If I see one more commercial depicting a doting mom feeding her busy youngster a nice bowl of canned pasta for lunch (one full serving of vegetables in every can!), I’m going to blow a fuse. On one hand, childhood obesity is epidemic, and on the other hand, bulemia and other eating disorders are rampant among teenage girls. Clearly, kids aren’t learning healthy eating habits.
I stand in line at the grocery store, and almost without exception I see carts full of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, instant this and instant that. And the TV tells us this is healthy food. For fuck sake, it’s not even FOOD! I’m not a chemist, so I don’t know if this is true, but I read that Cheeze Whiz is chemically more similar to plastic than it is to cheese. Here’s a tip: cheese is spelled with an S. Any product that is spelled “cheeZe” is NOT CHEESE. It may contain cheese, but it is not cheese. Remember the Simpson’s episode where the school was giving the kids “malk”? I’m pretty sure that was a parody of “cheeze”.
I especially hate the commercials that imply the mom is a “stay at home mom”. It’s midday, clearly in the family home, with no other adults around. ‘Cause we all know stay-at-home moms are the best kind. The one’s who REALLY care about their kids. And if Chef Boyardee is good enough for them, it must be good enough for us lesser moms. Well, I never had the luxury of staying home with my kids for more than a few months. But I always found the time to feed them actual food. Yes, it takes more time to cut some cheese off a block than it takes to peel the plastic off a slice of cheeZe. It takes longer to make a pot of soup than it takes to open a can. But that’s part of the job. If adults want to eat crap, that’s our choice. We have no right to feed it to our kids, especially as a regular diet. Look around and see what it’s doing to them.
—Your Mom
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2009.
You makes some good points but I wouldn’t say cans of soup and pasta are particularly unhealthy…
Cheeze-Whiz shares certain chemical properties of Lego. I could make a cracker tower, I suppose.
One of my kids ate chicken fucking nuggets for 10 years and now she’s a vegetarian. I learned my lesson.
I used to see this all the time when I worked as a cashier at a grocery store. Maybe it’s just because I don’t eat that crap, and I don’t ever plan on giving my kids that crap but it just makes me cringe. My mom told me I’m going to be a huge drag when i’m a mom because I keep saying I’m going to refuse to let my kids eat excess refined sugars and even artificial sweeteners. I don’t eat refined sugars so there’s no reason why i’m going to feed that shit to my future children.
Mom’s right, PK, your kids will go over to their friends’ houses and plow through those forbidden sweetie treaties like a heroin addict. Good luck with that.
Fast food/processed food may not be any good, but what’s worse is someone telling someone what they can or cannot advertise. No one is forcing you to buy any products or go to any fast food place.
You’re the parents, you don’t want any of this stuff for your kids, then don’t buy it.
I’d rather fast food or processed food than the government banning this and that and telling us how to live.
I got curious so I wik’d “processed Cheese” (which includes Cheez whiz) and it’s pretty much just cheese scraps and emulsifiers. Maybe not the most appealing thing, but not exactly plastic.
I do have some sympathy for parents who can’t afford to buy organic veggies and whatever for their kids. Not everyone can afford that. But if you can afford it, there is no excuse for people still feeding their kids pop tarts and shitty canned soups that are laden with sodium. There is plenty of information available nowadays about what is and isn’t healthy.
Apparently more low-income parents these days are buying pop instead of juice, because it’s way less expensive. Personally, I’ve just stopped buying any kind of sweet drinks (except what I need to set me up with a rye and ginger). It’s a waste of money really. Water comes with my rent…I’d rather spend the money to buy actual fruit.
There’s something about kids in commercials that squicks me out. Like I’m supposed to buy a product because some impossibly cute kid is grinning at me and shoving it in his face.
I understand why the OP bitches. I cringe when I see fat kids too. However, as a society, both parents work, and mostly due to that fact, we want convenience foods, which tend to be unhealthy. However, healthy food is slowly becoming out of reach for some families, especially the working poor and lower income families. So, given that, sometimes unhealthy is all that people can afford.
