Maple Leaf Foods New Food Manifesto for Real Food is Good News for Us!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Maple Leaf Foods. I have been compensated for my time, but as always all pictures and opinions are my own. I feel good about this initiative by Maple Leaf, and am happy to share it with you!

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Maple Leaf Foods head office in Toronto, and listen to President and CEO Michael McCain, talk about big changes made to the foods they make. Maple Leaf Foods has made a promise through their Food Manifesto, that their food is only made with real, simple or natural ingredients. These are BIG changes that I think are so fantastic, and make me feel good about the products I purchase and feed to my family.

I have always had a level of guilt? or maybe hesitation? when serving hot dogs, hams and sandwich meats to my kids, mainly because of the ingredients. It always feels strange to feed my family foods where I can’t even pronounce the ingredient list. But lunches had to be made, and summers were made for hot dogs so I purchased these things in moderation. Now I don’t have to worry because we have options…Maple Leaf Foods has recently announced that their bacon, ham, hot dogs, deli meats and breakfast sausages are all made with real, simple or natural ingredients. This means that you can recognize (and pronounce!) all of the ingredients on the package.

For example, the bacon ingredient list consists of: pork, water, sea salt, cane sugar, cultured celery extract, spice, smoke, and the hot dog ingredient list consists of: chicken, pork; water, tapioca starch, sea salt, spice, vinegar, cultured celery extract, cane sugar, cherry powder, smoke. Only simple, real ingredients. NO artificial preservatives, NO artificial flavours, NO artificial colours, NO artificial sweeteners, and NO animal by-products. This is such great news for families who are concerned about what is in our food.

So guess what I bought for our recent camping trip? Yep, Maple Leaf hot dogs. Because camping just isn’t the same without hot dogs…even if it is too windy for a campfire…hot dogs grilled on the stove for the win!