking mix line that I have had the most success with is Pamela’s. It is gluten-free, based mostly on rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch (with corn starch, almond flour or inulin added to some items). Although it is not marked as organic, most of the items that I have tried have felt pretty clean to me.
I especially like the Pamela’s Cornbread & Muffin Mix, which I have continued to make once in a while.
I also enjoyed during taste-testing a few of the Pamela’s cake mixes. The Spice Cake Mix was especially good, but I also liked the Vanilla one and think it could be the basis for a good Carrot Cake or many other yummy variations (adding some shredded coconut or strawberry puree comes to mind, for instance).
Both the cakes and the cornbread cooked up remarkably well in a cast-iron skillet or Le Crueset saute pan in a covered barbecue grill. The cakes were indistinguishable from those made with wheat and really delicious – no one should be hesitant to serve these for any birthday regardless of whether the guest of honor is gluten-free, I don’t think.
The cakes even were very good after being frozen and then allowed to thaw for an hour or two at room temperature. After I realized how well they held up, I started cutting leftovers into chunks and storing them in zip lock bags in the freezer until someone wanted a piece.
All of the Pamela’s products include potato starch, and potatoes are a product that in theory may be treated with glyphosate as a pre-harvest dessicant. I don’t know how often that happens or how much the potatoes (which are underground during the spraying and also are peeled before being made into potato starch) might be affected, but based on my experiences with this product line I don’t think this is affecting the quality of this line very much.
Some items in the Pamela’s line that I think pose some additional concerns with regard to potential glyphosate contamination are the Baking & Pancake Mix (buttermilk); the Non-Dairy Pancake & Waffle Mix (sorghum); the Pumpkin Bread Mix (buttermilk); the Oatmeal Cookie Mix (oats); the Sprouted Buckwheat Pancake Mix (buckwheat); the Sprouted Buttermilk Pancake Mix (buttermilk); and the Protein Pancake Mix (buttermilk). I’ve tried a few of these and did not have good experiences, which puzzled me until I figured out what the apparent problems were.
Pamela’s products that I think probably are good but have not yet tried include the Chocolate Chunk and Sugar Cookie Mixes; the Chocolate Brownie Mix; the Bread Mix; the All-Purpose Flour; the Chocolate Cake Mix; and the Vanilla and Chocolate Frosting Mixes.
Another baking-mix line that I thought was quite good when I tried it was The Pure Pantry, It is both gluten-free and organic, and it is pretty expensive (which is presumably why I have never seen it sold in any grocery stores). The line is based on rice/potato/corn/tapioca flour and includes a baking mix, two pancake mixes and three cookie mixes.
I have yet to try the Wholesome Chow line of baking mixes (including cakes, cookies, brownies, scones, muffins and pancakes), but it gets good reviews on Amazon. The line is organic as well as free of gluten and other common allergens with regard to both ingredients and required additions.
If I were looking to buy ready-to-spread cake frosting, I would consider the ones by Miss Jones Baking Company. They are organic, gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free and nut-free, and the Amazon reviews are very positive. The company also sells well-reviewed organic mixes for cookies, cakes and brownies (all of which contain wheat).
Bars
Although energy bars can be be convenient to eat on occasion, it’s been hard to find any that I have been really enthusiastic about.
Recently though, I have been really enjoying the grain-free Swell Bars from Nana Joes, a small artisan granola marker located in San Francisco. Although I am not opposed to the idea of eating quality oats in granola bars (and though Nana Joes’ regular granola bars are very good too), the Swell bar is the first bar of any sort that I have felt all-around good about eating on anything more than an emergency basis. The bars contain only whole foods (including plenty of healthy fats) and no refined sugars: the only ingredients are toasted unsweetened coconut, maple syrup, cocoa nibs, olive oil, vanilla, sea salt and a whole bunch of nuts and seeds (pecans, almonds, pumpkin seeds, pistachios, sesame seeds). They are only mildly sweet, very clean feeling, and really delicious.
Over the past year or so I also have been occasionally eating Bulletproof bars, which contain what I feel is also a pretty good combination of ingredients (just cashews, grass-fed collagen, chicory fiber, coconut/MCT/Brain Octane oil, vanilla, lemon oil, stevia and sea salt in the Lemon Cookie version). In a lot of ways they are just about perfect, except that for me, the stevia makes them taste just a little bit bitter. I would like them a lot better if they instead either had a little bit of maple syrup or else no sweetener at all.
Bumble Bars are based on sesame seeds (which I really like), are only moderately sweet, and come in variety of flavors that I have found pretty tasty. I worked my way through a box a couple of years ago as a result of keeping them in the car. However, the sweeteners used (brown rice syrup and evaporated cane juice) are not what I consider ideal, and they also contain smallish amounts of soy.
Clif Kit’s Bars are based just on dates, other fruits and nuts, and they feel really clean to me. Although I am more willing to consume dates than I am processed sugar, these bars are still way too sweet for me to eat more than very occasionally.
Pure Bar is another organic product line based on dates, nuts and other fruits. Although I do not like this line as much as Clif Kit’s, fans of Larabar (which is labeled as GMO-free but not organic and which is owned by General Mills) may want to check it out.
Louck’s Sesame Snaps are made in Poland out of just sesame seeds, glucose syrup and sugar. These came up as extremely well-rated in the energy bar taste tests at Mercey Hot Springs. In terms of the nutritional content, they are no worse than most of products out there that are labeled as energy bars (they are not any more sweet and also have a fair amount of protein). Although they are not marked as organic or GMO-free, they feel really clean to me.
Kate’s bars (based on oats, seeds, chocolate and fruit and labeled as 85-90% organic) also are much more sweet than I think is necessary, but they seem pretty clean and certainly are tasty. Maybe they would be good for a strenuous hike.
Beverages
I pretty much only drink GT’s Kombucha, unsweetened green tea, regular water with a little unsweetened cranberry juice in it, San Pellegrino mineral water, and fresh juices, but once in a while an unfermented sweetened drink seems to really hit the spot. Here are some quality beverages that I have enjoyed.