I realize this is sort of off topic from the bitch – but as someone recovering from an eating disorder.. I completely disagree with the idea that it stems from not learning how to eat healthy. Sorry, but you’re just wrong on that point.
ok, a few finer points of this post might be a little loose with the facts ( cheeze wizz being like plastic is an old urban myth ) since i think the OP was just trying to inject a bit of hyberbole and humour but the main point of this is so RIGHT ON!
People eat WAY too much processed “food”. Whats worse than that is when they think they are making healthy choices.
Thats why I like Mr Noodle in a way. It keeps it real. It knows its as much calories as a big mac and as much sodium as you need in a lifetime but at least its not having an identity crisis like some other garbage they try to pass off as health food. Mr Noodle knows it shit and is ok with that!
I think price point also has to be taken into consideration. It’s a lot more expensive, as well as time consuming, to eat healthy and prepare meals from scratch. When your kids are in a couple of after-school hobbies/teams, you dont always have time to make an ideal meal that’s nutritious and still yummy enough that the kids’ll eat it, every night. Sometimes you just have to make sure they eat SOMETHING.
I think almost anything is fine in moderation. When I was in high school not to many years ago, I would rush home after school eat whatever could be made the quickest, (almost always nachos with c-whiz, or Kraft dinner) and the be on my way to play ball or hang otu with friends, but when it came time for actual meals my family always sat down at the dinner table together, and at real food that everyone had a hand in helping prepare.
In regards to these processed foods, I can remember from I think back in Jr High or early high school d ays, we had a nutritionist come into our class. She named off what she called the three worste things you could ever eat, one was Mr Noodles, one was those lunchable things with crackers and cheese, and believe the third was Sunny D, could be wrong. Anyway, she pulled out two boxed of these “lunchables”, one brand new and one was something like 3 yrs old, and opened. They looked the exact same. Kinda freaked all of us in the class out, because if it didnt’ change at all it says alot about have much natural ingredients there are. Saw something similar while flipping through the boob-tube last week with a Mcdonald burger and fries,… was about 3 years old, and looks the same as the day it was bought….
When your groceries look more like brightly-coloured toys in boxes, you’re probably feeding your kids too much salt, sugar, and fat. I used to go shopping with a friend, and was shocked at the fact that no fruits or vegetables went in the cart, but lots of snack packs and other toy food substitutes. I commented once on how cheerful her groceries looked, but otherwise I kept my mouth shut.
I had to make a quick stop at Superstore on my way to work this morning, and I did a very brief price comparison.
4.5kg of potatos: $5.49. An equal quantity of no-name frozen french fries: $6.75
2kg bag of Macintosh apples (12-14 apples): $2.99. Box of 10 fruit roll-ups: $2.89.
3kg box frozen, boneless skinless chicken breasts: $30. 1kg box PC chicken nuggets: $9.99
Just a few examples, and there is no doubt the price of food has been increasing. But I am not at all convinced that unhealthy convenience food is less expensive than plain, nutritious, unprocessed food.
Good points on the price comparisons!
Yeah, I agree, sometimes there is just no time even if you can afford nice food. I don’t even have kids and sometimes I just get pizza. For like three nights in a row. I guess I was referring to people who get the processed stuff all the time just because it’s the fancy processed stuff and it’s from a label you trust (if for no other reason that it’s familiar).
I think there are plenty of fast, nutritious meals people could make, they’re just not aware of them; people associate a “good meal” with three hours spent in the kitchen. Then again I ordered a book about good fast meals to make for two, and I’ve barely cracked it open. Just lazy I guess 😛
I also cringe when I see fat kids. It’s not that the parents can’t afford healthy food, it’s that they are too lazy to prepare something healthy the day before. Or perhaps they grew up eating crap as well or they are just really uneducated and don’t know any different. You can make in bulk and freeze meals if you are a working mom. Both my parents worked from home growing up so I guess I was one of the fortunate kids. There was always a slow cooker full of some kind of healthy soup or stew in my house.
