Cultural changes...
I went to the fruit and veg shop yesterday and the person who runs it told me, "You know, a few years ago people here spent money on eating well that they didn't spend on other things. Now, they won't buy anything extra in the food line because they want clothes, or expensive makeup, or whatever." It's not just that...modern Spanish women see cooking as "old fashioned." They don't cook, they heat things up. 30 years ago, processed packaged foods were in the minority; now you have precooked pasta and white rice in little foil packets. I mean, please--how long does it take to cook pasta? 10 minutes? But they "don't have time." Which being interpreted is, they associate cooking with "old fashioned women." They are cool, they shop in the expensive supermarkets where everything is overpriced processed crap in plastic packaging. A newspaper article I read told how kids in the 6-10 yr old range "don't want to eat anything they have to chew." They want processed mashed potatoes, soups, junk food from the foil pouches. Fruit? No way, you have to chew that. Give em industrial "fruit juice" or yogurt drinks, and they're happy. Soda, sure. Or mineral water. But real food, the way Nature made it? Surely you jest.
The mind boggles. Srsly.
Yeah, I get really angry whenever I see commercials for those fruit and vitamin drinks that are made for kids (Pediasure is one of them, and there are others but I can't remember names). I know that the parents who are giving those to their kids only mean the best because "Oh, they're such a picky eater and I just want to make sure they stay healthy." News flash, you aren't teaching them anything by continuing to let them eat junk and fixing it all with a juicebox. That's only going to mess them up further when they have to embark into the world on their own and have no idea how to healthily feed themselves.
I agree...people in general eat WAY too much processed crap these days. I'm nosy and I like to look in other people's shopping carts. It never fails that when I see a massively overweight person/people/kids, the cart is full of chips, cookies, soft drinks, lots and lots of meat (esp. fatty lunch meats and sausages), white bread, etc...and maybe 3 apples or something. ::)
Lately there's been a trend here towards healthier food, and trying to get kids involved in food prep and gardening and such. A lot of cooking shows and magazines point out that cooking healthy and yummy food doesn't have to be expensive or difficult. I haven't really seen the effects yet, but hopefully it continues. There's still plenty of misinformation around though. Lots of products pretend to be healthy when they're not (fruity soft drinks being 5% real fruit juice, or advertising things as low-fat but not mentioning that they're 95% sugar, etc. They should teach label-reading in school).
yeah, processed food is scary. And I'm quite sure we don't have it anywhere near as bad as in America, or even probably Europe. I was chatting with my friend who just got back from the States last weekend, and she was saying how she had to get used to reading labels in a different country and how hard it was to find products that didn't have high fructose corn syrup as the second ingredient. We don't even have that here, but it still scares me!
oh, and my mum has recently decided that she wants to cut down on 'food with numbers' and so she tries not to buy anything with more than 3 'numbers' in the ingredients. It's a good start, I guess.
I mostly just buy dry beans/grains and produce. No numbers there! : )
A few times I'd ask some other people at college if they cook, and more than half the time they would say yes... only later to find out by cooking they mean heating up canned soup over the stove, or making easy-mac. ._.
I guess, to be fair, making instant ramen is about the same level of cooking as pasta with jarred sauce, but... the health factor is what gets me. That's where the reputation for healthy food = expensive comes from... Because the pre-made stuff often is.
If it will never ever go bad, I try not to eat it. Except Oreos. Darn them they are way too tasty.... But yeah... It makes me so sad that people get so much processed stuff. My mom is one of them. It is RIDICULOUS how much food she has in her house and a lot of it is like snack packs and cereals and individual servings of everything.
ETA: I felt so sick and gross from all the processed food last time I visited, and I was SCOURING the house for fruit. Just 1 piece of something healthy and when I asked my dad he said "Fruit? we don't really eat much fruit. Grapes every now and then.....we have some juice in the fridge, and some kool-aid..." I was boggled. We always have fruit in my house, if only bananas or apples.
Children eat what they are use to eating. Parents that have an aversion to healthy homemade food, have children that will only eat junk. We were poor growing up and had no choice but to cook from scratch. Learned to cook when I was about 8. Fast food was a rare treat. There is no fruit or vegetable that I will turn down. To me a meal is not complete without sometype of vegetable or whole grain. Also, I don't feel right eating nothing but processed food.