My favorite drink on this list is Hey Honey! artisinal lemonades, but they are available only in California. They use honey as the sweetener and taste pretty much exactly like lemonade I make myself. I especially like the strawberry-basil flavor.
Ginger People’s Ginger Soother is a strong-tasting ginger drink sweetened with honey.
Reed’s Premium Ginger Brew is sweetened only with honey and pineapple juice, though some of their other ginger brews also contain cane sugar.
Bragg also sells drinks sweetened with honey, though the apple cider vinegar in them is a bit of an acquired taste.
Honest Tea’s iced tea drinks are widely available and lightly sweetened with cane sugar.
San Pellegrino’s delicious sparkling fruit drinks contain mineral water, citrus or other fruit, and cane sugar.
Runa sells teas and energy drinks sweetened with cane sugar and containing Guayusa.
Rebbl’s Super Herbs Protein are vegan protein drinks that have felt really clean to me (but that are quite sweet and that need to be refrigerated even before being opened). They are sweetened with coconut milk, sugar and stevia.
Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar Drinks
Ginger People Ginger Soother (2)
Rebbl Super Herbs Protein Drinks
Runa Guayusa Tea/Energy Drinks
San Pellegrino Fruit Sodas (2)
Bone Broth
One of the biggest health trends to have emerged in the past couple of years is bone broth. Many packaged-goods companies and restaurants have begun offering it, and a large number of media stories and blog articles have been written about it.
Some of those covering the trend (from least to most favorable) have been NPR, Time, Goop and Dr. Mercola.
Dave Asprey offered a simple recipe for it on the Rodale Wellness site.
The first time I heard much about bone broth as a healing therapy was a number of years ago when I read about it being included as a core part of the GAPS diet developed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. This diet has as its stated goal the healing of the gut lining and thereby the reducing the food sensitivities and some of the other problems associated with so-called “autoimmune” disease.
Insofar as bone broth (which contains high amounts of L-glutamine) is actually helping people, my guess would be that it is at least partially through the mechanism of repairing the intestinal permeability that can result from dietary and environmental exposures to glyphosate and trichothecenes. In order for this to be likely to work though, elimination of the substances that are causing the problem to begin with (such as by avoiding moldy buildings and glyphosate/mycotoxins in diet) would seem to be critical.
It also seems that it is important that the animals used for bone broth have been raised in especially clean ways, since heavy metals and other toxicity may be stored in the bones and then leech out into the broth during cooking.
I’ve been cooking bone broth once in a while in the slow cooker for the past few years, and have been making it much more routinely since purchasing an Instant Pot. (I usually let the pot sit in “warm” mode for quite a while after the pressure cooking is done, because long cooking times are supposed to increase the health value of the broth.) I do this partially because of the supposed health benefits, partially because it is a frugal use of the carcasses of roasted whole chickens, and mostly because I think that bone broth is a good staple food that makes it easier to create easy and enjoyable meals on a daily basis.
The dish that I prepare most often, for instance, is to steam fresh vegetables in bone broth in the Instant Pot and then to puree about half of them with the liquid plus some good butter (and maybe some bacon grease or Brain Octane oil) to create a creamy and flavorful soup with a lot of vegetable chunks in it. (Kudos to Dave Asprey for suggesting this great idea.) I also use the bone broth to prepare quick chicken soup or vegetable-beef soup (adding rice, cooked meat and vegetables to the broth and running the mixture for a cycle in the Instant Pot) and for homemade gravies.
Recently I tried the frozen chicken bone broth sold by Bonafide Provisions and found that it tasted pretty much exactly the same as the chicken broth that I make myself. (They offer a beef bone broth as well.) This is a product that is a little expensive but not outrageously so, and I might be inclined to buy it myself if I were not able to so easily make my own broth with the Instant Pot. The main issue for many people may be in persuading a local retailer to carry the product.
In addition, there are now a whole bunch of refrigerated, shelf-stabilized or powdered bone broth products on the market. I tried a couple of higher-profile ones and found that they tasted nothing like my own broth and that I had no interest at all in drinking more than a sip.
So I am not convinced that bone broth is a product that lends itself to being turned into a processed food. It more seems that insofar as there is magic here, it is as a result of the product being in its natural state.
I’m open to suggestions of particular brands being better though.
Bonafide Provisions Bone Broth
Bread
By far my favorite kind of bread is real sourdough. The fermentation process digests the fructans in the bread (meaning that it is low in FODMAPs) and also helps with other toxicity problems (such as with mycotoxins, antinutrients and gluten).
I’ve yet to find a frozen version of real sourdough made with good ingredients, however. I therefore have to make an effort to find good locally made organic sourdough bread and then freeze it until I am ready to use a slice or two.
(Hint: Real sourdough bread should not list yeast in the ingredients. It also should be unlikely to go moldy due to the antifungal activity of the sourdough process.)
Sprouting the wheat or other grains before making the bread – as Food for Life and Silver Hills Bakery do – also helps to reduce the amount of toxicity present. I have known many people who have said that they were very reactive to regular wheat but could eat certain sprouted breads and/or sourdough breads with no problems.
Food for Life’s wheat breads are all sprouted and free of GMO’s, with ingredients that are almost 100% organic (and for most of the breads wholly organic). The only ingredient that I have been able to find that is not listed as organic in any of their sprouted-wheat breads are the chia seeds in the Genesis bread.
In addition to breads, Food for Life sells sprouted buns, English muffins, waffles, pockets and tortillas (plus sprouted-wheat cereal and pasta). I have tried many of their sprouted wheat products and thought they were pretty good across the board. These are virtually all 100% organic as well.
Food for Life also sells quite a few gluten-free breads, including two versions (a brown rice and a multi-seed rice) that are free of yeast, corn, soy, dairy, gluten, animal products, GMO’s and refined sugar. I have never seen their gluten-free products in stores and so have not tried them. Although these have more non-organic ingredients than the wheat breads, I am not seeing any non-organic items that seem to present a glyphosate contamination issue.
For Silver Hills,
All of the products made by Food for Life and Silver Hills are sprouted, free of GMO’s, and use mostly organic ingredients. Silver Hills also produces a few certified-organic breads.