Miles (from home) : You do know the big corps are editing all of the pages in Wikipedia that relate to them or their products right? It was proven in an article that I cannot link presently but they ip traced the people that edited the pages…and nearly all of them traced right back to corporate servers.
And yes Cheezewhiz is very close to plastic, might not be a single molecule but it is uncomfortably close…it is not the only one either.
I’m right with the OP, whether their scientific claims are exact or not.
Processed food is more expensive and less healthy. There’s no way around it. It’s like buying your groceries at a Needs – the quality is lower but you pay more for it because it’s convenient.
A giant bag of potatoes costs very little and is healthy and versatile as hell, but you need to take the time to mash, bake, boil, fry – whatever you want . It’s seems so much easier to buy french fries, but it really isn’t that much work to slice a potato, oil it up and make your own. Easy, mindless, unhealthy food just has such as strong hold over so many people.
I totally agree with SA, the convienence foods are just as expensive if not more than the make it yourself foods. And in reality, they’re not even that much quicker to make. Throw some veggies in a stir-fry pan with some seasoning and some cut up chicken, takes 20 mins at most to cook. Add pasta which will take 10 mins, which is cooking at the same time, and you have a meal in under 30 mins. It takes 25 mins to make nuggets and fries in the oven. How long does it take to make a sandwich? Or a salad? 10 mins? People seem to think that making supper is an hour long job, when there are tons of things you can make in under 20 mins, and are super healthy.
DER? First of all, I really don’t care that much what is in cheez whiz, i was just curious and was pretty sure it wasn’t plastic.
I don’t use Wiki as a reliable source, it was just easier than listing all the websites i checked out which all say pretty much the same thing: “cheese scraps, milk products, salt, emulsifiers”
The only way in which those ingredients are like plastic is that they contain hydrocarbon chains. Perhaps the emulsifiers have some similarities to chemicals used in plastics, but most of the common food emulsifiers are not used in plastics.
In addition to not putting much stock in wikipedia, I also don’t put much stock in urban legends like “Cheez whiz is plastic”
Tell that to the alligators in the sewers. LOL
Did you know margarine is 1 molecule away from BEING plastic… that’s probably where you got that Cheeze Whiz stat… hydrogenated oil which, consequently, produces MSG that doesn’t have to be added to the ingredient list because it’s “produced” during manufacture of the product. Spooky, eh?
And water is only one atom away from being peroxide. Now that’s spooky.
Margarine is made from fats. So is butter and cheese. These are mostly chains of carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons).
Plastics, generally, are made from hydrocarbon chains too but they are connected to each other (cross linked) to form a lattice. That gives plastics stability and strength.
And, remember where plastic comes from: Oil, which generally has it’s origins from organic sources.
So, just because there are some chemical similarities, doesn’t mean they are anywhere near the same thing.
A Trans-fats and saturated fats and unsaturated fats differ by only a few hydrogen atoms and have very different biochemistry.
LMB -What are you huffing? Food from scratch is cheaper than processed/pre-made, hands down, and doesn’t take a shitload of time to prepare. Staples + flyer sales on produce.
By your logic, Miles, we could all just suck back a little organic-sourced crude oil and be a-okay…. that it’s not actually POISON. I’d also like to know where the hydrocarbons come from in animal fat? (maybe we’re feeding the livestock rubber tires?) I’d also really like to know how hydrogenated VEGETABLE oil is similar in any way shape or form to butter or cream? Come on, educate me some more. *good grief*
Did I say hydrocarbons? I meant polycarbons.
