Against reverse food snobbery

People are very defensive about their daily routines. It wasn't very nice of your friend to try to play the class card on you, but I don't think you can take literally the things people say when they are defensive.

The "cost" issue is almost laughable. Buy potatos, beans, and rice in bulk, have a small garden plot that can provide a huge percentage of your fresh vegetables, and eat meat the way our great-grandparents did: rarely.

"She said this in front of a kitchen counter loaded down with Fritos, Doritos, Little Debbie snack cakes and the like -- expensive junk food, in other words."

Just so, and when you factor in all of the socialized cost of industrial food production, "cheap food" becomes very expensive indeed.

Dinner last night:

Pinto Beans
Corn Bread
Salad with fresh red sail lettuce, peas, chard, carrots, broccoli (all from my garden). Store bought items include the dressing, pitted black olives, shredded cheese.

Unit cost to feed my family of five? About $7.

Oh, boy, food wars again. Yummy!

The sad fact is that junk food *is* cheap. Little Debbie Snack cakes are some of the cheapest baked / cake-like foods around. At the various "dollar stores" and "bread stores," these high-glycemic processed carb confections can be bought for about $1 a box or bag. A name-brand, full-price bag of Doritos might be $3, but you have to ask, what are Doritos *for*?

Two people who share a bag of Doritos will not be hungry afterwards. So for $1.50 each (or way less, even), a person can feel full - which is basically all the lizard part of the brain asks for. And food marketers know the lizard brain inside & out. The deal is, the brain runs on glucose - about 1/3, IIRC, of all the glucose we eat. It doesn't care where that glucose comes from (in the short run, at least - of course it matters overall.) As far as your brain is concerned, a big whopping high-glycemic rush of cheap refined carbs is *great* - until the crash sets in 2-3 hours later. But that's in the future. A hungry person, especially one in the major metabolism-upset throes of carb addiction, does *not* care about the future. He wants that sugar rush *now.*

So in terms of both raw dollar cost, and in terms of convenience (no cooking or cleanup; just throw away the wrappers), junk food *is* cheap. Until the bill comes due later on.

Adam01, BTW, many people's grandparents & great-grandparents didn't eat meat "rarely" - in fact, they ate meat all the time, especially if they were farm people. My husband's family butchered whole hogs and smoked them in an 1830s-vintage smoke house. His grandmother had a busy egg-selling business and well, you know what happens to hens when they don't lay anymore. And there were a *lot* of hens.

Many people of Northern European descent get too little protein in their diet, rather than too much. Your menu is wonderful - but someone like me, if I ate that way, would be having intense protein cravings, and would probably regain the 60-some pounds I've lost by cutting out most grain-based carbs. So not everyone can eat high-grain veggie diets.

I've lost by cutting out most grain-based carbs. So not everyone can eat high-grain veggie diets.

Isn't a high-grain diet what they feed to pigs to fatten them up?

BTw, what about those of us who live in apartments? Not everyone has access to a plot of land to grow a garden. With the housing and mortgage crunch, there are going to be a lot more people living in places that don't have yards.

Buy potatos, beans, and rice in bulk

Hard to buy in bulk if you're one person who lives alone. I can't even use up a whole head of lettuce before it starts to go bad. (I think the person who came up with the idea of prepared salad in a bag was a genius.)

I agree that with a bit of creativity and the willingess (and ability) to expend some time and effort (all of which, alas, I am lacking far too often), eating good food can be cheaper, or at least not more expensive, than eating junk food, as well as better for you. But maybe one of the reasons why some people who practice -- and proselytize -- healthier eating experience "reverse food snobbery" from others is the fact that so many of them seem to convey a superior attitude about it. You're not going to win many converts to your culinary cause if you act as if eating healthier food somehow makes you morally superior to people who eat Doritos. You may feel that way, and perhaps with some justification; but the Doritos-eaters of the world aren't going to respond positively if you act that way around them.

Conservatives are responding to decades of conditioning by liberal whackos.

When I was in grade school, a small number of parents tried to have all snacks and candies banned from children's lunches...which came from home. Needless to say, the idea died, but any time a story comes on TV about people wanting to tax junk food, sue McDonald's, PETA, etc., my mother will start cursing the food police.

There really are people out there who want to use government to restrict our food choices, and conservatives oppose them. Conservatives go over the line when they turn opposition into support though. It's one thing to defend your right to eat junk food, its another to support the eating of junk food.

Just a quick example from my life, when our toddler was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, the medical professionals gave us a big handout, a cheat sheet of snack foods with a certain number of carbs. 80% of it was prepackaged processed foods, nabisco, etc. At the same time, the nurses were telling me I should quit breastfeeding because it made managing the diabetes hard. These were doctors, nurses and educators. Dealing with a baby. With a chronic and serious medical condition.

Because we are told by the Today Show that carbs and cheese, maybe a little salad on the side, that's a nice meal.