Silver Hills (which is based in Canada) sells sprouted-wheat breads, buns, and bagels. While everything that I have tried from them has been good, I would suggest sticking with their organic products since their non-organic products contain small amounts of wheat (including non-sprouted, non-organic vital wheat gluten) that has the potential of being glyphosate contaminated.
Silver Hills also used to sell some good gluten-free bread (based on sprouted sorghum flour, millet and chia), but it has been discontinued.
The best other gluten-free bread I have tried so far is Udi’s Millet-Chia, which has a nice texture and decent taste. It is stated by the company as being non-GMO, and none of the non-organic ingredients in it seem to be at risk of carrying much glyphosate contamination. However, it contains some food-science-type ingredients such as dough conditioners, and so I have a hard time exactly recommending it.
Grindstone Bakery (based in Rohnert Park, CA) makes a line of organic, gluten-free breads (as well as organic spelt/rye/barley breads) that I would really like to try. Free standard shipping is available throughout the U.S. (with a four-loaf minimum required for all orders).
A few other suggestions of companies baking GMO-free, gluten-free breads that I have received include Canyon Bakehouse, Genuine Bavarian, Kim & Jake’s, O’Dough’s, Paleo Bread, Rudi’s Bakery, Sami’s Bakery and Three Bakers.
I also received a positive comment about the Siete brand of gluten-free tortillas.
Many people who are unable to tolerate gluten report baking their own bread. This recipe from Against All Grain is popular, and Andrea Fabry of the It Takes Time blog offers a gluten-free sourdough bread recipe.
Finally, I would like to note that some of the worst food reactions that I ever have had were to sprouted-wheat organic breads being sold at low prices in mainstream food stores. My guess here is that these companies buy low-quality organic ingredients in order to keep costs down and that these can be badly contaminated with mold toxicity or glyphosate contamination. I never have had these kinds of problems with Food for Life or Silver Hills, but suggest proceeding with caution with regard to the other brands out there.
Food for Life Sprouted Wheat Products (1)
Silver Hills Bakery Sprouted Wheat Breads & Bagels (1)
Butter
I like Kerrygold (which is a pastured Irish butter) a lot, but it is not perfect with regard to my toxicity concerns since about 3% of the cows’ diet is reported by the company as coming from GMO feed.
Still, about 90% of the cows’ feed consumption is from fresh grass, resulting in a bright yellow, creamy and flavorful product that likely is very low in mycotoxins and that I prefer over the American organic butters that I have had.
Even better is Double Devon Cream butter, from northern England. I have encountered it in a few stores but have been able to find almost no information about it. The style is very similar to Kerrygold, but it is even creamier and yellower and cleaner-feeling. It’s a little pricey but I still buy it when I come across it.
Recently I have been eating goat-milk butter from St. Helen’s Farm, which is located in York, England. I think it is just terrific – very clean and creamy and flavorful, with just a tiny bit of goat-type tang to give it a little more interest value.
I was interested to see on the St. Helen’s Farm website that all the goats are kept in a large airy barn and fed mostly with crops that are grown on the farm. The website makes the argument that the goats are more protected from disease this way, and they certainly do look happy in the website video. The more that I learn about dairy, the more that I think that while it certainly is important that animals be eating clean and non-moldy feed, having the feed source consist solely of fresh grass is not the only way or even the best way to accomplish that goal. Carefully growing and storing your own high-quality feed crops – as St. Helen’s Farm does – seems like it works fine too, for instance.
(Note that pale color of the St. Helen’s Farm butter even after carotene color has been added is not much related to the feed issue – rather, dairy products made from goat milk are always naturally quite white no matter what the goats are eating.)
I also have tried Collier’s butter, from Wales, and thought it was quite good too.
In general, I am feeling really good about butter that originates from the British Isles, and would not hesitate to purchase any brand from there if I happened to encounter it.
I tried Anchor butter (a grass-fed product from New Zealand) in the coffee at a Bulletproof conference a while back, and I liked it. Anchor also has a 100% organic version that I would like to try. I have never seen any Anchor butter at all in any stores though.
Oddly, Kerrygold products are not stocked by UNFI (the big natural foods distributor) and thus tend to be available only in regular grocery stores. Natural food stores often stock only American organic butters, which usually are not nearly as yellow and rich as Kerrygold. Still, as long as they are made from good milk and cream – such as that produced by Straus, Kalona SuperNatural or Sierra Nevada – those lighter-colored butters almost always are very good too.
Double Devon Cream Butter (2, 3)
St. Helen’s Farm Butter (2, 3)
Cereal
I am a big oatmeal fan, mostly because it seems to be a good gentle binder of mycotoxins and other types of toxicity in the gut. I usually eat a bowl for breakfast at least several times a week
I wrote in a previous blog about my experiments a decade ago finding out that McCann’s Irish oatmeal, though not labeled as organic, was much less problematic for me than the organic oatmeal being sold under the Whole Foods private label.
My guess is that the Whole Foods oatmeal was contaminated with mycotoxins, which are almost wholly ignored in the U.S. but are regulated in Ireland and other European countries. The American food situation is so messed up that there could have been substantial glyphosate contamination in the Whole Foods oatmeal too though.
Since that time, I have eaten only McCann’s oatmeal and never had any problems with it. Usually I use the steel-cut version in the metal can, but their rolled oats (which cook much faster and make good oatmeal cookies) have been good too.
Recently McCann’s has been labeling its products as GMO-free, with the suggestion on the company’s website that they never have contained GMO’s.
They also now have a version that is labeled as gluten-free (meaning that they are taking care that the product does not get cross-contaminated with gluten during the growing or milling process).
In recent years, I have learned that farmers in the British Isles (including Ireland, Scotland and England) often spray grains (including oats) with glyphosate just prior to harvest, in order to dry it out and shorten the growing season needed. Glyphosate contamination levels of grains treated in this way tend to be especially high.
