Essentially, Big Food has hijacked our taste buds and good common sense and fooled us into thinking gelatin based treats come from a tiny box full of unhealthy, ultra-processed ingredients. These ingredients eventually lead to disastrous health consequences for both kids and adults. That’s why I’m a passionate advocate for homemade and organic and ethically sourced food. So many common health issues that people think are normal, actually aren’t at all. That said, let’s take a closer look at the ingredients in store-bought jello and why they should be avoided. If you don’t mind, I’ll insert my logical thoughts and commentary along the way too.

Learn how to make homemade jello with a step-by-step tutorial on my blog at beckybuttlesamericana.com

The following are ingredients found in name brand boxes of Jello, how some of them are made and why they should be avoided.

1.) Sugar: This is the primary ingredient second to water, (which makes no sense since it’s a dry, powdered substance!) and it’s definitely not organic cane sugar. And even if it is, white sugar doesn’t add any nutritional value to the human body, but it sure causes a lot of costly problems!

The sugar in homemade jello comes from fruit juice, whole fruit or honey and maple syrup. In the corresponding blog post above, I highlight how to reduce the amount of sugar found in homemade jello. Not to worry, it’s just as tasty as store-bought, but healthier!

2.) Fruit juice concentrate: Sounds healthy and innocent, but I’ve developed a lot of warranted skepticism around what I see on food labels. While the general public has been fooled to think that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is an upstanding entity that has the best interests of the everyday American at heart, I’m here to tell you they don’t. They are shills for Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma and money talks. Thus, food label regulations are very soft and most ingredients on products like Jello aren’t required to be listed.

So, maybe this fruit juice concentrate really is from real fruit, but it’s likely not organic fruit, and we all know how conventional food is raised. With lots of chemicals and pesticides, that is. Also, Big Food chemists are paid to throw together hundreds or thousands of chemicals to make something taste like a particular food without actually using the real food itself. In other words, strawberry flavoring in common store-bought items generally doesn’t come from actual strawberries themselves.

3.) Adipic and Citric Acids: These are added for tartness. Just a logical question, why on earth does jello need an acidic or tart flavor at all, and doesn’t real fruit itself provide a slightly tart zing? Supposedly the fruit juice concentrate is real, right?! My guess is that it’s not :)

So, how is adipic acid made? Your guess is as good as mine. And that’s on purpose by the way. Big Food does not want you to know how these ingredients are made and what their health consequences are. Go to Google and type in “How is adipic acid made.” You’ll understand why I can’t swiftly explain it to you. You need a chemistry degree to figure it out.

For exclusive recipes and the latest blog posts, sign up for my newsletter over on the blog!

Sign Up for Newsletter

Let’s move on to citric acid. It’s found naturally in fruit with citrus fruits (thus the name) having the highest concentrations. It acts as a natural preservative in other foods, however its industrially made counterpart is what’s used the most (since its more financially feasible). Here is what Google AI had to say about how industrial citric acid is made.

“Citric acid is primarily manufactured through an industrial fermentation process using the fungus Aspergillus niger to metabolize sugar sources like corn syrup or molasses. The mold converts these sugars into citric acid, which is then isolated, purified through precipitation, and crystallized. While it occurs naturally in citrus fruits, industrial production is more efficient.”

First of all, this doesn’t tell me much. And second, just a thought, but I see more conventionally (chemical and pesticide laden) grown sugar being used as well as mold. OH MY GOODNESS, where to begin.

You already read my thoughts on sugar up above. It’s not good. And mold?!?! Mold contributes to so many health problems, especially with leaky gut (in other words most Americans) that you don’t want want anything to do with it. Trust me! Do some research and you’ll find lots of natural and functional medical doctors talking about the topic of mold.

Sorry, but common sense tells me that anything with mold at its foundation, including citric acid, isn’t something we should be ingesting. And sadly, citric acid is used as a preservative in everything found in the grocery store.

4.) Artificial Dyes: Red 40, Yellow 6 and Blue 2 are common food dyes found in store-bought jello. Tell me, why exactly does food have to look like a certain color? Can’t food simply be made with real, whole ingredients and naturally look like it’s supposed to look?

Again, Big Food has conditioned us to think food has to look a certain way in order for it to taste like a particular flavor. I can assure you, it doesn’t. Something doesn’t have to be a ghostly green color in order to have a minty flavor and strawberry jello doesn’t need to be fire engine red to taste like strawberries.

