Horrible 'Food' !

For several years, I had stopped buying factory bread. When I was a kid, back in the '60s and '70s, me and my siblings would eat up nearly the entire loaves of bread that my Mom brought home from the grocerie store, because each slice was so incredibly soft and tasty. We would put one slice after another into the toaster, -with- butter -on- it! (And wrecked the toaster though). In recent years, I eat cereal instead of bread for my daily grains, because all of those it seems, no matter what brand, are the SAME. Tasteless and dry. I also HAD to STOP buying frozen pizzas for awhile, because a phase occurred where -all- of the store-pizza manufacturers decided, "Hey, I'll bait and switch on the cheap, and give all these suckers, my customers, --cheese substitute-- cuz it's nice and cheap, and looks like real cheese, and thereby gain more profits, profits, profits ! ! !" Cheese substitute is made out of cheap 'non-dairy coffe creamer', basically, and everytime I enter a grocery store, I see more proliferation of this GARBAGE, and less and less --real-- cheese. I was --greatly-- amused, when, everytime I went to the store, I saw that this one frozen pizza -Major- Brand's prices reduced, and reduced, then reduced, until they could not give their once great brand away for free, anymore. While the newly stocked product stacked up and up. Last night, was THE LAST STRAW for me ! ! ! I paid 26 dollars to go pick up those "Three pizzas for only $15.00", and their new whole wheat one, at this Major Resteraunt Chain, -ahem- , which advertises all over tarnation. Took one bite sample from them all, AND NEARLY HURLED ! ! ! Those rotten "B******s too ? ? ? I always could count on them for real pizza. NEVER AGAIN, I'M DONE WITH YOU, AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I know many people will want to pile on here, and lecture me about growing and making my own food, etcetera, but I am a very --poor-- disabled person on an extreme budget, who lives in a large HUD apartment building. I yearn for my own house on several acres of my own property, but only people with $$$$$ can live like that.

yeah, mass produced food is rubbish but you can't really complain about this.

you are choosing to go for the easy option. as long as people shop based on price rather than quality this crapifacation is going to happen. you can't blame the food companies, their duty is only to increase profit.

i don't think the only option is growing your own food either. you say you're on a budget yet you spend $26 on pizza!!!! it doesn't cost $26 to buy the ingredients for a pizza and make it yourself.

learn to cook and drop the factory/take-away stuff, as much as possible. that way you won't be eating all the crappy chemicals they add to your food and you might end up with enough money in a few years to buy your house.

Thanks for the input, but just to reiterate, I got 4 medium sized pizzas for $26.00 and my plan was to put them in the freezer, and 'nuke', a couple slices when I wanted them, for expedience and convenience. Cooking is time consuming, and it seems that all the recipes from recipe books, are serving amounts for a family. I know this sounds like an excuse, and it is, because I --hate-- cooking, and don't have a knack for it at all, as evidenced in past DISASTERS that were my 100% efforts and attempts at such. I -am- DEcontributing to food crap'ification though, as everytime I get something that turns out to be garbage, I do NOT buy it anymore. Ever.

[edit on 5-3-2009 by simonecharisse]

I totally agree, all that grocery store factory food is absolute CRAP. And the really sad thing is, people are feeding that barf to their kids, and they do so for essentially the same reasons those corporations make crappy fake food.

Of course, there is also the issue of there being more mouths to feed than there is real food, so you have to feed them soylent substitutes.

As far as your financial situation, why don't you do something about that. It's a lot easier to make more money than to try and change the food industry.

And, you know, you can eat a lot cheaper and BETTER by buying your primary food ingredients by bulk. That is what I've been doing for over a year now. You can buy 25 or 50 pound sacks of dried beans and peas for soups, large #10 sized cans of dehydrated onions, half a cow for your freezer, flour and rice and other grains in 50 or 100 pound sacks, noodles in 5 gallon buckets, freeze dried egg power for scrambled eggs and cooking, and the list goes on .. and you can even order this stuff on the Internet and have it delivered right to your front door, and all for 1/3 the cost of buying this stuff in those tiny little grocery store packages.

The above solution also works well for emergency preparedness. I have enough food on hand to last me a year, and by doing so I cut my food bill by more than half.

Certainly preparing your own meals and baking your own bread takes a little extra work and effort, but if most people got rid of their g.d. televisions, they would have LOTS of time for the REAL THINGS they should be doing with with their life. And, some things are so simple to prepare. I can spend about 3 minutes tossing some beans and veggies and seasonings and water into a crock pot earlier in the day and a few hours later I have ready the most delicious stew or soup ready for me, and all without any of those fake filler ingredients and preservatives.