That being the case, I am especially surprised at how well I have done with McCann’s oatmeal. Quite a few people with food sensitivities have reported doing well with the oatmeal too, compared to how they do with other oatmeal (including non-organic oatmeal).
McCann’s states in a video on its website that it sources its oats by contracting directly with farmers who are especially skilled and take great pride in their products. Other material on the website suggests that McCann’s believes that the weather conditions in Ireland are ideal for growing oats; that there is a long growing season in the area; that the grains “ripen slowly, giving them more time to absorb nutrients from the soil”; that they are happy about the pure water in the area; and that the oatmeal that they are producing differs little from that produced hundreds or thousands of years ago.
On the other hand, McCann’s has been owned and managed since 1988 by various large food conglomerates, and this always makes me nervous about product quality with regard to toxicity issues. My email to the company asking about the use of glyphosate has of yet gone unaswered.
Still, I have done so well with this product that I would be really surprised if I were to learn that McCann’s is selling oats that have been treated with glyphosate prior to harvest. Even though 30-50% of cereal crops in the British Isles are treated with this chemical, the information that McCann’s supplies on its site suggests that the practice (which is very controversial in Europe) would not be helpful to their growing efforts anyway and that it would be very contradictory to the company’s stated values.
With regard to preparation, the steel-cut oats cook up beautifully in my Instant Pot on the porridge setting. I put the oats (plus some chia seeds, flax seeds, raisins and/or dried cranberries) in a bowl with twice as much water, plus pour a little additional water in the bottom of the pan, for super-easy cleanup.
Soaking oatmeal overnight and then discarding the soaking water before cooking is helpful for removing toxicity and faster cooking, but the McCann’s feels good enough to me that usually I don’t even bother. I do generally at least rinse it before cooking it though.
Addendum 4/2/2019: In recent months, a couple of things have happened with regard to McCann’s oatmeal. In the past, dozens of Mold Avoiders members had tried McCann’s oatmeal and done well with it, and I consistently did well myself. More recently though, I got a report of someone who had had a negative reaction to it. Following that, I received a news report that Taiwan had refused a shipment of McCann’s oatmeal due to the fact that glyphosate contamination was higher than that country’s legal limit (0.1 parts per million or 100 parts per billion). (Another Mold Avoiders member reported finding live bugs in a can of McCann’s and posted the video online, but that is of less concern to me than the glyphosate). I thus am no longer eating McCann’s myself at this time. Many members of the Mold Avoiders group have recently done well with One Degree oatmeal, which is organic, gluten-free, sourced from one particular grower, milled from the company and glyphosate-tested, and so that is what I have been eating recently.
Although I usually don’t eat any cereal other than oatmeal or very high-quality granola, I do like sort of like Food for Life’s Ezekiel sprouted-wheat cereal (which is similar to Grape Nuts but much better in every respect). Sometimes I have a bowl of it with milk when I am in a hurry.
Nature’s Path is a huge, wholly organic, Canadian cereal company that has been largely responsible for the development of the Non-GMO Project. Although I rarely eat North American grains unless they are soaked, sprouted or made into sourdough bread, I have sampled a wide variety of Nature’s Path products (including frozen waffles, breakfast pastries, granola bars, and various cereals). Across the board, they seem pretty good and certainly infinitely better than 99% of the other cereal products that are out there.
Although many of the products from Nature’s Path contain wheat, they have a wide range of gluten-free products as well. One particularly popular product is their Qi’a instant oatmeal, which is both organic and gluten-free and also includes chia, hemp and other seeds in the mix.
Food for Life Ezekiel Cereal (1)
Cheese
The problem with almost all U.S. cheese (including expensive specialty cheese) is that it is made with milk from cows that almost certainly have eaten moldy and glyphosate-contaminated feed (and also that have very likely been mistreated). Since toxins in cows’ diets have been shown to be excreted in large quantities in the milk, this has led me to avoid U.S. cheese pretty scrupulously unless it is labeled as organic.
I seem to do just fine with virtually all European specialty cheeses though. Presumably this is due to there being less glyphosate usage and more concern about mycotoxins in Europe than in the U.S., but there may be other factors as well.
The U.S. cheese that I think is the best (and that may be my favorite cheese of all time) is Claravale’s organic raw-milk cheese. It is crumbly and golden and rich-tasting when eaten straight, and also makes ridiculously good grilled-cheese sandwiches. (Note that aged raw-milk cheese does not carry the same risks with regard to pathogens that raw milk itself or that soft raw-milk cheeses do.) I used to get it direct from the farm and am happy to see it being offered on their website now.
A few other delicious organic artisan cheesemakers from California are Cowgirl Creamery (which uses Straus milk to produce award-winning, French-style, “stinky” cheeses) and Garden Variety (which uses its own sheep’s milk to produce a wide variety of flavorful cheeses).
Another more mainstream sheep’s milk cheese producer is Bellwether Farm. A caveat here is that although the animals eat mostly fresh grass, and although most of their supplemental feed is organic, the website states that there is a chance that a small percentage of the animals’ diets may have consisted of GMO feed. I have done very well with the company’s cheese as well as their yogurt though.
The cheese that I eat most often is Kerrygold, which is made in Ireland with milk from mostly grass-fed cows. Approximately three percent of the cows’ diets may have consisted of GMO feed. The cheese is widely available, not very expensive, and tastes really good to me. I especially like the Dubliner version.
Spring Hill, Sierra Nevada and Rumiano are some producers of U.S. cheese that I feel make good products sold at reasonable prices.
Nordic Creamery is a line of cow, goat and sheep milk cheeses made in southwestern Wisconsin, and I came across their products many times in stores without feeling inclined to purchase them since there was no mention on the labels of their being organic. I finally gave some of their goat milk cheese a try after I noticed that Tropical Traditions (which is testing all its products for glyphoste levels) was selling some of Nordic Creamery products via mail order. As it turns out, they are unusually delicious and feel very clean, and so I think this is going to become my top go-to cheese brand into the future as long as I continue living in this area.
Traders Point Creamery – a small dairy farm in Indiana keeping its cows on 100% grass feed – makes a number of different artisan cheeses as well as some less expensive deli cheeses that I would be interested in trying.
