Making homemade versions of store bought food

kommodevaran

I like to make my own food, to some extent. It makes me feel a bit like Superwoman.

I haven't made my own mayo, but I have made nut butters; never crispbread, but I've baked bread and biscuits; I recently made liver paté, and I make pasta sauce from canned tomatoes. I have made sweet&sour sauce with vinegar and corn starch, but never ketchup; I make my own pancakes, but I buy frozen pizza. We made butter once in school, I have never tried making yogurt, but I think my mother did once (that or kefir).

For weight loss, calories is what matters. You can eat too much of anything. But it's harder to overeat - or easier to not overeat, I'm not completely sure here - when you eat a nutritious diet. This is where "whole foods" come in - home cooked foods are made from real food ingredients and have naturally occurring nutrients. If you do it properly, the finished product will also be nutritious. There will be a range of nutrients and a rich palette of flavors. Fresh food and homecooked food will spoil quickly because it's packed with organic compounds that are attractive, not only to humans or any dogs or cats in the household, but to microorganisms too.

Readymade food tastes good because it just has to taste good and have a long shelf life. Simple, strong flavors are easy to get used to, and repeat customers are guaranteed.

"Organic" on the label is just to justify a higher price.

illusion2269

The things I make from scratch at home I do because of cost honestly. I picked up an electric pressure cooker and a bread machine on sale, and have been making my own multigrain bread loaves and homemade yogurt for quite a few months now. The bread is slightly higher calorie per slice but I need less of it to feel full (and the flavor is outstanding) and fresh homemade yogurt is so good in so many things. I can make the yogurt for under $1.50 per half gallon, and the bread is under a buck per 1.5lb loaf.

canadianlbs

i think you're putting a bit of a halo around the idea of making your own. maybe the halo is justified by special factors in how you do it, but you're over-generalizing and making some rather odd claims. for one thing, you seem to be using the word 'organic' far more casually than would be applicable where i live.

Fresh food and homecooked food [...] packed with organic compounds

uh, no. if i buy cheapo non-organic produce and bring it home, it doesn't magically become infused with 'organic compounds' just because i make a soup out of it.

"Organic" on the label is just to justify a higher price.

around here anything labelled that way better be organic or some kind of licensing board would start getting involved. it refers to concrete differences in the means of production. and mostly i think it's meant to imply an absence of something, aka pesticides and chemicals.

i've also made some food of my own that was feckin' awful, just ftr

kommodevaran

canadianlbs wrote: »

i think you're putting a bit of a halo around the idea of making your own. maybe the halo is justified by special factors in how you do it, but you're over-generalizing and making some rather odd claims. for one thing, you seem to be using the word 'organic' far more casually than would be applicable where i live.

Fresh food and homecooked food [...] packed with organic compounds

uh, no. if i buy cheapo non-organic produce and bring it home, it doesn't magically become infused with 'organic compounds' just because i make a soup out of it.

"Organic" on the label is just to justify a higher price.

around here anything labelled that way better be organic or some kind of licensing board would start getting involved. it refers to concrete differences in the means of production. and mostly i think it's meant to imply an absence of something, aka pesticides and chemicals.

i've also made some food of my own that was feckin' awful, just ftr

Yeah, I think it's fun and surprisingly easy to make the things I make, that's possibly some kind of halo.

"Organic" has at least two different meanings. (I live in Norway, but I think the "organic" label denotes the same all over the world.) One is what certain foods that are grown without use of certain pesticides and fertilizers, are legally allowed to be called/labeled. They are not any more nutritious than their "non-organic" counterparts. (All foods are made up of chemicals, by the way. Nutrients are indeed chemicals.) The other is "living", which means that the nutrients in the food are present and can be utilized by the animal that eats it. This availability can be enhanced by cooking (potatoes, meat) or the nutrients are available also in the raw food (apples, nuts).

I'm not making this up. I recommend reading Michael Pollan and Mark Schatzker, they are probably better at explaining this than I am.

canadianlbs

kommodevaran wrote: »

I'm not making this up.

i'll take your word about it. haven't heard of that second usage being common in canada. there's all kinds of soft claims that are made, of course. but afaik the formally-regulated 'official' label here only refers to production methods.