Just for fun: list the unhealthy processed foods you grew up with

[deena]

Spinning from a thread in which we talked about how we strive to eat: organic, GMO free, cage free, grass fed, GH free, antibiotic free, dye free, low in sugar, corn syrup free, etc. We started listing what we grew up on and boy was it funny! List your Standard American Diet foods of childhood.


Here's mine:
My mom worked and didn't cook much so I ate a LOT of candy. In highschool my after school snack was always those pre-packaged totally fake peanut butter or cheese crackers. Always white bread. Sometimes, for an evening snack my mom would make us cinnamon sugar toast or sour cream mixed with sugar. (She invented that). She never actually cut up or handled raw meat. The only steak I ever ate was "Salsbury steaks", which aren't steak. When I met my mother in law who actually COOKED food it was so foreign to me.

[Soliloquy]

My mom cooked dinner every night and mostly from scratch but these are the things we always had in the house:

There was always a can of Hershey's syrup in the fridge. YUCK!
My dad loved American cheese and Oscar Meyer lunchmeat so we always had that.
Oscar Meyer hot dogs.
Miracle Whip
bottled salad dressing
Lay's potato chips
Bisquick YUCK! (we always had ingredients to make pancakes so why she used Bisquick I'll never know.)
Crisco for pie crust
Campbell's soup
Lipton soup mixes

[deena]

Crisco! Yes! I recently found out about palm fruit shortening and now I'm totally grossed out at the thought of all that hydrogenated fat we baked with.

And Campbell's chicken soup. How did I eat that? It's so salty!

[ReadingMommy]

My mom usually cooked from scratch too, but we commonly had all the cream-of-whatever soups in many of our recipes. We used margarine and miracle whip. Her brisket recipe (which I loved), had a can of coke in it as part of the marinade. We regularly used canola and corn oils. Crisco for pie crusts and sometimes cookies.

For the occasional quick meal or treat, we had:

Kraft mac and cheese
Tombstone pizza
Hot queso made out of velveeta
Kraft American singles

OTOH, she did several things for "health", like where she ground her own wheat and made homemade bread, adding extra gluten to the dough to improve the texture. Now the whole family is gluten free. We also had a juicing kick and a low-fat phase.

In general, we ate better than most of our friends.

[mamacat]

Kraft singles and Velveeta,Kraft mac n cheese dinner same hersheys syrup in can,Hawaiian punch, Bisquick,hot dogs,lunch meat. This was mostly later on. earlier my mom "cooked" some kind of meat,pasta or rice ,canned vegetable.

[ReadingMommy]

Yes, the Campbells soups! We would have either tomato or chicken noodle with cheese or pb on saltine crackers or a grilled cheese sandwich on Mrs. Baird's honey wheat bread.

---------- Post added at 05:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:17 PM ----------

A couple others...

Jiffy's cornbread mix
Bisquick
Fake syrup
Normal hotdogs
balogne

[HomeWithMyBabies]

Pop Tarts, Lucky Charms or Toaster Strudel for breakfast! I crashed hard by midmorning. The quacker oatmeal packets had sugar and flavorings in it. Sometimes I had a cold, tall glass of skim milk with Carnation instant breakfast.

Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch...I do miss that.

I remember balling up chunks of Wonder bread and eating it that way for snacks. And Kraft cheese and Velveeta. We too had the can of Hershey's in the fridge.

When I was a kid meals were mostly beef that was so well done it was almost jerky, with A1 sauce, mashed potatoes from a box and canned peas or corn. I am honestly wracking my brain to remember anything else she might have served, and I can't right now. When I got married my idea of cooking dinner was browning a pound of ground beef and adding the hamburger helper.

[milkmommy]

At home meals cooked by my mother were just slightly above SAD

Breakfast it was mostly cereal my father was always on some low cholesterol fad diet and "oat bran" was a biggie. I remember eating a lot of fruit N fiber cereal and when I could I put anything that made the milk turn to chocolate in the cart

My parents refused to buy pop tarts but they would buy us toaster strudel and those packs of hostess cinnamon buns

before big school tests we got scrambled eggs with hot dogs.. (which I'll admit to this day is the only way I'll eat a hot dog)

School lunches when made were almost always
1) sandwhich PB and J or ham, bologna, etc (which I have forever Hated)
bag of chips
a piece of fruit
a "dessert"

When I got old enough to just buy a lunch I pretty much wasted my money on vending machine Cherry cokes beef jerky sticks and icecream drum sticks from the cafe (cause no one cared).. Or once in HS we just went out open campus and LOOOONG lunch break.

