Aluminum Free??

So I've been on a baking craze lately.
I tend to learn something new and obsess over it for a bit before moving to the next.
My latest obsession is natural yeast (a later blog post.)  Zucchini Bread (a huge hit btw) was up next so I went to the store for some ingredients.  One of them was baking powder. 

In a hurry, I picked up the first, generic brand, and plopped it in the buggy. Just then I thought, I am making bread yeast the natural way and sticking who knows what in there with it.  That just defeats the purpose! 
I didn't bother reading the ingredients because, lets face it; generic is not top notch stuff.  I then carefully looked for the words, non gmo and found one.  But then I noticed, beside it, an even smaller container of baking powder with a phrase highlighted on the front.
"ALUMINUM FREE"....

Ummm, what? 
So they can just stick whatever the heck they want to in our food now?  (The answer is a big yes btw.) 
Not only that, but they make you think you're buying quality by labeling it, non gmo.

Later I decided to find out what could provoke them to add aluminum, so I did some research. Just a little.  Well, surprise surprise.  They started putting it in there to save money.  Originally, baking powder was made with baking soda and cream of tarter.  Well, this got expensive to use.  ( A whole few cents extra people.)  So they started using alternative acids instead of cream of tarter.  One of which is sodium aluminum sulfate.  Aluminum.  Apparently it reacts the same way with the baking soda, so yeah, that makes it alright...

Since then I have been carefully reading the ingredients list in everything I buy.  I am not able to get all of the good stuff yet since anything natural or chemical free is of course costly, but this has taught me to at least pay attention.

It has also proved that having your own source of food or shopping at farmers markets will improve your health and quality of life tremendously.