Why home baking is best??

I am on my soap box today, I have just been browsing through the Sunday papers and I have come across this article about home baking featured in the Guardian supplement . lifeandhealth.guardian.  It argues that home baked is best. It has listed what would normally go into a home baked cake and then what’s normally in a shop bought cake and some of our shop bought bread. Here is the list: eeekkkk!! 

 Joanna Blythman is the author of Bad Food Britain: How a Nation Ruined Its Appetite (4th Estate) argues:

Typical ingredients

Home-baked

Butter

Sugar

Freshly shelled eggs

Wheat flour: self-raising, or plain with baking powder (bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar)

Shop-bought

Butter (only in a minority of cakes)

Margarine (made from chemically hardened oils such as palm)

Sugar

Glucose

Fructose

Invert sugar syrup

Dried egg powder

Skimmed milk powder

Wheat flour

Cornflour

Modified maize starch

Modified tapioca starch

Soya flour

Raising agents (disodium diphosphate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, calcium carbonate)

Glycerol (a humectant to keep cake moist longer)

Emulsifiers (acacia gum, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids,

calcium stearoyl-2-lactylate, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids)

Acidity regulators (sodium citrates, citric acid)

Flavourings, usually synthetic

Colouring (anthocyanins)

Preservative (potassium sorbate)

Stabilisers (xanthan gum, tragacanth)

Salt

This is a quite frightening list and it has convinced me that home baked is definetly better for you and your health. From now on, no more shop bought cakes for pennypincher’s household, For sure!!!    

Jane Asher, wrote a marvellous article in this supplement health.guardian.co.uk/guides/baking/, she has inspired me!!