Homemade Snacks

Homemade cheese crackers

I used a recipe from the Pioneer Woman herself, Ree Drummond, to make some cheese crackers from scratch. Oh my, they were heavenly. I was craving some goldfish or cheese-its, and since I am trying not to purchase all the packaging that comes with those snacks, I decided to make my own cheese crackers instead. The only trash I ended up making was the plastic wrapping from the cheddar cheese I used. I have heard and read online that you can find cheddar cheese to purchase by the wheel so that you would then only be left with wax waste (which is very reusable) but I had no such luck at Kroger.

Plastic wrapping for the cheese

 Since my nutrition fact comparison from a couple of days ago was such a hit, I decided to do the same comparison between these homemade crackers and store-bought cheez-its. I weighed out my crackers so that I could compare the two by weight instead of number, since my crackers are much thicker than cheez-its. Turns out that 8 of my homemade crackers weigh the same as 27 cheez-its.

Weighing the homemade crackers

Below are the nutrition facts for my homemade crackers on the left, and for store-bought cheez-its on the right.

My crackers seem to have more of every nutrient; calories, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, protein, vitamin A, calcium, and iron. My crackers have less carbohydrates, and also lack the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.

My crackers also contain significantly less ingredients, and more natural ones at that. A huge problem with engineered snacks that most Americans now consume are the unnatural chemicals that are added for taste or color or preservation. When we consume these chemicals, our body has a hard time processing them, and so the body sets the chemicals aside in your body, coated in fat so that the chemical does not damage any other part of your body. Enter the American obesity crisis. Now, when your body tries to break down fat after you exercise or fast, those questionable chemicals are released into your body, making you feel sick. By beginning a more natural, trashless diet we can fight back against companies who would have us hooked to their chemically enhanced foods. To quote Bill Buford, "Food made by hand is an act of defiance, and runs contrary to everything in modernity."