The Five Ingredient Pantry

Rule #6: Avoid Food Products That Contain More Than Five Ingredients.                                            - Michael Pollan

Right now, I'm in a point in my life where I want to cut the junk. All the junk. What does this mean? 

- If I'm doing cardio at the gym, I turn off the TV. I don't need someone else who sells airtime to the highest bidder deciding what I consume visually. 

- If I get catalogs in the mail that I don't want, I call the 800-number on the back and ask them to stop sending them to me. 

- If I haven't used it or worn it in over a year and it holds no sentimental value (i.e., my wedding dress), it goes in the giveaway pile. 

- If small plastic "junk" toys come into our home, I patiently observe the 24-hour waiting period that it takes for our child to lose interest in it, then whisk it away, out of our home. 

And then food. Obviously I think about food often, and lean towards the local/healthy/organic side of the spectrum. Since we make a lot of our food from scratch, I'm pretty comfortable with how we eat and what we eat. But still, somehow, through grocery store coupon "freebies" and gifts and impulse buys and a weakness for cold cereal, we have a constant flow of junk food coming through our home. Highly processed, lots of preservatives, white flour white sugar junk. 

I'm over it. 

So I went through the pantry and separated out anything with more than five ingredients. Why five ingredients? Pollan explains: 

“Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients. The specific number you adopt is arbitrary, but the more ingredients in a packaged food, the more highly processed it probably is. Note 1: A long list of ingredients in a recipe is not the same thing; that’s fine. Note 2: Some products now boast, somewhat deceptively, about their short ingredient lists. Häagen-Dazs has a new line of ice creamed called ‘five.’ Great–but it’s still ice cream. Same goes for the three-ingredient Tostitos corn chips advertised by Frito-Lay–okay, but they’re still corn chips.”

My priority in food is making delicious choices that support the well-being of me, my family, and my community. After this little pantry clean-out, I realized that the five-ingredient rule is a reliable way to cut out the items that aren't contributing to our food priorities. 

So what did I find in my pantry? Since I like to cook, I have a lot of the good stuff: oils, vinegars, beans, pasta and rice, dried and canned fruit, honey, maple syrup - the basic ingredients that shape the base of our daily meals. These are the keepers. 

However, there's plenty of junk food, and it became quite apparent that we have a cracker addiction. Ritz, saltines, Goldfish, Teddy Grahams, regular grahams, Wheat Thins - all of them have a ton of ingredients, and I'm guessing I can find better options, like healthier crackers, subbing in veggies instead - or even making my own crackers. 

Then our array of cereal. Decreasing our consumption of processed cereals will require a family meeting, as others in our household have strong affection towards Mini-Wheats and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I eat little bowls of cereal as a bedtime snack occasionally too. But again, perhaps there are some better options. 

Then the condiments, seasonings, and toppings: Hershey's syrup, taco sauce, mayo, Shore Lunch, salsa, marshmallows. Add in bread, fruit snacks, flour tortillas, tortilla chips, chocolate chips, and there's plenty of room for improvement. 

So to kick things off, I threw half of it in a bag, the worst offenders at least (pictured at the top of the post) that were still unopened, off to a local food drive. Already, I feel better, a little more junk cleared out, a little more space to breathe, and frankly, none of these items are doing us any good in terms of nourishment. The rest, I plan to use it up, pass it on, and slowly seek out substitutions when I can. 

But before you think I'm going 100% with this five-ingredient thing, there's another food rule that I'm a big believer in: 

Thinking about doing your own five-ingredient pantry review? I found the blog 100 Days of Real Food to be a good resource. Here's her Five Ingredient Rule page.