Maple Hill Creamery also makes cheese – including three raw-milk cheeses and a fresh mozzarella – from the milk of cows that have been 100% grass fed.
Bellwether Farms Sheep Cheese (2, 3)
Chocolate
A problem with chocolate is that even products from the best companies can be occasionally contaminated with mycotoxins. Eating chocolate at all is, therefore, sort of a crapshoot from a toxicity standpoint.
The one exception to this is Bulletproof Chocolate Fuel Bars, which are guaranteed to be low in mycotoxins. However, these bars contain xylitol, which I consider to be a toxic substance and which I believe eventually will be found to have been a huge mistake for people to be eating. So I cannot recommend those.
Chocolate is healthful enough and enjoyable enough that I think it’s worth the risk of coming across a contaminated bar from time to time. And actually, I have eaten all of the brands listed below repeatedly and done really well with them almost all of the time.
The most interesting of these brands to me is Sjaak’s, a small northern California company owned by a chocolate maker who learned his craft as a boy in the Netherlands. Sjaak’s makes a variety of delicious chocolate bites (small, reasonably priced chocolates filled with almond butter, caramel, hazelnut truffle or other confections) as well as more standard chocolate bars. Their Mint Mills remind me of the Frango mints that I used to buy from the old Marshall Field’s in Chicago, except that these are much yummier and certainly more healthful than those ever were.
Alter Eco also makes some pretty good filled truffles that are more widely available in stores.
One brand that is not organic (just GMO-free) and that also is not gluten-free (due to pretzel cross-contamination) is Bark Thins, which makes bags of chocolate bark with various items added (I especially like the pumpkin-seed version). It is really delicious chocolate and almost always has felt very good to me. I do not feel any hesitation about purchasing it due to toxicity concerns (though I have generally steered clear of the pretzel ones since they have non-organic wheat that could be glyphosate contaminated).
I recently tried a Meltaway Mint Truffle Bar from Seattle Chocolates (non-organic, non-GMO) and was really impressed by it. Although the other items that I have tried from them so far have been more sweet than I prefer, the line feels pretty clean to me and seems to have some potential.
I have especially enjoyed the raw Lulu’s chocolate bars. It is a pricey brand and can be hard to find in stores, but sometimes they offer free shipping on their website. My favorite is the Smoked Sea Salt Almond, but I suggest trying a variety pack (and maybe also the Maca Buttercups).
Rawmio is a newer raw-chocolate company that also is producing very good products featuring high-quality and healthful ingredients, with broader distribution in natural-foods retailers.
Alter Eco, Theo and Dagoba offer a variety of chocolate bars that I have consistently found enjoyable. Probably my favorite of these is the Alter Eco Dark Quinoa bar, which reminds me a bit of a Nestle Crunch bar.
One product from Dagoba that I really like is their Tasting Squares, which are small individually wrapped chocolate bars (one-third of an ounce each).
Dagoba also makes another noteworthy product called Chocodrops, which are little discs of mildly sweet dark chocolate (74% cacao). I generally have just added them to trail mix, but they also would be good for baking.
A more standard-shaped bittersweet chocolate chip (organic and 65% cacao) that is appropriate for baking is offered by Sunspire. I have only tried it once and thought it was pretty good.
For organic artisan chocolates sold in gift boxes, the award-winning Monterey Chocolate Company is worth checking out. They are located in northern California but shipping may be a possibility.
A brand that I have yet to try but that I have heard good things about from chocolate professionals is Lake Champlain Chocolates, which has many organic items.
Stirs the Soul is another raw-chocolate line that I would like to try.
Although the brands listed here are the ones that came up as top-rated in the Mercey Hot Springs organic chocolate tasting and that I have subsequently had particularly good experiences with, other organic chocolates may have the potential of being really good too, at least some of the time.
In addition, it is my feeling that good chocolate made in Europe has the potential of being far superior to all of these other brands on both purity and taste, even if it is not labeled as organic or GMO-free and even if it is not terribly expensive. I recently purchased a bar of Zoet chocolate (from Belgium) at my local Hy-Vee grocery store that turned out to be the best chocolate I had had in a very long time, for instance.
Chocolate Spreads
Quite a few companies now produce organic or mostly organic chocolate spreads (many of them with hazelnut butter mixed in).
Of the versions listed below, I think the Italian one – Rigoni di Asiago Nocciolato – is the clear winner in terms of quality and yumminess.
Nutiva’s version is less expensive and less sweet, and thus more suited for use as an everyday spread.
Justin’s also makes an reasonably good product (organic except for the nuts and palm oil) that is especially useful since it comes in convenient travel packets.
There are three additional new contenders in this category that I would like to try: Raw Mio (an organic and wholly raw product); Jem (an organic raw product with sprouted hazelnuts, raw cacao nibs and coconut sugar); and Barefoot & Chocolate (a partly organic product that gets great reviews).
Although I like chocolate spreads, I rarely have purchased them except when doing taste testing. Instead, if I want this kind of treat, I usually just mix some cocoa powder with melted coconut oil and raw honey, and maybe a little nut butter, to create a healthful version of my own.
Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter (2)
Cocoa
I often mix cocoa with coconut oil and honey, to make a healthful chocolate that firms up nicely when it is spread on waxed paper and kept in the refrigerator.
If cocoa butter is used instead of the coconut oil, then the mixture can be molded into little candies, such as these adorable chocolate bears created by Julie Genser of the EI-oriented website Planet Thrive.
(Unfortunately I have not yet found a cocoa butter that I have been very happy with, and so am especially open to suggestions about brands.)
I’m starting to think the best cocoa out there may be Rapunzel, which is from Germany. It tastes good to me and I always have done well with it.
I also have liked Bulletproof chocolate powder, which is guaranteed to be low in mycotoxins.
Dagoba cocoa also has seemed fine to me on the one or two occasions I have tried it. (Despite the fact that Dagoba was purchased by Hershey in 2006, their products have felt pretty good to me across the board, especially considering their price point.)
I also have received some positive comments about the cacao products from Wilderness Family Naturals but have yet to try them.
