What’s in My Mayo?!

I will do my best not to overwhelm you all with posts about yucky processed foods, but I can’t make any promises. What can I say? When I am passionate about something – like eating wholesome, nutritious foods – I want to share it with everyone!

I am amazed at the amount of unhealthy ingredients in our foods. Not even hiding. Just right there in plain sight, listed right there in the ingredients.

Take this Heinz mayo, for example…

Looks pretty normal, right? Has that nice, clean label with the words “Real Mayonnaise” on it. I bought this recently and I even glanced at the ingredients before sticking it in my cart. No partially hydrogenated oils, no high fructose corn syrup (I always check – you’d be surprised at all of the weird places I’ve found this!).

I did notice the CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA in the ingredients, but it sounded pretty harmless. It wasn’t until I pulled this mayo out of the refrigerator this morning, to mix up a batch of homemade ranch dressing, that I decided to look up this unfamiliar ingredient. Just to make sure I am truly sticking to this unprocessed plan.

As soon as I began looking up this ingredient, I knew I had been duped. Yuck. Here are a couple of excerpts from the articles I read:

Calcium Disodium is often used as a drug to stop lead poisoning or to treat someone exposed to radioactivity. It causes your body to expel heavy metals. (source)

It is widely used to dissolve limescale. (source)

In laundry products and cleansing agents, disodium EDTA softens hard water and improves the bleaching and cleansing performance of non-chlorine cleansers. (source)

I have found several recipes for homemade mayo, which I have never tried before. I know that there has got to be some healthier mayo choices available to buy as well. So, my quest for a healthy mayo begins…

This is why I decided to take the October Unprocessed Challenge. I encourage all of you – if you’re not already – to read your ingredient labels. If you still choose to purchase certain products, that is your choice. But get to know what’s in your food!