I agree that processed food is much more expensive than healthy food. Bulk grains and beans are very cheap. A bag of apples or carrots is always less than a bag of chips. People are lazy. They don't want to eat healthy or exercise. All the time, someone is coming up to me to comment on how great it is that I make healthy meals at home and ride my bike to work. I always ask them to join me. The excuses always comes down to the don't want to change their mindset and try something new. This always puzzles me. Isn't being overweight and unhealthy much more difficult than eating healthy and exercising?
It also doesn't help that the government and medical groups are very reluctant to be hardline about lifestylte change. It is always eat more fruits and vegetables...if you can. If not drink this juice or eat this pill.
Yeah... even at TJs, there are nutritional supplements that are concentrated fruit/vegetable, which is probably not something you'd take if you got 5-a-day or more. You can take a pill or a wheatgrass shot and get the same amount of chlorophyll as a week's worth of vegetables... so people feel like their job is done.
I mean, even juice. If you don't like the texture of fresh fruit, or it's hard to eat, how about blending it into a smoothie? Aw man, but then I'd have to press a button, and clean out the blender!
I agree...people in general eat WAY too much processed crap these days. I'm nosy and I like to look in other people's shopping carts. It never fails that when I see a massively overweight person/people/kids, the cart is full of chips, cookies, soft drinks, lots and lots of meat (esp. fatty lunch meats and sausages), white bread, etc...and maybe 3 apples or something. ::)
There was an episode of "Jimmy's Food Factory" about "slices." Apparently the UK supermarkets don't have the face to call them "cheese" anymore, because they don't actually have cheese in them! So they call them just "singles" or "slices"! I can't remember which topflight supermarket it was that their "singles" only had 6% of cheese in. Mostly "milk protien" and "whey solids" and oil and chemicals. The presenter tried to make his own but he said without a chem lab and a factory full of machinery, you basically can't.
Same for "luncheon meats." Anyone who thinks that is anything like food, even meat, is kidding themselves. Like "cheeze curls", it's mostly plastic.
Even in my most un-veg*n times, I had never felt that I'd really "eaten" unless there was a vegetable or two. And now that I live where there's a fruit-and-veg shop on every corner (and one street in our neighborhood has like 6) more so. Quality varies, but so does price.
yabbit-- about the cheese, a few years ago one of my roomies accidentally bought a different kind of cheese than she wanted and she was reading the ingredients and asked me if i would like it because it's vegan... I was like "what? No way! Vegan cheese from the cheap supermarket?" turned out she had overlooked some small diary derivative, but it was pretty much all chemicals. Disgusting.
processed food actually is/can be really cheap, which is what gets me. For instance, my family gets a lot of processed stuff when it's on sale and when they have coupons for it, rendering it almost free :/ I'd love for them to switch to a more whole food diet, but I don't think they could even afford it. The fillers in processed foods are all subsidized.. grain, corn, etc.
I don't usually see people buying too crap of food, because I mostly shop at the farmer's market and spend about 5 minutes in the co-op getting a couple cases of bananas a week, but even when I am in the co-op and everyone is asking about all of these herbs, nutrition supplements, etc., it just kills me! So much of that is unnecessary stuff just heavily marketed to us through fear that our diets are inadequate... Oy...
D and I were recently talking about our childhoods, both of our moms were 'the neighborhood mom' simply because they REALLY cooked!! D told me he didn't realize why his friends were always wanting to be at his place vs their own, until he visited and saw what their parents were feeding them.... all boxed and frozen stuff pretty much. He still claims if his mom didn't cook he wouldn't have had as many friends as he did.
So, it seems, if the kids have some sort of access to it, then they will typically choose the 'healthy'/home cooked option as much as possible.
(Another reason why I want to be the 'neighborhood mom' myself!!)
and you wonder why the majority of people in america are obese!
and you wonder why the majority of people in america are obese!
THIS. When I was in school I was one of the "fat kids" (not obese, just chubby) and I now realise it's because my parents were just obsessed with food, from their poverty days of the Depression. When they had it, they ate, and ate. Food was central to everything. Food was love, food was approval, food was comfort or encouragement or whatever. But my mother never bought processed crap foods because she knew you could make better and cheaper from scratch, and though she wasn't a fantastic cook, she let me experiment. We ate healthy, just too much (because they also didn't believe in team sports etc.)