There's at least one country I know of where that *is* considered a nice meal -- Italy. And they aren't obese, partly because they tend to be more physically active, partly because they tend to eat fresh, rather than processed, food, partly because they don't snack the way we do, partly because their portions are smaller.

I've encountered this attitude in quite a few fellow conservatives. It has always baffled me. As conservatives, we SHOULD prefer food prepared in a traditional manner in accordance with nature; not this newfangled, unnatural crap. Liberals are always yammering on about Change and Progress, THEY should be the ones embracing foods that more closely resemble some sort of Better Living Through Modern Chemistry experiment.

In reality, however, it is generally the hemp-wearing, Birkenstocked hippie types who care about eating natural foods. I can only assume that this is due to the same phenomenon that made your average conservative detest environmentalists; if the liberals are for it, we should be against it!

One thing I have noticed is that cooking is rapidly becoming a lost art. I am not talking fancy pan-Asian nouvelle fusion here, I am talking about people who cannot do basic things like roast a chicken, mash some potatoes, grill a steak, make a simple pan gravy, etc.. Thus, they tend to rely upon restaurants and takeout (if they can afford it) or vile, ersatz food products like junk food, Lean Cuisine, and other processed crap. When a person such as Rod or I hold forth at length about the fabulous bargain we got on free-range chicken the other day, our non-cooking friends get rather defensive about the fact that they have no earthly idea what to do with a chicken in its natural (albeit plucked) state; they do know how to thaw out chicken nuggets and they immediately assume we must be one of those Crazy Organic Hippie Weirdo Nutjobs and probably a socialist as well.

I blame the two-income family for much of the loss in basic culinary knowledge; most decent home-cooked meals are not difficult to cook but require that someone be present to monitor them. I am fortunate in that I work from home so it's easy enough to pop a roast in the oven or make a pot of soup while I work. But for a weary mother who puts in eight hours at the office then spends an hour picking up children from various childcare arrangements and gets through the door at six-thirty in the evening with tired, crabby, hungry kids in tow, fish sticks and Tater Tots seem like a reasonable choice for dinner.

My parents' generation should also share the blame; my mother grew up eating home-baked bread, fresh veggies from the family's garden, jam made from the grapes they grew, apple pie from their apple tree, and chicken that had been clucking in the coop an hour before dinnertime. However when she grew up and had her own family, she fell hook line and sinker for the explosion of convenience foods and the freedom from kitchen toil they promised in the '60s and '70s. Most of her standard recipes involved a can of cream-of-something soup, a can of tuna and some noodles -- if she was feeling crazy, she crumbled Ritz crackers on top. To this day, she cannot understand why on earth I would do irrational things like make my own spaghetti sauce and yogurt or mix my own taco seasoning blend, when you can buy that stuff already made at the supermarket...

I digress. But I still do not understand how consuming large quantities of Little Debbie snack cakes makes one a conservative. I also do not understand why my conservative friends used to mock me for walking instead of driving; I always felt that a TRUE conservative would prefer the time-tested mode of conveyance on ones' own two feet vs. the modern fad of the horseless carriage.

According to an Italian friend of mine, arugala is a weed in Italy and is an inexpensive food source of the salt of the earth farmers. It is also less perishable than regular lettuce. Only recently was it grown in the U.S. and served in gourmet restaurants.

Hard to buy in bulk if you're one person who lives alone. I can't even use up a whole head of lettuce before it starts to go bad. (I think the person who came up with the idea of prepared salad in a bag was a genius.)

Actually, you can buy these items in bulk if you do live alone. Beans last forever. Just put them in an air-tight container and they'll last for years. Rice won't last as long as beans, but keep it airtight (even better, use a vacuum sealer) and it will last for a few years as well. (I've used rice that had been packed in cans and was 10+ years old and it was still great.) Potatoes don't last as long, true. Keep them in a cool, dark place, and they'll last longer, but I always end up throwing some out when I buy in bulk, which is why I rarely buy potatoes in bulk anymore.

"Actually, you can buy these items in bulk if you do live alone."

Well, actually, it also depends on the size of your home and how much storage space you have. I don't have a lot of storage space, or a big kitchen. There really is only so much *I* can store in my little apartment before I find myself nudging that 50 lb sack of beans/rice/whatever out of the way so I can live my day to day life. It's that way for a lot of us who live alone in high-cost cities like NYC or Boston, where reasonably priced apartments are SMALL.

Just sayin'.

"I blame the two-income family for much of the loss in basic culinary knowledge . . . But for a weary mother who puts in eight hours at the office then spends an hour picking up children from various childcare arrangements and gets through the door at six-thirty in the evening with tired, crabby, hungry kids in tow, fish sticks and Tater Tots seem like a reasonable choice for dinner."

I'm troubled by your statement, Salamander. First, many families have two incomes out of necessity, and do not have the luxury of keeping one spouse at home to cook, clean, etc. Second, I hope your statement is not implying that women should stay in the home, as they have the same right to work as men do. Finally, the loss of culinary knowledge you mention is not necessarily correlated with two-income families, from what I've seen. I know stay-at-home moms who rely on processed foods, and two-income families and DINKs who love to make home-cooked meals.

