Oh No! GMO & Home Made Mayonnaise
As I began learning about the dangers of GMO foods a couple of years ago, and how toxic these products are to the environment and our bodies, I began removing GMO from my diet every way that I could.
It is estimated that at least 70 percent of the prepared foods on our supermarket shelves contain GMO ingredients, so avoiding GMO requires one to be a bit of a detective and to carefully read all labels. GMO ingredients sneak into food in all kinds of ways!
Unless a product is specifically labelled as certified organic, if it contains soy, corn or canola it is GMO.
I didn’t personally eat that many prepared foods anyway….I like to cook from scratch…but I did enjoy the convenience of certain condiments..
Which brings me to the subject of mayonnaise… Most commercial brands of mayo are made with canola oil. This oil is pressed from the seeds of a hybridized strain of rapeseed which was developed in Canada, so the oil got its name from Canada + oil. It has been touted as a healthy dietary choice because it’s low in saturated fat.
The problem is, about 90 percent of all “canola” crops in both Canada and the US have been genetically modified to be “Round-Up Ready”. This means that these crops have been tinkered with genetically in order to withstand massive doses of the weed killer Round-Up, which is absorbed into the plants and ends up in all foods made from this produce.
Round-Up is an herbicide developed by Monsanto Corporation which utilizes the extremely toxic chemical glyphosate to destroy weeds.
But, Mother Nature is nothing if not resourceful, and the weeds themselves are becoming increasingly resistant to glyphosate, meaning that every year farmers have to use more of the poison to kill the weeds, which means that even more of this toxic chemical ends up in our food!
Genetically modified foods have already been totally banned in a number of countries as people have been awakened to their dangers. Many countries require that GMO food be labelled, unfortunately this is not the case in either Canada or the USA….yet. However, the battle is heating up as activists all over North America call for mandatory GMO labelling.
But genetically modified crops are so ultimately destructive to the planet and our health that they shouldn’t be grown at all! Sure, labelling the stuff means people will become more aware of what’s in their food, but these toxic crops will still be growing, killing bees and destroying biodiversity.
The best way to cut the head off of this particular snake would be if everyone just quit buying the stuff!
Because of the GMO canola oil in commercial mayonnaise, I quit using it a couple of years ago. I like mayo, and always used to have a jar of Hellman’s in the fridge. When I quit Hellman’s cold turkey, I switched to organic mayo, but this required making a trip out of town in order to obtain it.
Soooo…I decided to try making homemade mayo. It would save me a drive, and I’d know exactly what was in my mayonnaise. But I had tried making homemade mayo many years ago, way before I had such conveniences as a food processor and a blender in my kitchen.
And there certainly wasn’t any internet….as I recall I used a recipe from the original “Joy of Cooking”. This homemade mayo project came about because I wanted to taste real mayo, as recommended by famous chefs, not because I was worried about what was in my food back then.
Making homemade mayo came with a lot of rules, too. Seems like you weren’t supposed to try to make the stuff if a thunderstorm was in the air, that the barometric pressure would keep your mayonnaise from emulsifying.
At any rate, my homemade mayo projects of some 40 years ago were total busts! I clearly remember frantically whisking oil into a beaten egg and ending up with a useless oily mess for each batch I attempted, no matter what the weather was doing at the time!
So I was a little bit nervous when I decided to give homemade mayo another shot. I sure wasn’t going to do it by hand, I wanted to find a recipe that used a blender or food processor, and I wanted it to work.
Mayonnaise is simply a basic emulsion of egg and oil , but you have to add the right amount of oil at a slow speed or the sauce won’t emulsify and become firm.
I found this recipe, and so far it has worked like a charm! It’s easy, it tastes great, and it makes just a bit over a cup of mayo. It does contain raw egg, so you need to use it up within a week. The acid of the vinegar does help to preserve it.
For the oil content I’ve been using 3/4 of a cup of sunflower or safflower oil, and 1/4 of a cup of extra-virgin olive oil. If you use more olive oil than that the flavour will be overpowering.
This mayo makes a great base for homemade salad dressings. For a really tasty Thousand Island Dressing I mix this mayo with a squirt of organic ketchup and a bit of Lady Ashburnham Relish….it is easy to throw together and delicious!
It is also a yummy base for homemade tartar sauce mixed with some grated onion, lemon juice and chopped pickle.
Blender Mayonnaise
1 ½ tsp lemon juice or vinegar
(I found organic apple cider vinegar to be the tastiest option)
1 large egg
1 cup oil
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp paprika
Dash cayenne
Place the egg and vinegar in a blender. Blend at high speed until the colour becomes lighter and it begins to froth.
With blender still running add spices, then begin to add the oil very slowly in a constant, thin stream. It will take over a minute to add the oil.
Store in a clean jar in the refrigerator.
Bon Appetit!
A Quick GMO Food List
Dairy/Eggs. Unless it’s labelled organic or rBGH-free, if it’s from the USA everything in the dairy case, including milk, cheese and yogurt, probably contains milk from cows injected with rBGH, a GM hormone used to make cows give more milk. (The use of rBGH is banned in Canada.) It’s also likely that the cows and chickens were fed GM corn, soy and canola.
Meat. GM corn and soy are so dominant that almost everything in the meat case comes from animals fed GM crops.
Fresh Produce. Not many GM items yet, but GM sweet corn arrived in 2012.
Cereals. Unless labelled as organic, cereals probably include GM ingredients, primarily high-fructose corn syrup and other corn products, soy and milk proteins. Don’t be fooled by “natural” labels; they mean nothing.
Cookies/Snacks/Chips. Almost all include high-fructose corn syrup; soy, corn or canola oil; soy lecithin and other soy isolates; or other additives derived from GM corn and soy.
Pasta/Rice/Beans. You’re pretty safe here, because wheat, rice and beans are not (yet) genetically modified, but watch out for the heat-and-eat pasta meals that include GM ingredients.
Ice Cream/Frozen Prepared Meals. Unless labelled organic, these are virtually guaranteed to have GM ingredients, including corn and soy products, whey protein from rBGH milk, and GM beet sugar.
Oils/Fats/Shortening. Olive oil is non-GM. “Vegetable oil” usually is GM, as are corn, soybean and canola oil. Solid shortenings are hydrogenated canola, corn and soybean oil.
Condiments/Prepared Foods. All of these items contain GM soy, corn and/or canola unless labelled organic.
Bread/Crackers. Almost all commercial bread is made with corn syrup and soy-based ingredients.