Most dinners consisted of a meat 2 types of from a can veggies and or some canned fruit some kinda starch and their was always bread ("whole wheat") with margarine. (cause we were healthy )

convince boxes like hamburger helper boxed mac N cheese etc were pretty common.

We were rarely fed "dessert" however their was always plenty to be found as our pantry always had cookies or little Debbie snacks the freezer always has ice cream or Popsicles etc

We always did have a decent variety of fresh fruits around we were allowed to get at will. but my parents horded any fresh produce though to this day I have no idea why. It was like Christmas if my mother peeled a raw carrot for me to munch on..

My parents didn't allow us to just get whatever when even but our home was somewhat free range as well.
because of my heart issues as a little one I was VERY tiny for my age well into my early teens. (I weighed 17lbs when I had my first surgery at age 4)
I was barely 70lbs soaking wet when I was 13 and stayed around 90 during high school.
Once I could I was somewhat active though I was never very athletic.. however like on non school days unless it was extremely cold/ hot or rainy my friends and I were off on bikes or exploring.. We left after breakfast and stayed out till "the street lights came on" or by 5:30 when dinner was served and if we could get away with it we returned after.. It was VERY rare to sit around just watching TV or doing video games. Even when we stuck around home we played outside, swam played with jump ropes climbed the fences etc..
Sadly I know that is the biggest difference between how things were then and how I see my DD.. Its VERY hard to get Cecilia moving other than in organized stuff she does soo little of it on her own. Even with big time restriction on media and such she'd still rather sit around bored... Something I do NOT get.. While her diet choices could be better they aren't bad mostly cause she doesn't have access to junk. but it only goes so far.. She needs to be more active.

[squiddles]

I'm glad I know better now but sometimes I get Cravings for all that junk my mom bought at Costco:
ham and cheese hot pockets
Pepperoni sticks
Five pound bags of gummy bears
Pop tarts
Meatball calzones
Velveeta grilled cheese

She was otherwise a health freak... It was just a bad phase when I was in highschool... I would come home from school and eat a hot pocket while I played sonic the hedgehog


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[bliss]

Government cheese . Sooo good .

[rdsmommy]

I can honestly say I didn't get "junk" food at home growing up. We didn't have a lot of money and my mom said she wasn't going to spend what we had on junk. No white bread, kool aide, snack cakes, or sandwich meat in my house. We ate a lot of Peanut Butter and Jelly but it was always on 100% whole wheat bread with the peanut butter that you have to mix because the oil separates. I loved going to friends and relatives houses though because they always had plenty. My grandma always had the Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls for us.

[mamaKristin]

We had pretty healthy choices in our home growing up, for the most part. My mom made yogurt and granola when I was little, and we had garden produce from the yard.

However, kool aid was common. Tang for breakfast when I went off pulpy oj. My parents also were early adopters of diet soda.

My mom's homemade poutine was really good, and we probably had that more often than we should of (mainly when my dad was away, which was often)


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[HomeWithMyBabies]

I was laughing remembering some of these foods and my oldest asked me what was so funny. I told him the topic, then I said I wonder what *you* will say when you're an adult? "My mother fed me conventional zucchini!!!" He looked at me and said, "The zucchini you buy isn't organic!!??!!?"

[MegMarch]

I thought boil in a bag turkey and gravy was amazing. My friend's mom was always dieting and had Sizlean at her house, I looooved it. We ate "lunch meat" often. I thought spray cheese was a luxury food And general junk like Little Debbies and only white bread.

[twoplustwo]

My mom was really good in that we had lots of fresh fruit and veggies. And some of the meals were pretty healthy, though we did some hamburger helper and shake n bake too so not always.

But there was not limit on sugar. Sugar cereals were fine. After school snacks were starcrunch or those little debbie cakes. Endless supply of those freeze pops in the summer. Koolaid. Those super sugary drinks that came in little containers that looked like barrels.

But then we almost never were allowed soda and the rare occasions "clear" soda only. And candy only on occasion.

In the end I grew up a great eater of fruits and veggies with a major craving for sugar. Yet I dont drink soda pop.