Angie,

No one has to make a value judgment about why so many women work outside the home or whether they should, it logically follows that if there are no adults in the home in the hour before dinner is served food will of necessity be prepared differently. When the bulk of a society does things a certain, a large percentage of the remaining minority are likely to see benefits from this behavior and follow it.

You can say that the loss of the home cooked meal is a tragedy, and one more reason why two income households are a shame.

Or you can say we should all rejoice that women no longer have to slave in front of a hot stove all day, they have lots of other options.

But it's pretty clear that the dominance of two income homes and single parent homes has something to do with the automation of our meal system.

And notice how all of us are talking about dinner. I think in most households, breakfast is cereal or a bar (highly processed, normally) and lunch is served by the work microwave, the fast food restaurant on the corner, or the school. We've surrendered 2/3 of the battleground without even noticing.

Rod,
When you get upset at the person who tries to lay claim to salt-of-the-earth values and uses it to bash you, maybe you should re-think they way you assume that salt-of-the-earth folks are on the right side of the aisle. When I grew up, salt of the earth seemed to mean honest. Now, it seems to mean politically conservative. People like you have helped this along. That's part of the reason why liberals didn't like Palin's supposed salt of the earth shoved in our face. Salt of the earth doesn't mean conservative...either in politics or in food.

Stefanie,

Sorry, I think Anonymous was me. For some reason my computer no longer automatically enters my name, and I sometimes forget to type it in.

I blame the two-income family for much of the loss in basic culinary knowledge; most decent home-cooked meals are not difficult to cook but require that someone be present to monitor them. I am fortunate in that I work from home so it's easy enough to pop a roast in the oven or make a pot of soup while I work.

As I said, I'm single and live alone. It's not just time, because I waste enough time watching TV or doing other things that I could easily make the time to cook if I wanted to. The truth is, I just don't want to. When I first started living alone, in graduate school, I used to make an effort to cook for myself. Eventually I just got bored with it. Why? Because, to be honest, I just don't care enough about what I eat to want to go to the bother of thinking about what I want to make, making a list of ingredients, going to the grocery store, bringing the home, finding a place to put them, and then having to take the time to prepare them. Honestly, making a cup of Minute Rice is more work in the kitchen than I really feel like doing.

Of course, the fact that, where I live now, I have a serious bug problem in my kitchen doesn't give me any encouragement to want to spend any time there and makes it difficult to prepare food there. I have trouble keeping the bugs out of my cereal, even in closed plastic containers.

After living alone for over 20 years, I've just basically outsourced all my food preparation, either to restaurants, or fast food, or frozen stuff (but even taking the time to heat a frozen dinner is more work than I really feel like doing in the kitchen) or, for lunch, to the campus dining halls (which are nice, because I can have a salad and vegetable with lunch every day and not having to worry about preparing them). A lot of times I just have cereal for dinner.

And since I not only live alone but almost always eat alone, I'm afraid cooking is just more trouble for me than it's worth. But I think the real foundation for my disinterest and unwillingness to make an effort is that, as I said, I just don't really care about what I eat.

When I was growing up, my mother was the queen of opening cans, defrosting, and using boxed mixes, though she occasionally made a meatloaf or something like that. She told me that when she and my father were first married, she used to put a lot of time and effort into preparing interesting things for dinner. After awhile, he essentially told her that, while he appreciated the thought and the effort, he was a meatloaf-and-potatoes kind of guy and he'd really be happier if she didn't knock herself out in the kitchen. So, after that, she didn't.

I didn't mean to sound as though I was slamming working mothers. I'm a working mother myself, although I am fortunate that I only work part-time and from my home. I used to work outside of the home, also only part-time, but when you added up commuting time and dropping off/picking up children I was gone 25 hours rather than 15. And the quality of our meals suffered as a result, not because I was an evil selfish working woman but for the reasons I outlined -- I simply didn't get home in time to have anything cooked in time for a reasonable dinner hour (my children are little so we have to eat early before they get too tired). Once again, I was fortunate in that I only worked 3 days a week so on my days off I could prep and/or pre-cook the following days meals but it was a LOT of effort and I realized how a family where both parents work full-time might feel that slow food is an impossibility most of the time.

My own mother worked, by the way; since my father was culinarily challenged she had to make everything in the morning for him to reheat at night (she worked evening shift), hence her fondness for tuna-noodle casserole.

This is not an indictment of two-income families; it is simply a fact. Just like the fact that women working full-time are going to have a lot harder time breastfeeding an infant; mind you, it CAN be done if one is particularly dedicated to pumping and is fortunate enough to work for a company that allows breaks and privacy, but for many working women it will just be well nigh impossible. Not slamming anyone, just stating that there are trade offs to everything and depending upon your situation, paying the rent might be more important than roasting a free range chicken.

We could get into a long discussion about *why* two incomes are necessary but that is a different subject altogether.