Essentially, artificial dyes are made with petroleum (crude oil) and thousands of other synthetic chemicals. Their side effects include anything from hyperactivity and behavioral changes, neurological disorders, allergies, cancer and other diseases, and more.

I’m guessing you’d like to avoid all that, right?!

5.) Natural and Artificial flavors: The FDA has no legal definition for the food label “natural flavor” and we all know artificial means synthetic or fake. Oftentimes, companies hide hundreds or thousands of chemicals behind that label in the name of “propriety recipe” so consumers and competitors can’t mimic the product.

To Sum It All Up

I hope I’ve convinced you to make homemade jello vs. store-bought. I really believe disease and degeneration is avoidable in all generations if families return to real homemade food and prioritize healthy choices. No, it’s not as easy as the “old days”, but with a mindset shift amongst families, Americans can regain health without relying on the Big Food, Big Ag and Big Pharma system that’s meant to bankrupt us, steal vitality from our years and ultimately cut our lives much shorter than God intended them to be.

To make your own homemade jello, head to my blog for the step-by-step tutorial.

Subscribe now

Share

Thanks so much for stopping by! -Becky

That said, let me take a moment to introduce myself. I’m a wife to a herdsman and volunteer fire fighter named Luke. We are both Wisconsin born and raised and proud to call Northeast Wisconsin home. We embrace the four seasons and everyday life in our 1900 farmhouse. Yes, when you think stereotypical Wisconsinite, we are all of that!

We love farm life, good cheese and brats and pot-lucks with all sorts of traditional dishes from the ethnic melting pot of cultures here in Wisconsin. Think German potato salad, Polish sausage, pączki’s, etc. We loudly cheer for the Green Bay Packers and all Wisconsin sports teams. In the last few years, the snap of a baseball hitting a glove has been part of our summer soundtrack at Green Bay Rockers games. If you’re from this area, their games are a ton of fun, so check 'em out!

Our favorite destination is gorgeous Door County, the Cape Cod of the Midwest (at least I think so!). It’s nautical beauty dotted with cherry trees and Belgium and Scandinavian cultural touches is second to none. There’s also the rugged Northwoods, which we head to every fall for the colors. Summers also consist of county fairs, rodeos, fishing and Sunday afternoon drives to destination nowheres. Winter days are slow, often filled with cards or board games, reading self-improvement or gardening books and the Bible. We attend an occasional Green Bay Gamblers hockey game at the Resch Center, which is where we originally met on a sort-of blind date.

All of that is in our “free” time, which isn’t much. Spring, summer and fall days mostly consist of gardening, harvesting and preserving. Mostly by me, but Luke helps when he can. While we live on a beautiful one acre lot in the country, we don’t have an actual farm. He works on a large dairy nearby, about 75 hours a week. It’s true! That’s farm life, which Luke has loved his whole life, especially the cows.

While Luke is at work, my every day life consists of cooking our meals from scratch, trying to keep our large farmhouse clean and tidy, taking care of Sadie (our dog), working out and running my blog beckybuttlesamericana.com. And when it’s summertime, there’s the garden of course. It might not seem like a lot, but without much help, my days are full and fly by fast.

If you can’t tell by now, we do not have any children. We’ll leave it at that for now, but perhaps it’s something I’ll talk about in future posts. If you are blessed enough to have children, hug them tight and never take them for granted.

I also dabble in canvas painting and I crochet as well, which is a skill my mom taught me in fourth grade. I’m proud to say my 4-H projects won blue ribbons at the county fair!

My life is certainly full of blessings and I’m thankful for every day that I wake up with another opportunity to live a good life. I’ve always had an affinity for simple, country living, having grown up in a farmhouse in the country as a kid. I loved that life and wanted the same as an adult. I’d say it goes hand in hand pretty well with healthy living too since I advocate for a homegrown, homemade lifestyle. Maybe growing your own food and cooking from scratch, hanging clothes on the line to dry, saying no to buying everything we want, staying home and stretching the money we do have isn’t always convenient or sexy, but it’s sure provided Luke and I with better health and more happiness in many ways.

If you love all those things, I invite you to check out my blog beckybuttlesamericana.com and come on back to my space here on Substack. I’ll write corresponding articles here to my blog posts and everyday thoughts and musings. Stay tuned for more about my journey here to my mid-forties self and how my creative side blossomed into my blog. I hope you join me! Until then,

Have a blessed day! -Becky