Feeding My Family Poison

My freak out moment came this morning after falling down the proverbial rabbit hole of Facebook/Youtube videos...and I think you know that you too have fallen down the rabbit hole at one point or another.  It is when you start watching or reading one thing that you were looking up and that next video pops up after the one you were just watching...it is just as interesting, if not more, than the last one you watched and one hour later you realize you forgot what you were doing on your phone or computer in the first place.  This morning I fell down the rabbit hole, and it is the first time in a long time I'm glad I did, let me explain why.

I am very cautious about what I purchase for my family in terms of soaps, shampoos, toothpaste...don't even get me started on that rant...and foods.  I buy mostly organic, or minimally processed foods for my family and we eat pretty healthily.  I'd like to say we eat healthy100% of the time but in reality it is about 80% of the time, if I am being honest with myself, because sometimes we go through the McDonald's drive-through for a happy meal or a fruit and yogurt parfait, which are just loaded with sugar, but they are delicious and a tiny bit healthy (this is the lie I tell myself to justify all the sugar I am about to consume).

Every once in a while, I break down in the grocery store in a moment of "hanger infused weakness" and buy something I don't normally buy...like for instance, that buy-one-get-one box of Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch to which I succumbed to last week after Karate class in Wally World (I hate that place, but my Aldi and Florida Grub Hub are both closed now for an entire month because of renovations...and I am literally dying for them to be open again because this Wally World thing is for the birds.)  Well this morning on Facebook, this guy was ranting about an ingredient in both of those cereals called Trisodium Phosphate or TSP for short.  It is used by painters to degrease walls before painting and causes harmful changes to bodies of water when it leaches out of soil or runoff into groundwater or lakes and rivers.  It causes algae blooms and kills all of the aquatic life in streams, rivers, and bodies of water that are dependent on the oxygen in the water from the oxygen producing plants that grow on the bottoms of them.
BHT & Tri Sodium Phosphate in one cereal...quite a concoction of known toxins...YUMMY, HUH?
So when I saw this guy freaking out, I decided to take it with a grain of salt and go grab my cereal boxes and ingredient read.  The kicker is, cereal is a food of convenience really, and it makes school mornings easier when we wake up late or someone is up earlier and has the hunger bug...but trading the possible overall health of my family for convenience is not a worthy trade for me...especially now that I know better.  What I found was not only appalling but downright true.  It had TSP in it, and for the other cereal without TSP, I found an equally interesting ingredient in it called BHT.  What the heck is that you ask?

BHT or butyl hydroxytoluene is a fat-soluble synthetic compound which is commonly used to preserve foods and cosmetics to slow down the autoxidation rate of ingredients in a product that can cause changes in the taste or color. As such, it is primarily used to prevent fats in foods from becoming rancid – but it is also used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, jet fuels, rubber, petroleum products, electrical transformer oil, and embalming fluid...and BHT accumulatively builds up in the human body...which is No Bueno.  Sure sounds strange that  BHT is something that is found in our food, right?
The good thing is that TSP or BHT is not ending up going on our bodies because everyone in my house uses Shoogie products, but I am not for a minute adding anything to their toxic load for their tiny growing bodies. I use Vitamin E oil in my products instead of BHT, and did you know that it is an acceptable exchange ingredient, albeit a more expensive version, which is why I suspect that the big cosmetic companies use the cheaper synthetic version of the preservative known as BHT.  Did you know that the first ingredient in the so called "Natural" 30 SPF sunblock Aveeno is BHT? 

You can reduce your unnatural ingredient load just by making small changes. https://www.shoogiecompany.com/listing/518820698/fun-in-the-sun-kit Shoogie 30+SPF sunblock ingredients read like this: Organic Coconut Oil, Unrefined Shea Butter, Organic Almond Oil, Organic Argan Oil, Organic Beeswax, Organic red raspberry seed oil, geranium oil, non-nano zinc oxide, essential oils, & love.  They smell wonderful, make your skin soft, and protect them from the sun's harmful rays...and they are at the same price point as Aveeno.  check us out online and get your natural fix today!  Free shipping on orders over $50... www.shoogiecompany.com



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