An unfashionable defence of convenience

fishshark

7elizamae wrote: »

"Women were expected to spend most of their day in the kitchen, preparing, washing, chopping, braising, making pastry. All women, whether they wanted to or not, were expected to cook all day, every day. And to do the laundry. And to care for the children. And keep the house clean. Many would have backbreaking work to do on their allotment. Women were trapped in this cycle because it was expected of them – the requirements of managing a household forced them into servitude and anyone who rejected this risked social exclusion."

Hmm...where to start?

While I would never want anyone "chained" to a kitchen, "excluded" from society, and "trapped" in "servitude," I do believe that most families would benefit from having someone (male/female/what-have-you) making care of the family nutrition their priority.

I wash, chop, braise, and keep the house clean most days. But I am not trapped in servitude; I'm just taking care of my family.

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

Right now i dont work and my husband does.. im in school online so its a blessing to be able to stay home. I do all of the cooking and 90% of the cleaning. After 10 years working 60 hours a week as a chef i wouldnt call it servitude.. im so blessed and thankful to have a break. I am by no means chained haha. I agree i think whatever arrangement one has for their family is all that matters.

Lounmoun

I do see a lot of people labeling foods negatively as vaguely unhealthy or junk without stating the actual nutritional value or their standards for those labels. It is irritating. Real people come here all the time crying about not being able to stick to a diet or being able to socialize at all because their friends/family eat "garbage". They have cut tons of "junk" foods from their life but it isn't actually sustainable with their lifestyle to do that so they struggle.

I spend a lot of time planning meals and cooking for my family and still use convenience foods. I don't bake all of my bread, make all of my pasta or grow all my own vegetables. I'm all for people cooking more. I'm for people using fresh ingredients. I'm for eating tasty food. I'm for being aware of ingredients in your food and making choices that best meet your needs. I'm also for being truthful that you gain weight from consuming too many calories and that can come from too many home grown vegetables and organic chicken or too many Twinkies and lattes. Optimal nutrition is a different issue than weight management.

Roseygirl1

I remember the movies SUPER SIZE ME and FATHEAD. The first set out to show how fat the filmmaker became eating nasty McDonald's foods. FATHEAD showed that calorie counting eating only at McDonald's resulted in weight loss. In the first film, the filmmaker set out to eat lots of calories. According to the film, he gained weight and developed a fatty liver. In the second film, the filmmaker LOST weight but....wait for it.....his cholesterol numbers shifted, his LDL increased and his HDL (more significantly) decreased. So he lost weight, but perhaps at a cost of some increase in systemic inflammation. (I would have liked to have known his homocysteine and C-reactive protein levels, both decent markers for systemic inflammation.)

So the point I'm making is....wait for it....you will lose weight with CICO, but you can be skinny and in poor health depending on the quality of your diet. The issue isn't convenience foods, the issue is HOW the food is made "convenient."

NOT ALL CONVENIENCE FOODS ARE HORRIBLY MADE! When I still had my two kids at home, and was working as a physician, I did not have time to make my own bread! But I didn't want bread with things like ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, and more. So I went up and down the bread aisle, reading labels. At the time, I found ONE brand (Helderberg) that had this label: whole wheat flour, water, salt, yeast. That's been my family bread ever since.

You can do the same kind of balancing act with almost every product. Yogurt? Stoneyfield Farms Organic Lowfat plain yogurt= Pasteurized Organic Low Fat Milk, Pectin, Vitamin D3, live cultures.

Dannon Light and Fit cherry cheesecake mousse Yogurt=cultured gradeA nonfat milk, water, sugar, modifed food starch, kosher gelatin, vegetable juice for color, lactic acid esters of mono and diglycerides, natural and artificial flavors, acesulfame potassium, lactic acid, sucralose, vitamin A, vitamin D3, nitrogen.

You have to work a little harder if you want convenient food that isn't total crap. And yes, I consider the Dannon Light and Fit cherry cheesecake mousse yogurt crap. Most of the stuff manufacturers put in foods are there to boost flavor to hit the reward centers of the brain (hyper arousal) or to extend shelf life, as in the case of those lactic acid esters of mono and diglycerides. But consider this: what does it mean to extend shelf life? It means the food doesn't get mold as quick. I think maybe the molds are smart enough not to eat that crap.

So for me, my bottom line is, I will buy convenience foods if they are convenient because somebody else made them.

But I still want to eat foods as health promoting as possible and reasonable, most of the time.

Pea

cross2bear

I hope everyone here realizes how privileged they are to even be having this discussion. The fact that we in the Western Nations have so much choice is staggering - I cannot understand how so much angst can be generated over what YOU eat versus what ANYONE ELSE eats.

rankinsect

Roseygirl1 wrote: »

In the second film, the filmmaker LOST weight but....wait for it.....his cholesterol numbers shifted, his LDL increased and his HDL (more significantly) decreased. So he lost weight, but perhaps at a cost of some increase in systemic inflammation.

It would be interesting to know what his numbers were like after stopping weight loss and being on maintenance. Rapid weight loss by itself can increase LDL and decrease HDL. The primary point of lipoproteins is to move fat through the bloodstream, and if you're losing weight quickly, you're moving a lot more fat, so changes to LDL/HDL ratio is not unusual.

MelissaPhippsFeagins

The truth is that when I pick lettuce from my own garden in my own backyard, I will wash it before I eat it. That washing is both a process and an intelligent thing to do. I am grateful for the room to garden, but i am also grateful for the process of canning and other preservation techniques. I also like protein bars as a snack and since i LOVE both coffee and peanut butter, I'll be giving up heavily processed foods when I die and not one minute before.
Life is about balance - bratwurst and veggies off the same grill - and moderation - splitting fries with my 9yo.

