Enriched wheat flour [flour, malted barley flour, reduced iron, niacin, thiamin mononitrate (vitamin b1), riboflavin (vitamin b2), folic acid], water, sugar, yeast, dehydrated onion, wheat bran, cornmeal, salt, wheat gluten, preservatives (calcium propionate, sorbic acid), grain vinegar, rice flour, monocalcium phosphate, cornstarch, mono- and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, soy lecithin, potassium iodate, onions.

And there it was: soy lecithin. It’s an ingredient you’ll find in a lot of chocolate bars, but I didn’t expect it in a bagel. I guessed the other ingredients were probably there, but this was an unusual circumstance. I thought I could eat a little Sara Lee bagel and get away with it. But I couldn’t.

This onion bagel was the joy of Larry’s day so I wanted to find a better bagel.

First I went to a local bagel shop. They didn’t have their ingredients posted, so I asked. I was told they didn’t know the ingredients. They just bake the bagels. Apparently it all comes in a mix or something, they aren’t actually mixing ingredients at this location. I’m not sure this is legal to not have the ingredients available for a food item, but that is not the issue here. We couldn’t find out the ingredients to see if the bagels contained fat or not. When we asked this specifically we were told, “We don’t know so don’t buy the bagel.” Talk about difficulty getting a list of materials used to make a product…

Then we went to a local independent grocery where we often shop. They had bagels in bulk bins that we could buy individually, but no ingredients. But there was an attendant at the bakery counter. We asked her and she said “These are authentic New York bagels. They only contain flour, water, yeast and salt.” And she picked up the phone and called the bagel maker to confirm.

We bought those authentic New York style bagels and loved them, The Sara Lee bagels didn’t even taste like bagel and were more like bread than bagels.

Now, you are probably asking why I didn’t buy organic bagels. Well, I tried. The first place I looked was my local organic food store. But they didn’t have any. We used to buy bagels at the farmer’s market made from organic hand-ground whole wheat flour and they were out-of-this-world delicious. But they are no longer being made.

So for the moment our best choice is fat-free, additive-free bagels. But they are a tiny part of our whole food intake, which revolves around whole organic foods, more than half purchased at the farmer’s market.

I’m telling you this story just because I mostly live in the world of natural food store and farmer’s market. It was actually shocking to me to look back at industrial food and experience what it is made from, how it tastes and what it does to my body, and to see how difficult it was to get the ingredients of food products.

Just a little slice of life to show the range of choices.

Now that I’ve had my bagel digression, I’ve decided I’d rather eat my whole organic food. The day after I wrote this I bought a loaf of hand-ground whole grain organic bread made from heirloom Italian grain. Oh so much better!