Although we endeavor to eat well, we are far from food purists in our home. I do cook a significant portion of our food from scratch, but we regularly consume ready-to-eat cereals, crackers, etc. I try to buy better quality and/or organic food as often as I can reasonably justify it. Since there are only three of us, it is easier to spend more on things because they don’t have to go nearly as far. I can buy a box of Kashi dark chocolate chip cookies for Caroline and they last a long time because they don’t agree with me and David just doesn’t seem to eat them. If we had four or five children, then I would probably never buy them.
Buying better food and eating real food does have its disadvantages though. One of them is financial. Once you become accustomed to eating real food that isn’t laden with chemicals, it is almost impossible to go back to the other, cheaper stuff. We buy Annie’s Organic Chewy Bunny Snacks at Costco as one of our “junk foods” because, like I said, I’m not a purist and five year olds like that kind of thing. (Okay, I like the purple ones, too!) I decided to try save some money and bought a couple of other non-organic kinds of those chewy snacks and nearly gagged. Same thing with the Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. I tried to buy a different kind of goldfish or something and when Caroline tried them she found them revolting and wouldn’t eat any more.
What can I do? Tell her to eat the ones with more chemicals because they are better for our pocketbook? I’d like to find more ways to cut corners on our food budget, but at what cost? The options become either continue spending more or completely eliminating the item from our pantry.
The other downside is that when you try to revisit those favorite foods from your childhood, you find they just aren’t what you remember. I recently had an old-time craving for Jello Chocolate Pudding and Cool Whip. It was something I enjoyed when I was younger. I made it and was honestly really looking forward to it since I hadn’t had it in years. I could not even finish it. The chemical taste of the Cool Whip was terrible. I always make real whipping cream for us (and on very rare occasion will buy Redi-Whip) so we are accustomed to the real taste of real whipped cream. I could not believe how terrible the Cool Whip tasted to me. I threw the rest of it out.
I never set out to become a food snob. I simply wanted to feed my family better foods. But I find that the more we move in that direction, the harder it is to do anything but eat real foods. Plain yogurt blended with real frozen fruit? Yum. Presweetened yogurt? Gag. Homemade muffins? Yum. Sugar-laden boxed muffin mixes? Gag. To be sure I can still find some mixes that work for me. But they are becoming fewer and farther between.
So I’m guessing the beloved SpaghettiOs with Hot Dogs from my childhood are probably a no, too.
Blueberry and Cream Cheese Strata Casserole
I believe they are putting different nasty tasteing chemicals in that weren’t there when we were children …I thought my taste had changed over the years , but tasted a purple potato and was shocked to remember THATS! what ALL potatoes tasted like 50 years ago!! Worse yet.. when I was 11 and I began to “cook” dinner when my Mom returned to work she bought “hamburger helper” for me at first….so a few years ago I needed my daughter to start a few meals for us and bought a few of the favorites I remembered. OH MY GOSH they were so nasty no one wanted to eat it .. tasted like a chemical experiment. It is a specific chemical flavor that seems to permeate almost all processed food. We eat a lot more being a bigger older family than yours so somehow it is cheaper for us to eat less processed foods probably because we an buy a larger quantity at a cheaper price and don’t have to worry about it spoiling, also the only fresh organic food is what we grow.I feel badly that so many people probably think that chemical taste is normal Blechhh Karen
Karen, – It would be fascinating to look at older packaging and see how the ingredient list has changed over the past thirty years on some of these items. I do buy in bulk for us, but some things you just can’t easily make for yourself (like Wheat Thins or whatever). And even the better companies like Kashi have their own set of problems. I tried some of their cereals and they gave me horrible gastrointestinal distress. It turns out it is a fairly common problem. I found entire discussion boards dedicated to people who couldn’t eat Kashi products because of some of the “natural” things they put in their products.
We’ve been experimenting with low-carb and gluten-free lately, and buying our meat from a real meat market. Now it’s a surreal experience to be shopping in the regular grocery store, walking past aisle after aisle of things we don’t eat anymore.
We ate a lot more processed foods when we were first married, but over time learned how to make better, homemade, simpler versions of most things. We have quite a few spices from Penzey’s, which helps to keep the basic real foods from getting boring.
I totally identify with this, Sallie! When I was pregnant with one of the girls, I was craving one of those packaged cherry pie things (Hostess, I think). I bought one. I opened it in my car!
It tasted terrible. I was so disappointed.
I do wonder about the changes in ingredients. For instance, I was reading that a lot of things used to be made from coconut oil (which is now considered quite good for you) when I was really young, but that changed when saturated fats were vilified. Sort of like how eggs were “bad” for a decade or two.
It *is* hard on the pocketbook, though, as you say. We try and raise some of our own foods, but I find that trying to raise all or most of it is very overwhelming, so this year we stuck to dairy products only (no garden for the first time in years).
Stephanie buys Annie’s Mac & Cheese by the case from her food co-op. 🙂
I am sure Cool Whip had to change their formula. I used to love it but I bought it two or three months ago for the first time in awhile and it was horrible. Blech!
Good for you. Just keep making the better choice when and where you can – and don’t freak out when you can’t. I’ve been on this food journey for 10 years and have come so far. I have honestly seen the benefits with my medically fragile children and aspergers child. The more natural the diet (fruit, veggies, meat, limited organic dairy) and the less processed the better we ALL feel.
It’s a crime that eating well is so expensive in this country.
Yes I bet they have changed their ingredients over the years , eggs lard coconut oil bad , now good …LOL . I wonder if our “guts” having grown up on processed foods do not have the kind of enzymes or bacteria to digest natural ingredients. Kind of goes along with the ideas from the book Nourishing Traditions I think. Karen
Believe me, you do NOT want to try the Spaghetti-Os.
Cool whip tastes the same to me as it did back then. But the spaghetti os are horrific.
My husband and I have found the same issues with eating out. It has become unappetizing, not to mention so expensive to go out for a nice dinner. When we do go out we find ourselves discussing how if the meal had just had a little of this or that, a fresher sauce, fresh herbs or not fried (we live in New Orleans where so much is fried) how much better it would taste. It’s our challenage to remake it home and make it better for us, better tasting and much less expensive. I look at the school lunches that my daughter is served in elementary school and it gives me the focus to get up a little earlier just to make sure she has a healthy, preservative free, wholesome lunch (and a note from mom to tell her to have a great afternoon! 😀 ).