Hummusgirl's Blog

What are the ingredients in American made hummus that differ from Middle Eastern hummus?  We have so many food additives in everything I just assumed we had food additives in our hummus too, at least maybe in the less expensive brands of hummus.  The more local it is, the less food additives and more pure it is right?  But the Whole Food store hummus all had chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, and spices, just like mine!

I’m a Middle Eastern hummus virgin, so the fact that we are so competitive with food over here shows me that Middle Eastern countries are probably pretty afraid of us for a reason.  Maybe they do mess with their ancient hummus recipe in the Middle East.  Maybe it’s not as perfect as I think it is and dream it is.  But the Middle East is more fragile then we are and I have to support the country that is having the most trouble.  Could that be why we buy it?  Because we want to support a people who we think are less important than we are?  What is the psychology of food anyway?

What if the fast food people made hummus?  Heck, they opened fast food restaurants specifically for people in ethnic countries like India and the Middle East so surely they wouldn’t do a bad job of making vegetarian food for us here right?

So I checked out the ingredients in all the Whole Foods hummus and found that it’s all pretty much the same.  I was kind of surprised actually, because I just figured that our hummus wouldn’t even compare to the Middle Eastern ones.  But there was something called citric acid in there that I didn’t know.  I looked it up on Wikipedia and it was invented by an Islamic alchemist in the 8th century.  It doesn’t sound as bad as the chemicals we put into our convenience foods nowadays and since it was invented so long ago, it must be good for us right?