Now, though, I feel flat-down sorry for so many people who really do not understand what they're eating. I left the US before there was so much HFCS, salt and HVO in everything. No wonder people are obese...they are eating tonnes more calories than they realise and getting zero nutrition in exchange. When I went to the nutritionist he explained the "lite" myth: sometimes fat is exchanged for sugar, or sugar for fat. But "lite" usually means "light on nutrients."
dlb - it's ironic that in countries like Canada and the US, it's often cheaper nowadays to eat fast food/processed foods than to cook from scratch! I recently saw a doc in which a low-income family was interviewed and were filmed on a grocery trip..the kids would pick up things they wanted like apples, and weigh them to see how many they could buy per dollar they spent. Nothing fresh or healthy was affordable for them so they ended up buying processed crap and went to McDonald's alot for dinner, because you can get so much food there for so little money. It was really sad, especially hearing the mother talk about the family's history of diabetes. I believe her husband had it, and part of their spending rationale was to save money in order to afford his medicaiton. The whole situation is totally fucked! :(
dlb - it's ironic that in countries like Canada and the US, it's often cheaper nowadays to eat fast food/processed foods than to cook from scratch! I recently saw a doc in which a low-income family was interviewed and were filmed on a grocery trip..the kids would pick up things they wanted like apples, and weigh them to see how many they could buy per dollar they spent. Nothing fresh or healthy was affordable for them so they ended up buying processed crap and went to McDonald's alot for dinner, because you can get so much food there for so little money. It was really sad, especially hearing the mother talk about the family's history of diabetes. I believe her husband had it, and part of their spending rationale was to save money in order to afford his medicaiton. The whole situation is totally fucked! :(
Agreed! I was recently on a soapbox about this, on another forum (btw, Shelfari's 'Politics of Food' & 'Alexandria Forum' discussion groups are awesome for thoughtful discussion of food ethics & spirituality issues-- http://www.shelfari.com/groups/10694/about, http://www.shelfari.com/groups/19143/about... I think a lot of folks here would enjoy them)-- I can NOT believe we tolerate the current status quo in the US, where subsidies make the worst food the cheapest food.
The dollar-menu at McWhateverRestaurant only costs a dollar b/c we (a) subsidize food for slaughtered animals, rather than local healthy food for humans; (b) allow IBP (beef industry) to commit hideous anti-worker practices in the US/ avoid paying workers fairly or compensating them for (constant!) injury; (c) allow poor regulation of IBP/ ConAgra/ Monsanto, so they can effectively strip-mine the soil with high-pesticide monocropping and/or unprocessed animal waste in order to produce cheap high yields, polluting the land & water for miles around and leaving the taxpayers to clean up the mess... and driving (more ethical) small farmers out of business, in the process... and corrupting whole ecowebs w/ GMOs, which (among other problems) also impact small farms trying to run things in a sustainable way...
So the result is 'cheap' food that is more costly than anyone can realistically asess. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke... the leading causes of death among adults in America are *hugely* mediated by diet... Risk for these disorders also correlate strongly with poverty, because we have allowed ourselves to blindly go along with the subsidization and runaway greed of manufacturers of unhealthy food... There is *no* good reason for us to tolerate fresh organic produce being more expensive than a pound of full-fat artery-clogging ground beef, or a bacon double cheeseburger from the Mc-dollar menu.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, here, but it just makes me so MAD...
This has such a HUGE effect on kids from poor areas, here in the US... at the school where I work (in a traditionally poor/ minority area) most kids eat a diet of basically sugar, fat, & salt-- b/c Little Debbies, ground beef, & Ramen noodles are so 'cheap.' And, yeah, traditionally poor schools have a disproportionately high number of kids with learning disabilities (who are then at risk for dropping out/ street crime/ jail time/ a lifetime of poverty)... go figure! Growing brains need actual food! Without a cultural change making *food* available to children from poor areas, nothing we do to 'reform' our failing educational system is going to work. Learning is dependent on brain development; brain development is dependent on adequate nutrition. Why this isn't obvious to everyone involved, I do NOT understand.
The documentary hespedal posted at http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=30557.0 does a great job of summarizing the subsidy/ false-cheapness issue, from about the 50 to the 60 minute mark of the video. Nutrition should not be dependent on economic status, in a developed country... but for most families within the US, it very clearly *is*.
Also--I seriously covet this shirt: http://www.cafepress.com/overtheedge.55679193.
ahh i'm glad someone else here shares my frustration! I would really like to look into some programs set up for school-aged kids, and low-income families in general (regardless of age) that provide skills and resources so people can grow their own food. it would be great to introduce something like this to elementary schools, or in urban centres and whatnot.