I even order freeze dried fruit and vegetables in large #10 cans, and once rehydrated and used in cooking, you can't really tell the difference from fresh. And, that freeze dried and dehydrated stuff has a pretty long shelf life too, so you don't waste any food like with fresh picked apples and carrots and strawberries and eggs and whatever went bad in the fridge in a couple of days.

Seriously, you can save a lot of money if you feed yourself your own prepared foods and order this stuff in bulk. And another good thing about this is you can save time too .. time you can use for cooking, because you won't have to keep making weekly trips to the grocery store .. you can sit at your computer at home and order your bulk supplies a couple times a year. And, most places will delivery for free if your order enough.

reply to post by simonecharisse


This is real food mmmmmmmmmmmm !

To be honest I am a chronic label reader and I to have noticed alot more additives being added into most all prepackaged foods. I have gone as far as to make an extra trip to a different store (organics) just to make sure I can allow my teens to have "junk food" that isn't total crap with no nutrient value at all. It cost a few dollars more but you actually get more if you look at the weights etc.
Another thing you guys really need to pay attention to is that about 70% of manufactures are now selling said product for a slightly higher price, but in a smaller quantity! PAY ATTENTION!
I was in the store 2 days ago and was buying some ice cream as a treat for the family and ALL of the packages where not only a minimum of 2$ more but they where in smaller quantities! ( normally 2 quart package @ 4.99 for the good stuff was in a 1.5 quart for 6.99) I was not to surprised as I was more angry than anything. I think the lady next to me noticed I was upset and asked why I showed her and she said that until I had said something she hadn't noticed due to the brighter colors and new packaging art!

My three kids where born with adhd (NO MEDS) and since entering their teens have dropped the hyperactivity part and are just having mild problems with the ADD. It caused two of them to gain alot of weight, the doctors told us it is a normal side effect and would level out soon.To keep them active as normal and stay on top of their diets. So we try real hard to make sure that they eat very healthy meals and still get to have some of what they "think" is junk food.
It has become a good rule of thumb over the last 16 months to learn how to make large batches of good wholesome foods and store them; by either canning or freezing. At least that way you know whats really in it AND it is on average 65% cheaper than buying it already made with all the additives.

You’re going to have to get off the drugs.
The food drugs.
And I’ll tell you from first hand (mouth) experience it’s going to be pure HELL.
But it'll be the best thing you ever did ---> to get free!

No more pizzas.
No more store bread.
No more pre-packaged, pre-formed, pre-moistened, pre-chewed, trash food.

The first and best step is bread.
Your own bread.
Which leads to a question.

By *disabled* well - can you cook?

I’m not being mean I’m asking with a open heart.
I’ve no idea your disability, so I need to ask.

For example:

Can you scald 3 cups whole milk then add some cold water to take it to warm bathwater temperature (no thermometers here)?

You can measure yeast if you’ve gotten this far so that step you’re all set so on to the whisk.

Can you use a whisk to beat into the milk and water some all purpose flour to a cake batter consistency?

How about adding more flour, can you stir in more flour until the dough is wet but not sticky?

From there, very very little if any kneading is done, so, as long as you can turn the bowl upside down onto a floured table, separate it into three pieces, and stick them into bread pans you’re golden!

If you can do these things I'll send you the greatest bread recipe ever.

Costs pennies, no hours of waiting and is so much better than anything you buy in the store, plus a loaf goes ten times farther as it’s real food not un-wonder bread.

Also, the base can be used for so many other things other than just bread with only a few alterations - even a great pizza base.

The financial outlay will be to buy three bread pans and some olive oil, milk and yeast. Not a ton a money but still a bit but a plus is if you buy the bread tins second hand so you wont have to *season* them.

Beyond that you’ve just got to re-teach yourself to eat.
And re-learning to eat will be freedom!

Stop the food drug - Get off the habit and get into eating right.

It’s not just for health food nerds anymore - and - once you get off the food drugs and on to real food you’ll never go back.

Never go back to eatting that packaged trash in the stores, that stuff that looks pretty on the plate but does hell on your body and your mind!

I earn about 20 euro a day and I never want for anything when it comes to food.
Sure once in a while I splurge for something but all in all I eat like a queen, and feel like one because I’m out from under the food drug, eating right, and eating well.

And there's nothing like the smell of baking bread, the satisfaction knowing you did it yourself, the taste of that warm crust dripping real butter (I can teach you a great easy and fast way to make your own butter too) and the satisfied *Yum* your body makes when it knows something good is going into it!

Lemme know if you want more info.

I can post the recipe(s) here or in U2U.