SA— I like your food comparison, but in 2 of the 3 cases you cited, the prices are more expensive. I’ll agree, unprocessed variants are more expensive up front, but cost less over the long term, mostly due to the amount of unprocessed food you get. However, let’s look at some other fresh produce that is healthy and see what we find. Spinach is $2.99 for a 500g bag, oranges are $3.99 a pound (that usually gives about 3 oranges) 5 pounds of carrots are anywhere between $3 to $5 for 5 pounds. Breakfast is pretty bad; something simple as oatmeal or cream of wheat (both instant) are usually about $4.99 for 12 packets (you really only get 6, because the packets contain so little that anyone needs to use 2) and sugary cereal is anywhere between $4 and$ 5 dollars a box, with at least 7 or 9 servings a box. From concentrate orange juice (non-frozen, also full of sugar) is $3 or $4 for 1.89L and pure orange juice is $5 or $7 for 1L (even if you juice it yourself, it would take about 3 LB of oranges to make about 1.5L of OJ, given our previous price, that would mean $9 to $12 for twice the work). Not to mention milk and dairy products (although I admit that these are not necessary to be healthy in any shape, in fact most times it’s the reverse) are really insane; 2L of milk is $3.89 now, yogurt is anywhere from $2.89 for 1.5L all the way up to $6 for 12 100g packages. This isn’t taking into account meat products that make up most meals, which are the worst when comes to price spread, regular ground beef is about $2.99 a LB whereas lean costs $5. I know that while it doesn’t seem like many of the prices have that huge a spread up front, but given that a grocery cart has anywhere from 30 to 60 items for a family of four (mom, dad, 2 kids) that can add up to a 50 or 60 dollar difference, and if a family only shops once a month (which they really don’t) that’s $600 over one year. That’s half a mortgage payment of rent for a month for a low income family.
Kay– Margarine rarely contains hydrogenated oil any longer. Miles is right, anything that has hydrocarbons can be considered as a plastic, but just about everything (including the human body, and most of it’s organelles) are made up from hydrocarbons. You could say we’re plastic.
Wow, it’ll be great when you actually have kids and they decide to assert their independence by eating nothing but grilled cheese for a week…
Dr. fever I don’t think you read the price comparisons close enough, you may pay 10 cents more for apples, but you get more of them, and the price of chicken was a box of 1KG of nuggets (9.99), or 3KG of chicken breasts (29.99).
I don’t think of Orange juice in a carton as a convienence food, no one really expects you to go squeeze your own.
Instant oatmeal is still a convienence food. Compare a bag of actual oats, to a box of quakers, and you’ll see the difference. I’m always amazed at how much a box of cereal costs.
And if you shop the sales, you can always get your meat products far cheaper than the normal price. You might not have ground beef every week, but you can stock up when it goes on sale, and then it’s only $1-$2/lb for lean.
The best part of people shopping sales is that it forces variety on the family, try eating what is actually in season, instead of insisting that you need strawberries all year long. If they’re not on sale, you try something that is on sale.
It’s fine to say to shop at the sales, but most low-income households don’t have a facility to store meat or anything like that (not all house holds have giant deep freezers: my fridge freezer barely holds bread let alone a stock of meat purchased during a sale). My examples, although by and large are verygeneral and I understand convenience vs. health, but some convenience foods aren’t that unhealthy. Cooking oats isn’t hard, but most families don’t have the time to cook oats in the morning. Thus, the issue. Besides, the argument is about healthy foods, not necessarily convenience foods.
Just a note: the 3kg box of frozen chicken breasts are processed. they have at least 18% chicken protein in them and taste like ASS. The texture is all gross and eat it’s more like choking down rubber than chicken. *blech*
REAL chicken breasts (boneless, skinless) are EXPENSIVE. I buy mine at costco and a pack of 9 nice sized chicken breasts costs around 30 bucks (it’s gone up, used to be around 25-ish). It’s quite nice meat too. Breasts are HUGE and you can get two meals out of one breast so for a single person that’s 18 meals for 30 bucks or roughly $1.67 per meal. Costs around that to make KD, really.