On my university campus we have a couple acres of greenspace that's been devoted to post-oil organic plant food growth, and the on-campus childcare centre has implemented a program where the kids get to go down to the patch of land and take part in planting seeds, caring for the plants and soil, harvesting food, etc. I was talking to the person in charge of the organic ag centre and she commented on how so many of the kids (before starting this program) did NOT believe that potatoes came from the ground (thought they came just from bags.) It's amazing that these kids are learning about this at as young as 2 or 3 years old...this is such a great and empowering thing to do, and at the same time people are becoming more aware of how food can be produced without all the harmful external costs that conventional food production causes.
...On my university campus we have a couple acres of greenspace that's been devoted to post-oil organic plant food growth, and the on-campus childcare centre has implemented a program where the kids get to go down to the patch of land and take part in planting seeds, caring for the plants and soil, harvesting food, etc. I was talking to the person in charge of the organic ag centre and she commented on how so many of the kids (before starting this program) did NOT believe that potatoes came from the ground (thought they came just from bags.) It's amazing that these kids are learning about this at as young as 2 or 3 years old...this is such a great and empowering thing to do, and at the same time people are becoming more aware of how food can be produced without all the harmful external costs that conventional food production causes.
Cool! Sounds like a great program... I remember reading somewhere that Jane Goodall's 'Roots & Shoots' program did some similar things, with awesome results... we need more stuff like this going on, I think!
Coincidentally, I came across this New York Times editorial piece today... at least maybe this issue is starting to bug people in the broader world, too (as well it should!): http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/food-stamps-the-economics-of-eating-well/... Of course, the definition of 'healthy food' is still in need of societal revision; but for people to be thinking about it AT ALL is maybe *some* kind of progress, right?
For those of you who avoid processed foods, what about foods that are processed, but not OVER processed.
I don't buy pre-packaged meals, t.v. dinners, or anything like that.
But SOME of my foods are processed-like frozen fruit, for example, that I might buy to use in my smoothies. Or organic vegetable stock that I use in recipes (I specifically say organic because I found out that the regular kind I was using had high fructose CS! Other stuff like tamari sauce, canned beans, tahini.....I'm not grinding sesame seeds to make paste, ya know? I'm buying tahini from a jar. A lot of times these "staple" foods have preservatives, added sodium, etc.
What are your thoughts on these staple foods that are usually processed?
For those of you who avoid processed foods, what about foods that are processed, but not OVER processed.
I don't buy pre-packaged meals, t.v. dinners, or anything like that.
But SOME of my foods are processed-like frozen fruit, for example, that I might buy to use in my smoothies. Or organic vegetable stock that I use in recipes (I specifically say organic because I found out that the regular kind I was using had high fructose CS! Other stuff like tamari sauce, canned beans, tahini.....I'm not grinding sesame seeds to make paste, ya know? I'm buying tahini from a jar. A lot of times these "staple" foods have preservatives, added sodium, etc.
What are your thoughts on these staple foods that are usually processed?
i think ur totally ok... i think most would be more concerned with the frozen "meals", boxed and canned "meals", and fake meats... and basically anything else with a bunch of crazy ingredients IMO
I have to constantly check labels. I'm with you on the sugar in fruit...like, wtf is that about? What a way to ruin a perfectly healthy food.
The other day I was making a recipe that required veggie broth and happened to casually glance on the back of the can. I was utterly disappointed to read that it contained HFCS. I should not have been surprised, but I was. "WHY is this in my VEGGIE broth?!" So I started buying organic.
i don't think of frozen fruit, etc as processed if it is 100% fruit. i've seen companies put SUGAR in frozen fruit. WTF? condiments and things like that, eh, they dont make up a lot of the diet and are a different story than all prepared like yabbit mentions.
I was surprised to find this to be true with the frozen red fruit Aldi sells, but then I remembered that back in the day when my mother home-froze blackberries, raspberries, peach slices etc she always added sugar. I think it's because when you defrost soft fruit it kind of "collapses" anyway so the sugary sauce makes it more appetising. But one would think that with today's flash-freezing tunnels they could avoid that.
What freaks me out is--gazpacho in cartons. WHAT? How long does it take to blitz a few veggies in your blender, or with an immersion blender? Especially since most women leave the bread out, these days.