Then again maybe you’re not even interested, but, I’m here if you ever are.

peace

We bought a bread maker recently and it's fantastic. We purchased bread flour and a variety of other goodies to put in and the bread is wonderful.

We also make our own pizza. We sometimes buy pizza dough from Trader Joe's and then just make our sauce and add whatever sounds good at the time. Once again, far better than anything that I'm able to purchase at the store.

SO, make your own and you'll be so much happier.

reply to post by simonecharisse


Funny you mention this. Last week I picked up an old hobby and started baking again. I made bread from scratch, and cinnamon rolls.
A LOT of work though.

But man was it good! warm bread with butter. YUMMY


When you make your own food, and it is so tasty, it makes you realize what you are missing.
And there is a certain pride and good hard work in it as well.

My mom went to a farmers market, that has incredible homemade bread. Another woman there was looking at it and told my mom that she thought it was stale. My mom said why? The woman said, because it is so hard and crusty. My mom told her it was supposed to be that way. In fact, really good bread has a nice hard crust on it.

(I always think of the scene with the chef in Ratatouille where she said you can tell good bread by the sound of it, and plucks the crust)

But this woman looked doubtful. My mom and I thought it was so sad that this person has only known commercial bread, and thinks that good bread has to be overly soft. What she is missing....

I don't buy delivery pizza. I just don't think any of them are good. We have Ledo's here, which is really decent. But I tend to stick to local places. To me, getting delivery pizza is like eating mcdonalds hamburgers, when you are surrounded by decent mom and pop places.

And pizza isn't hard to make yourself. I use a rachel ray recipe, where you just layt thin slices of tomatoes, sprinkle some fresh basil, drizzle evoo, and cover with slices of fresh mozzarella.

reply to post by silo13


Can you send me that recipe? How is it that you can get by without the kneading?


If I had an easy, good recipe, I can just make it every week.


Also, what kind of flour do you use?

Though I am having a hard time convincing my husband, who was raised on nothing but processed instant food, that this is better and can be eaten like regular bread. sigh

Tis sad, his whole family is like that, if I doesn't come out of a box, they don't think it is as sanitary.

[edit on 5-3-2009 by nixie_nox]

Points well taken. I have been, more unconsiously than not, kicking against the fact that I am forced to make a food lifestyle paradigm shift. See, I had been habitually sticking with easy bready stuff, because something is wrong with me, and I don't know what and why. The "wrong" with is that I can't digest -real- nutritious food. I don't know why. I yearn to have beans as a staple, all different kinds, I love the tast of beans , and they are so versitile. Ditto bannanas, sweet potatos, broccolli, etc., but when I would ingest even a small amount of those, my physiology would --brutally-- --punnish-- me for hours and hours. a fate worse than death. I also suffer from nearly debilitating histamine allergies. I live on over the counter antihistamine pills. I don't have any health insurance. I am a veteran (honerable) and the VA has always covered me, but the city I had resided in, which was near--a major VA hospital, was too expensive. 100% of my $ went to being domeciled and barely fed. Now I live in a cheaper economically depressed area which is geographically innaccessible to any VA facility.

reply to post by xoxo stacie


It is very possible that your teens may be getting ready to hit a major growth spurt. A lot of kids, through their teens, plump up when they are ready to hit a major growth spurt, it is the body storing energy to handle it.If it goes on for more then a couple of years, then I would worry about it.

I have known people who have had children with ADHD,adn their hyperactivity reduced signifigatnly when they put them on natural diets.

It has also has been proven recently that preservatives cause hyperactivity in children.

Now that I am pregnant, the thought of eating something that is frozen like those pizza pocket, pizza, tv dinners- it is all very nauseating! I cant stand the smell or taste, it all tastes the same! Maybe its nature's way of saying "hey that mess is bad for you and baby... eat healthier" at least that is what I think. So I have started eating fresh food and notice my skin is better, I am not gaining an obsurd amount of weight, no more headaches, no more nausea...

For those like me that love, LOVE, love pizza, I suggest the Costco pizza. They make it to order. Everything is fresh and it only takes about 20 minutes. You can watch everything being made or you can go and your veggies and fruit while they cook it.

On a side note, I am 25 now and at my full height but I have had 2 major growth spurts. When I was middle school I had a pudgy couple of months and then I shot up like a rocket!! Again my soph yr of highschool, and I shot up again!! I think maybe your body is expecting a growth and stores extra support for it!!

Speaking of "bad" food - I just browsed an article about one of those coupon queens who purchased $100 worth of groceries for .25 cents. When's the last time you saw coupons for fresh fruit and vegies? Unfortunately most food coupons are for processed junk

Best wishes on finding a better way for yourself, OP. 