I swear, I’m not about to get preachy, but I’ve been doing a lot of documentary watching lately, followed by a little too much reading and the result is a combination of alarming awareness and also a sense of amazing power. Awareness that there are so many chemicals in the food we eat every day, and power that we don’t have to be victims to granola bars! You know?

I’m using granola bars as an example because with three kids, we can go through a lot of them! Originally, I tried making my own granola bars because I thought it would be cheaper to make them (not always), but the first time I made them it dawned on me just how few ingredients there are in an actual granola bar and how long the ingredient list is on the side of the box of store bought bars.

In a homemade granola bar, all you put in it is butter, brown sugar, honey, plain granola (I made my own with oats, honey, brown sugar and vanilla), rice cereal, and chocolate chips. Of course to really make your own, you’d have to also make your own rice cereal and chocolate chips and both of those are totally doable!

In a store bought granola bar there are 26 ingredients and include things like soybean oil, glycerin, soy lecithin, bht, and on and on and on.

So granola bars are one thing but what’s next?! I mean pancakes from scratch are no problem but does that mean I’m baking a loaf of bread every day? What about jam? What about the sugar in homemade jam? Nevermind, I just looked that one up, it’s not so awful if you use unrefined sugar.

It goes beyond food too, it’s also about the chemicals in our cleaning products, in our skin care products, in our makeup! I mean I know it’s also about the chemicals in the air all around us and all kinds of other really scary, but I’m talking right now about things we can physically and independently do something about. Right now.

There is a lot to learn and I know I’m leaving with yet another quickie post, but I was working on the design of the site/blog more today – the good news is, I’m pretty much done – and wanted to check in with what was on my mind.

Do you do scratch cooking? What about make up? Cleaning products?