Coconut
Coconut has a great many health benefits and is an antifungal, but it also has the potential of being mold- and mycotoxin-contaminated. This apparently is mostly due to mold growing on the coconut shells and then contaminating the product when the shells are opened.
Although companies that are concerned with product quality may be more reliable with regard to the mycotoxin issue, I have heard scattered reports even of those that pride themselves on offering products that are non-toxic in other ways selling coconut with obvious mold issues. Unfortunately, despite the thousands of papers on mycotoxin dangers in the literature, some people who should know better still tend to underestimate their importance.
I personally have not had a problem with the Let’s Do Organic line of coconut products and have heard mostly good reports about it from others. The company makes a variety of products, including creamed coconut (aka coconut butter); shredded and flaked dried coconut; coconut flour; coconut cream; and sweetened condensed coconut milk.
Native Forest (which – like Let’s Do Organic – is owned by Edward & Sons) sells canned coconut milks that also seem to be consistently pretty good quality. They can be used to make quick coconut milk for drinking purposes and also are especially useful for making curries. (I recommend starting off by using it in the Anti-Inflamatory Cauliflower Curry featured on the Living Clean in a Dirty World blog a while back – it’s a delicious dish!)
Native Forest also makes a Vegan Coconut Milk Powder that I have not tried.
Tierra Farms offers some dried coconut products that I have liked (plus the quality of their products seems good across the board).
Nutiva makes coconut flour that I have yet to try but that I would guess is really good based on the quality of the company’s coconut oils and coconut manna.
Wilderness Family Naturals and Tropical Traditions also produce a wide range of coconut products that I have yet to try.
Let’s Do Organic Coconut Products
Coconut Butter
Pureed coconut goes by a number of descriptive names, including creamed coconut, coconut butter and coconut manna. It can be used as the basis for homemade coconut milk, to add depth to soups, in baked goods or smoothies, or just eaten on its own.
Artisana and Nutiva both sell very good coconut butters in jars, and Nutiva put together a guide on how to use it.
A challenge with coconut butter is unless the environment is very warm (such as above 80 degrees), the product tends to separate and to get very hard. It then will need to be warmed up (such as by putting it into a hot water bath or a warm oven) in order to bring it back to a spoonable consistency.
For this reason, I really like the single-serving Artisana Coconut Butter Squeeze Packs (of about an ounce). Even if the coconut butter in these gets hard, it can be softened by kneading it for a while before opening the package. They are on the expensive side though (about $2 per package).
When convenience is less of a concern, I suggest considering Let’s Do Organic creamed coconut.Inside the box is a plastic pouch filled with seven ounces of coconut butter, which likely will be rock-solid and need to be softened by letting it sit in hot water for a while. The package then can be opened and transferred to a different jar or used all at once. Admittedly this is a little bit of extra work, but it is much less expensive than the other products and I have found the quality to be just as good.
Once coconut butter has been softened, it is easy to convert it into homemade coconut milk by mixing it with water in a blender or a shaker jar. The amount used could be anywhere from 1 to 3 tablespoons per cup, depending on the thickness desired.
Personally though, while I like the thickness and creaminess of homemade coconut milk, I find the taste to be a little overwhelming to use on its own. I think it is much better when it is balanced with nut or seed butter.
Following are instructions for how I usually do it, though I suggest that experimenting with the proportions of all the ingredients. I tend to use this mostly when on the road since good cow’s milk is not easily available and so am suggesting a shaker jar, but of course a blender could be used as well.
For about 8 ounces: 1) Put jar containing coconut butter in a hot water bath until coconut butter is softened (or knead squeeze packet until softened). 2) Put one tablespoons of creamed coconut and one tablespoon of nut/seed butter into a shaker jar. 3) Add about 1/2 cup of hot water and shake vigorously until smooth. 4) Stir in additional cold water (1/2 cup or more) until the consistency is as desired.
For 1+ quarts: 1) Put Let’s Do Organic Creamed Coconut plastic package in hot water until softened, then cut open the plastic package and squeeze contents into a one-quart Mason jar. 2) Add 2-4 tablespoons of nut or seed butter plus 1 cup of hot water and shake vigorously. 3) Add cold water to make one quart. (Note that the consistency of this very well may be too thick, and so I suggest stirring some additional cold water into the first cup and also into the jar until thickness is as desired.)
Although almond milk is nice in these recipes, other nut or seed butters (even much less expensive ones such as sunflower seed butter) work well too.
Let’s Do Organic Coconut Products
Coconut Oil
My experience with coconut oil is that the quality can vary substantially across brands, apparently in large part due to mold contamination of the coconut (including the coconut shell) occurring prior to the oil being pressed.
Choosing a brand that has focused on eliminating this kind of problem on the supplier end and thus is selling clean product is important.
I was really happy to discover the Carrington Farms brand, for instance. It has felt really clean to me and also is available at a low cost via Amazon.
I also have a lot of experience with coconut oil from Nutiva and Dr. Bronner’s. Those products are also very good but much more expensive.
I’ve received some good reports about the coconut oil produced by Wilderness Family Naturals but have yet to try it.
Brain Octane Oil is a particular kind of MCT oil made by Bulletproof. It is super-filtered to reduce contamination, is liquid at room temperature, has no noticeable coconut taste, and is suggested to have many health benefits.
I use Brain Octane Oil nearly every day and believe it to have been quite helpful to me. I especially have liked it for diluting wild oregano oil and other quality essential oils for internal use.
Coconut Water
If you read a lot of the discussion on the Internet, you would think that Harmless Harvest (which is a raw product) is the only decent mainstream brand of coconut water out there. Food Babe just raves about it, for instance.
In our coconut water taste test at Mercey Hot Springs though, two other brands of organic coconut water – Taste Nirvana and Purity – came out substantially ahead of Harmless Harvest. (And this article about a coconut water tasting by some Portland foodies reported the exact same thing.)
Both of these other brands are pasteurized, and Purity is made from concentrate.
I tend to believe that products that taste the best to people who are used to eating clean foods usually are the best from a health standpoint too, and that perhaps the buzz about Harmless Harvest is missing something important.