ReaderGirl3

MelissaPhippsFeagins wrote: »

The truth is that when I pick lettuce from my own garden in my own backyard, I will wash it before I eat it. That washing is both a process and an intelligent thing to do. I am grateful for the room to garden, but i am also grateful for the process of canning and other preservation techniques. I also like protein bars as a snack and since i LOVE both coffee and peanut butter, I'll be giving up heavily processed foods when I die and not one minute before.
Life is about balance - bratwurst and veggies off the same grill - and moderation - splitting fries with my 9yo.

This. My woe includes a wide variety of foods which include all sorts of 'processed' convenience foods. It also includes a ridiculous amount of veggies, whole grains, chicken and fish etc. I've found the balance that works for me-not only for the short weight loss phase, but also for the very long maintenance phase I'm now 3 years into. Eating convenience foods has not had any kind of negative affect on me and I'm in excellent health with great blood work panels, a bmi of around 20.7, no health issues, no medications etc.

I've got 40+ years of maintenance ahead of me, no way am I cutting out foods that I enjoy, or that make my life a little bit easier

ShodanPrime

fishshark wrote: »

7elizamae wrote: »

"Women were expected to spend most of their day in the kitchen, preparing, washing, chopping, braising, making pastry. All women, whether they wanted to or not, were expected to cook all day, every day. And to do the laundry. And to care for the children. And keep the house clean. Many would have backbreaking work to do on their allotment. Women were trapped in this cycle because it was expected of them – the requirements of managing a household forced them into servitude and anyone who rejected this risked social exclusion."

Hmm...where to start?

While I would never want anyone "chained" to a kitchen, "excluded" from society, and "trapped" in "servitude," I do believe that most families would benefit from having someone (male/female/what-have-you) making care of the family nutrition their priority.

I wash, chop, braise, and keep the house clean most days. But I am not trapped in servitude; I'm just taking care of my family.

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.

Right now i dont work and my husband does.. im in school online so its a blessing to be able to stay home. I do all of the cooking and 90% of the cleaning. After 10 years working 60 hours a week as a chef i wouldnt call it servitude.. im so blessed and thankful to have a break. I am by no means chained haha. I agree i think whatever arrangement one has for their family is all that matters.

You're a chef. You can walk into a kitchen and cook for 300 as easily as 30. Doesn't mean 3 isn't an insurmountable obstacle for the untrained.


As in most cases, it is.

shaumom

Oh man, this is near and dear to my heart in SO many ways.

Totally agree with some of what the article says, like that cooking from scratch is often not affordable in terms of time OR money. And that people often use the term 'processed' for food when they don't mean ALL foods that are processed. They aren't talking about shelled sunflower seeds or frozen peas.

Me? I totally am talking about these foods when I think of processed foods. I think of a food as being processed in some way if it has something on it, or in it, that is a result of how it was handled before it got to me. And these days, that's pretty much everything.

As an example, wax coatings on fruit, anti-sprouting agents on potatoes, defoaming agents added to maple syrup, preservatives added to dried spices, cornstarch added to yeast cakes, yellow dye added to chicken feed to get into the egg yolk and make it the 'right' color, and so on.

Most of the time, none of these even show up on a label, either because the food is not considered processed enough to need a label (like the fruit or eggs), or the addition is part of the 'processing' or in low amounts and so it isn't required to be on the label at all. But if you, like myself, suddenly develop a few allergies, you start realizing just how much processing is going on with unprocessed food because you start reacting to it.

Whether a person thinks this processing matters or not is up to them, but I absolutely believe that if a person believes all processed food is a problem and they refuse to eat it, they may want to re-examine what they think IS processed food. It's usually a lot more than they think it is.


RE: whether processed foods contribute to obesity.

IF you use the definition of anything processed being processed foods, so that even frozen peas or shelled nuts counts? Then holy cow, yes, convenience foods contribute to obesity. The original article is completely wrong about this, IMHO. NOT because processed food is inherently bad, though. It's because it freaking takes TIME and a lot of MONEY to make enough food to overeat!

The article talks about women being chained to the kitchen when they used to have to cook from scratch, and at the same time it says that "Obesity happens because people make poor food choices. If you took away convenience foods, they would still make poor food choices. People would make chips from scratch or buy them from the chippy..."

You can't have it both ways. Either making foods from scratch is such hard work that it was stifling, or it's not a big deal and people would make all sorts of junk food whenever they want.

After dealing with allergies and having to make foods from scratch to a level that is more commonly seen in third world countries, (I grew what grain I might use, had to make my own vinegar from fruits I juiced myself with yeast from the environment rather than purchased, grow and/or shell my own nuts/seeds, etc...), I can say with confidence that when it comes to overeating, you don't do it as much. Because you look at that food you just made, and you think: it took me two hours to make this, not including the time it's taken this week to shell the nuts, grind the grains, make the condiment, etc... I can have another helping right now, or I can save this and not have to freaking cook for another 2 hours for the next meal.

Most people with busy lives make the choice not to have to cook. Right now, that means using convenience foods. Without convenience foods? The choice is not eating so much because it took so freaking long to cook the stupid stuff that you're exhausted and don't want to do it AGAIN when you don't have to.

So yeah...convenience foods absolutely contribute to obesity, IMHO, even if it's only because it makes it easier for us to indulge if we feel the urge, instead of having to work really, really hard to be ABLE to indulge. There's a reason why, historically, a lot of fatty, sweet, and/or carb-heavy dishes were reserved primarily for feast days and holidays, you know?

I am not SAD that we have convenience/processed foods because otherwise the level of food preparation is quite extensive, and we don't have a society set up any more to allow this for most families, even if they wanted to. But thinking that it hasn't impacted our ability to make more food, and eat it, is just ignoring the facts, IMO.