Cupcakes for An All-Organic Bake Sale

Hi! My name is Heather O’Handley and I am a research team member for  Protect Our Breasts focused on dairy and meats.

As the holiday season approaches, the Protect Our Breasts  team thought it would be a festive idea to hold an all-organic bake sale with tasty  treats such as cake pops and chocolate covered pretzels. Strictly organic baked  goods were a first for me, but in the spirit of the holiday season, I gave it a try.

Organic foods have  often had a negative stigma attached to them  in terms of price and taste. While they are a bit more expensive than regular  groceries, the majority of organic foods taste as good as, if not better than,  conventional foods. I’ve switched to organic eggs, vegetables, milk, and even  meats. My experiences so far have been all positive. In fact, I don’t think  I’ll buy non-organic milk ever again! It has a really clean, fresh taste, and  you can’t help but feel good about making healthy choices. As I was skimming  the aisles of the grocery store looking for my ingredients, I easily found the  organic chocolate and vanilla cake mix, eggs, and milk to make cupcakes. Things  were going smoothly until I realized that there was no organic frosting or  icing anywhere in that conventional store. I called a few small local natural  stores, but it was a Sunday so they were all closed. Since I wasn’t able to buy  pre-packaged organic frosting, I was going to have to make it from scratch.
Using conventional frosting was never an option, because the Protect Our Breast  team is working hard to prove how important it is to avoid everyday toxins linked  to breast cancer. The Pesticide Action Network’s  http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/ is a  great resource to check for pesticides and carcinogens on ordinary foods.  Butter, cream cheese, sugar, and flavoring are the main ingredients used in  cake frostings.

  • Butter: 3 known or probable carcinogens, 8
    suspected hormone disruptors
  • Milk: 5 known or probable carcinogens, 8
    suspected hormone disruptors
  • Heavy cream: 3 known or probable carcinogens, 8
    suspected hormone disruptors

Since sugar was not listed, I did a little extra research. www.anticancerbook.com described  conventional sugar as not necessarily “carcinogenic”, but it may feed the  progress of existing micro-cancers, and may fight the body’s natural defense  mechanisms. By choosing to make my own organic frosting, I may have spent a few  extra dollars and added an extra hour onto my baking process, but I avoided 11  known or possible carcinogens, 24 suspected hormone disruptors, and all of the  ingredients in conventional sugar that feed the progress of existing  micro-cancers. You can’t put a price tag on that. Plus, I tried the cupcakes a  short while ago and they’re delicious! Sometimes it really does pay off to go  that extra mile…

-Heather

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