Hamburger Helper is killing me and anyone else out there eating it. No, this is not some crazy spouting of a deranged or disgruntled customer, but a legitimate look into the ingredients in Hamburger Helper that are harmful to your heart, arteries, and overall health.
Hamburger Helper is advertised as a timesaving healthy meal that busy parents can make, sit down with the kids to eat, and still have time after a long day at work. This would be true if there was any nutritional value at all in the box of Hamburger Helper. After reading the ingredient panel on the side of the box of Hamburger Helper I was in shock. This product should be banned from the shelf and made illegal to serve to trusting children. It may be saving you time at the end of a busy day, but it is stealing years off of your life!
How Hamburger Helper is Killing You and Your Kids
The first ingredient listed on the Hamburger Helper box is Enriched Macaroni made from bleached Durum Flour. You might actually wonder what in the heck this is, I did. Basically they are saying they are using macaroni made out of bleached flour, that was purposely stripped of all nutritional value to make it more shelf stable. After it was depleted of any nutritional qualities others were added back (enriched). In an effort to make their product be able to sit on your shelf forever they have purposely stripped out any nutrients.
After a few more unrecognizable ingredients that my spell checker wouldn’t even know how to digest, you come to partially hydrogenated soybean oil. To break this down into English you are eating soybean oil that has had hydrogen added to extend its shelf life as well. In the battle to keep products lasting longer on the grocery store shelf and in your pantry food companies alter ingredients, making them unhealthy for you. Partially hydrogenated soybean oil clogs your arteries. It also clogs your children’s arteries, hardening them, guaranteeing they will have the required American heart attack by the time they are 50. The math is simple. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women and men. Eighty percent of it preventable.
A little further down the list you come to corn syrup. Yes, corn syrup. Sugar. Why is this in Hamburger Helper? Merely to feed the cravings of all of us sugar addicts out there. Ingredients like sugar keep us craving these foods. Ask McDonalds. They have sugar in almost every single product they sell at their stores. Even the French fries have sugar. Sugar keeps you craving their food, which keeps you buying it.
The whole point is that there are no nutritional ingredients in the entire box of Hamburger Helper. Instead you merely find chemically altered ingredients, ingredients meant to play to your cravings, and a whole list of unreadable and unnatural ingredients. There is no nutritional value in Hamburger Helper.
Healthy Substitutes for Hamburger Helper
Make your own healthy version of Hamburger Helper and feed your family nutritional food that will help their body grow.
Cook with whole grain pasta. Barilla has some great products out there with a whole heck of a lot more nutritional value than the bleached white flour pasta in Hamburger Helper. Use lean ground sirloin or ground turkey in place of ground chuck. Ground chicken breast is also a healthy option. Add you own tomato sauce. Do not use anything from a powdery mix. Those powders are mostly salt. I don’t know one single person who needs more salt in their diet. Tomato sauce is a healthy food every American should be eating.
Add some fresh vegetables to your dish. Chop up and tomato, onion, bell pepper, or even some zucchini and add it to the skillet. You could also throw in some finely chopped spinach. The best thing about this homemade dish is that is perfectly fine to freeze it. In your freezer it cans safely last for up to three months with out any partial hydrogenated oils and bleached flour!