Maybe it’s just not realistic to expect to be able to ship raw coconut water all over the world and have it remain consistently good to drink, for instance.
The non-raw brands also are a lot more convenient in terms of obtaining them and storing them; they are more portable (making them more appropriate for use during workouts or when traveling); and they are considerably less expensive.
Here in the Heartland, I cannot even find Harmless Harvest.
So especially if Harmless Harvest is not seeming a practical or palatable choice (as is the case for me), I would suggest giving these other two brands a try.
Coffee
Like chocolate, coffee is a product that can be substantially contaminated with ochratoxin, a mycotoxin that can cause kidney damage.
Bulletproof coffee is guaranteed to be low in mycotoxins, and it now is available in two dark roasts as well as the original medium roast. I’ve gone through a few five-pound bags of it and have liked it.
I also have done really well with the organic Mexican Chiapas coffee from Fresh Roasted Coffee, which I buy in five-pound bags through Amazon. It is currently about half the price of Bulletproof and I think that it tastes quite good (though I admit I use it mostly for coffee enemas).
Fresh Roasted Coffee’s organic Bali Blue Moon has felt good and tasted good to me too.
Issues with mycotoxin contamination of foods are so problematic in parts of Africa that I have not bought any coffee at all from there in a long time. Probably there are some parts of that continent where mold issues are much less problematic than in other parts, but I do not know which parts those are.
Although I do not think that instant coffee is ideal for any purpose, once in a while I use Mt. Hagen for drinking or coffee enemas and have done fine with it.
Condiments
Many condiments for adding flavor and texture to foods (including grilling sauces, hot sauces, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and fermented sauces) are discussed in their own categories in this article. This sections includes stir-fry sauces as well as a hodgepodge of other bottled condiments not discussed elsewhere.
The Ginger People Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce is a very nice product that works well on any kind of fried foods or in stir fries. It is non-organic/non-GMO (and does not include any other non-organic ingredients that especially concern me in terms of likely glyphosate contamination). I suspect I will be buying this sauce again now that I have discovered it.
I’ve enjoyed a few items from the new Sky Valley line of sauces from Organic Valley and would be interested in trying more. In addition to the barbecue sauces and hot sauces discussed in other sections, certified organic items from this line include a General Tso’s Sauce; a Teriyaki Sauce; a Plum Sauce; a Thai Peanut Sauce and a Miso Glaze & Marinade.
Some additional Sky Valley sauces are non-organic/non-GMO and free of items (such as wheat, oats or barley) that I consider to be high risks for glyphosate contamination. These include a Sweet Chili Sauce; a Mole Sauce; a tomatillo-based Verde Sauce; an Enchilada Sauce; and a rice-wine Koji Sauce.
San-J also offers a line of non-organic/non-GMO Asian sauces (made in the U.S. rather than Japan) that are free of ingredients that I consider to be at high risk for glyphosate contamination. I tried their Sweet & Tangy Cooking Sauce (which gets most of its sweetness from honey, pineapple juice and apple juice) and thought that it was pretty good. I might be inclined to experiment more with this line, especially since it is pretty reasonably priced.
The Amore pastes (tomato, garlic, pesto, herbs, hot peppers or anchovy) are labeled as GMO-free but not organic. They are from Italy, seem to be very high-quality, and are convenient since just a little bit can be squeezed out of the tube as needed. I feel really good about that product line, and the fact that the products are inexpensive is a nice bonus.
I usually make my own fresh ginger juice since I have the juicer set up, but the The Ginger People organic bottled product is a nice option.
Eden Umeboshi Plum Paste is a fermented plum product from Japan that adds an intriguing tart and salty flavor to a variety of foods. (Those who find themselves drawn to it also may be interested in the Eden Ume Plum Concentrate, which provides the same digestive benefits and flavor – but without all the salt – in tea form.)
I use quite a bit of grated horseradish and seem to have done fine with the random brands that I have found on refrigerated store shelves. I do buy the Bubbies product when I can find it though.
Sky Valley International Sauces
The Ginger People Ginger Juice
The Ginger People Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce (2)
Cookies – European Wheat
The packaged cookies that I like the most and consistently do perfectly fine with are gourmet-type brands from Europe, which I am sometimes able to find in natural or gourmet food stores.
I especially like Jovial cookies, which are organic, not very sweet, and made with Einkorn wheat (an ancient grain that is often tolerated by those who are sensitive to regular wheat).
But I almost never have had any problems with other high-quality European cookies either, even though they are never marked as organic and and even though they contain regular wheat.
Because glyphosate is so much less prevalent in Europe than in the U.S., and because these cookie companies are being so careful to continue to source the same sorts of high-quality ingredients that they have used for many decades or centuries, and because I feel good after eating these cookies, the lack of overt statements about GMO’s on their packaging does not concern me too much.
Following is a list of some of the European cookies that I have personally enjoyed, but other European brands with simple lists of ingredients likely would be just as good.
Other than concerns about breakage and staleness, the main consideration for me in purchasing European cookies is making sure that they were actually made in Europe. Products made in North America according to European recipes are not the same thing at all.
While I agree that there is something that seems a little perverse in my suggesting that people skip the Cheerios but go ahead and eat these yummy European cookies, until the U.S. food supply gets cleaned up, I do think that is where we are at. While I do not eat cookies like this very often, I seem to do just fine with them when I do eat them – and I think there’s a good reason for that.
Anna’s Ginger Thins (Sweden) (1, 2)
Jovial Einkorn Tea Cookies (Italy) (1, 2)
Jules Destrooper Almond Thins (Belgium) (1, 2)
Loacker Quadratini Cream Wafers (Austria) (1, 2)
Lotus Biscoff (Belgium) (1, 2)
LU Petit Ecolier Chocolate Biscuits (France) (1, 2)
Pierre Biscuiterie French Butter Cookies (France) (1,2)
Cookies – Gluten-Free
Many gluten-free cookies contain toxic ingredients or are not very enjoyable to eat, but I have come across a few lines that I do like.
