Don't Try This at Home

Sandra was making taco soup yesterday from a recipe she's used several times. We both love it. One of the ingredients it calls for is a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch buttermilk salad dressing mix. Having nothing better to do than stand around the kitchen "supervising" the cook I took a look at the ingredients of the dressing mix which are, of course, listed on the packet back. The first ingredient listed is salt. The people at Hidden Valley obviously know Americans need more sodium in their diets. The second is monosodium glutimate. The third is maltodextrin. This one I had to look up. It's a carbohydrate that can be used as an artificial sweetener and is refined out of various starches like those found in rice. Then there were a couple of seasonings and something called calcium stearate. I had to look this one up too. According to Wikipedia it's "a non-toxic stabilizer and lubricant and an insoluble calcium salt of stearic acid." Applications include use as a flow agent in powders including some foods, a waterproofing agent for fabrics, and a lubricant in pencils and crayons. I was very reassured by the fact that Wikipedia said it was non-toxic. Then there was carrageenan, a "linear sulphated polysaccharides extracted from red seaweeds". I found that it is used as an ingredient in shoe polish which seemed bad to me, but it is also used in beer which made me feel a little better about it.

It's too late to make a "long story short" here but if it weren't I'd simply say "We omitted the packet of chemicals and the soup tasted great."