Ginnybakes is a line of cookies that is both organic and gluten-free (based on rice flour and in some cases oats). It includes mini-cookies in serving-size packets (appropriate for take-along snacking and lunch boxes) as well as regular-sized cookies, and the products feel clean and taste good to me. I especially like the Chocolate-Chip Oatmeal Bliss Mini Cookies, which have a pretty strong coconut flavor and are not very sweet.
Lundberg Sweet Dreams Chocolate Rice Cakes are an all-organic dessert consisting of a plain rice cakes with a heavy coating of good chocolate on them. Especially for those looking to keep things as clean and simple as possible, they are very nice.
Tate’s Bake Shop makes chocolate-chip cookies with simple quality ingredients, including just rice flour rather than a mix of grains. I was surprised at how delicious they were the first time I tried them – almost indistinguishable from the regular Tate’s chocolate-chip cookies. They are non-organic but marked as GMO-free, and they do not contain any ingredients of particular concern to me.
Jovial (an Italian company) makes gluten-free cookies that are organic and filled with chocolate cream, fig paste or sour cherry preserves. These are soft and actually quite wonderful when fresh, but very hard and basically inedible when stale. Although I have found that I can resuscitate the cookies to some extent by steaming them briefly on the rack in my Instant Pot, buying them is still taking a risk.
Amy’s previously made very good gluten-free chocolate-chip and shortbread cookies using mostly almond flour as the base, but they appear to be out of production at the moment. They do currently make some Gluten-Free Biscotti that I would really like to try though.
Lundberg Sweet Dreams Chocolate Rice Cakes
Cookies – North American Wheat
Cadia – a Canadian company – makes quite yummy organic maple sandwich cookies shaped like maple leaves, available for sale in the U.S. through independent organic-type groceries as a “house brand.” (Trader Joe’s now sells a version of what looks like the same cookies, but they say nothing about ingredient toxicity on the package and so I will not eat those cookies.) Cadia also makes some additional basic organic cookies that I have not had a chance to try, and I suspect they may be pretty good based on the quality of the maple cookies.
Country Choice (now owned by Nature’s Path) makes several kinds of organic ookies that I think are all pretty good. I especially like their ginger lemon sandwich cookies, but the other sandwich cookies and the snacking cookies (vanilla wafers, ginger snaps and oatmeal cookies) are nice too.
Tate’s Bake Shop makes chocolate-chip wheat cookies that – like the company’s gluten-free version of the cookies – are delicately crisp and very delicious. These are not marked organic (just GMO-free) but I have tried them on several different occasions and never had a problem with them. The company owners express so much concern about ingredient quality that my guess is that they are obtaining their flour from a reliable source such as a specialty milling company that avoids grains contaminated by post-harvest glyphosate spraying, but I have not gotten confirmation of that.
Newman’s Own makes a few enjoyable varieties of cookies that seem pretty clean to me, but other products of theirs are less enjoyable or contain ingredients with potential glyphosate contamination. My favorite cookies of theirs are the Ginger Snaps, which contain bits of real candied ginger. (They also make Spelt Ginger Snaps, which I have never seen anywhere but would like to try since I do really well with the Spelt Pretzels from this company.) All of the Chocolate Chip Cookies (especially the Orange Chocolate Chip Cookies) have felt good to me, though the soy lecithin makes me a little nervous since they do not seem to be guaranteed as non-GMO. The Newman’s-O’s Sandwich Cookies also have felt and tasted okay to me (I especially like the Ginger-O’s), but they include a smattering of non-organic ingredients that I think could be glyphosate-contaminated (sunflower oil, soy lecithin, molasses) and I prefer the Country Choice sandwich cookies anyway. For various reasons, I would not consider eating the other cookies from Newman’s Own.
Frog Hollow offers a wide variety of delicious-sounding, organic, freshly-made bakery goods – including some cookies – that I have heard very good things about. I only have tried the granola myself, but it was good enough that I would be interested in experimenting more.
Country Choice Sandwich Cookies (1)
Newman’s Own Organics Cookies (1, 2)
Tate’s Bake Shop Cookies (1, 2)
Crackers – Gluten-Free
Probably my favorite gluten-free crackers are the light-as-air crispbreads by Le Pain des Fleurs, which are made in France and particularly appropriate for spreadable cheeses. The ones made with chestnut puree are my favorites. Admittedly they are a little expensive though.
The gluten-free crackers that I eat most often are based on rice and seeds – Edward & Sons rice snaps, Lundberg rice cakes, and Mary’s Gone Crackers.
Although the brand is not stated as being GMO-free or organic and also contains a few specific suspect ingredients (such as “natural flavors”), Blue Diamond Nut-Thins is a gluten-free cracker brand that feels pretty good to me, and that is widely available and inexpensive.
Crackers – Wheat/Rye
I seem to do consistently fine with the Dr. Kracker line of organic wheat crackers. They include many large seeds and are crunchy and flavorful. Boxes of smaller crackers as well as these large crispbread ones are now available.
The Jovial Einkorn wheat sourdough snack crackers are sturdy little squares that I suspect may be tolerable to many people who usually don’t do well with wheat, due to their starting with Einkorn (an ancient grain) and then making it into sourdough. They definitely seem to be high-quality but (at least for the plain version) do not have very much flavor. I suggest serving them with strongly flavored dips (such as hummus) or spreadable cheeses.
Finn Crisps (from Finland) and Wasa Crispbread (from Sweden) are two GMO-free but non-organic products that are worth considering. I especially enjoy the rye versions of the crackers.
The Back to Nature Organic Stoneground Wheat Crackers are tasty and elegant for a cheese tray, and I have occasionally bought them for that reason. (Note that Back to Nature is a brand that is partially owned by Kraft and that based on my own previous experiences and the relatively high levels of glyphosate that came up in a test of one of their crackers, I would not suggest any of their other products at this time.)
Back to Nature Stoneground Wheat Crackers (1)
Jovial Einkorn Sourdough Crackers (1)
More Discussion
Links to all parts of this discussion of tasty and clean packaged food products are as follows.