What are some of your unpopular opinions about food?
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Do people still order Frappuccino’s?0
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I do, espresso or mocha, but not as often as I used to, and when I do, I say "no whip cream"... sometimes even "nonfat".pancakerunner wrote: »Do people still order Frappuccino’s?
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Curry powder is highly questionable. Some brands are good, others pretty terrible.
Any general spice blend (Italian Blend or Pumpkin Pie Spice or whatever) can range in quality/tastiness across brands, either because of the quality/freshness of individual ingredients, or the particular ingredients/proporions used in a given brand, but to me curry powder seems especially likely to have a huge range in practice.
Mostly, I'd rather use the separate spices or herbs, though I have found a brand of chili powder I like.
As a somewhat related, but possibly unpopular opinion: I don't personally care to keep things like brownie mix, cake mix, muffin mix, etc. around. It seems so much more straightforward to keep the ingredients on hand (flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, etc.) and make whatever I want at the time, rather than needing the specific box of stuff. The steps aren't hugely more time-consuming to make most things from scratch, either, IMO.
It seems evident, from looking at the grocery aisles, that a big segment of the population must disagree with this.3 -
You're right, it appears to be an unpopular opinion, but I share it.As a somewhat related, but possibly unpopular opinion: I don't personally care to keep things like brownie mix, cake mix, muffin mix, etc. around. It seems so much more straightforward to keep the ingredients on hand (flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cocoa, etc.) and make whatever I want at the time, rather than needing the specific box of stuff. The steps aren't hugely more time-consuming to make most things from scratch, either, IMO.
It seems evident, from looking at the grocery aisles, that a big segment of the population must disagree with this.
I haven't lately, but I used to enjoy making cakes (and icings) from scratch. You haven't had a good cake until you've had one with the egg whites whipped separately and folded in.
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I read some book on the rise of cake mix and other convenience foods. It was something of a women's social history of the 1920s-1960s or some such told through that lens. I can't recall the name of it, but if I look tomorrow I might be able to find it (I don't recall if I still have the book). Anyway, it was pretty interesting. One point is that people wanted a middle ground between just add water or buy premade goods and doing everything from scratch, and the add eggs but premixed dry ingredients seemed to fit.
I also read this series of books written in the '50s as a kid, and in one of them the main character (who was from a less well off family) really wanted to be able to cook/eat the processed options and thought her mother's cooking from scratch was embarrassing. When she took over shopping and cooking for a while because her mother had to go tend to a family emergency, she quickly realized that not only was this too expensive, but not as filling/tasty. I think it's interesting that the class implications have shifted a lot, as cooking from scratch now is likely a status thing for many, while obv easy processed stuff (even when likely across classes) is cheap, so certainly has no status.
I used to live in a very upper middle class professional neighborhood (my current one is more mixed), and the grocery store did a great business in super over priced pre cut veg/fruit, while people tended to disdain (or claim to disdain) other types of convenience foods.
Anyway, I don't actually like to bake that much and rarely do (oddly enough I wanted to be good at it as a life skill so used to bake but losing weight gave me the freedom to admit that baked goods are rarely worth the cals for me and I like cooking but not baking -- I much prefer tossing ingredients together based on whim/what sounds good), so it's common for me not to have either mixes or the flour/sugar/baking powder type ingredients on hand. I bought some sugar before Christmas and just recently bought some flour because I wanted to make chicken and dumplings (I had baking powder for some reason), but I often don't have either on hand. I do pretty much always have eggs. Milk I have to buy if I need. I have cocoa for some reason, largely because I rarely use it. I think I bought a Bob's Red Mill brownie mix a couple of years ago because it was supposed to be tasty and lower cal, but have not used it. It's probably still in my pantry.1 -
I read some book on the rise of cake mix and other convenience foods. It was something of a women's social history of the 1920s-1960s or some such told through that lens. I can't recall the name of it, but if I look tomorrow I might be able to find it (I don't recall if I still have the book). Anyway, it was pretty interesting. One point is that people wanted a middle ground between just add water or buy premade goods and doing everything from scratch, and the add eggs but premixed dry ingredients seemed to fit.
I also read this series of books written in the '50s as a kid, and in one of them the main character (who was from a less well off family) really wanted to be able to cook/eat the processed options and thought her mother's cooking from scratch was embarrassing. When she took over shopping and cooking for a while because her mother had to go tend to a family emergency, she quickly realized that not only was this too expensive, but not as filling/tasty. I think it's interesting that the class implications have shifted a lot, as cooking from scratch now is likely a status thing for many, while obv easy processed stuff (even when likely across classes) is cheap, so certainly has no status.
I used to live in a very upper middle class professional neighborhood (my current one is more mixed), and the grocery store did a great business in super over priced pre cut veg/fruit, while people tended to disdain (or claim to disdain) other types of convenience foods.
Anyway, I don't actually like to bake that much and rarely do (oddly enough I wanted to be good at it as a life skill so used to bake but losing weight gave me the freedom to admit that baked goods are rarely worth the cals for me and I like cooking but not baking -- I much prefer tossing ingredients together based on whim/what sounds good), so it's common for me not to have either mixes or the flour/sugar/baking powder type ingredients on hand. I bought some sugar before Christmas and just recently bought some flour because I wanted to make chicken and dumplings (I had baking powder for some reason), but I often don't have either on hand. I do pretty much always have eggs. Milk I have to buy if I need. I have cocoa for some reason, largely because I rarely use it. I think I bought a Bob's Red Mill brownie mix a couple of years ago because it was supposed to be tasty and lower cal, but have not used it. It's probably still in my pantry.
The bolded was my understanding from my marketing classes when I was briefly in MBA school back in the 80s, too: That the first cake mixes were the "just add water" type, and they were not well accepted because of being seen as . . . I dunno, not special enough, or not trying hard enough or something . . . but that requiring adding egg and milk or oil or somesuch was apparently enough to make it feel homemade and fresh, so that increased acceptance. (I generally agree with your social class observations, too: I was raised rural, lower middle/blue collar working class, and worked in a small city/white collar setting, the latter in everything from a trailer park to the suburbs, so I've seen a variety of socio-economic contexts, and they've changed in some kind of ironic ways over time.)
If the cocoa is unsweetened, try it in savories, if you haven't. I like it in veggie chili or some soups/stews, for example. (That ought to count as an unpopular opinion, and make this post on-topic, I'm thinking?)
I don't use flour very fast these days (also not very baked-goods oriented, but keep it around . . . in my basement chest freezer, in tight containers, so it keeps for a really long time. I always have eggs, milk, and oil; have found baking powder to keep OK longer than alleged; and I think refined sugar would survive nuclear apocalypse and centuries beyond, alongside the cockroaches. Yeast is the one that can (truly) expire here, before I get around to using it.2 -
Yeah, the cocoa is unsweetened, has kept well so far. It was nice to have when we did a Day of the Dead thing with Mexican hot chocolate.
My last flour got infested with some mites, but it was also way past the supposed expiration date--I just use flour very rarely. Sugar seems to last longer and is weirdly less likely to get infested, but I tend to buy it in much smaller quantities too. Milk I can never use before it goes bad since just din't use it that much unless I buy it for a specific purpose. (This is why I'm a fan of homemade cashew milk, since I always have cashews on hand.) I've been buying milk more lately since I've been experimenting with making yogurt. Oil, yeah, I have on hand. Yeast I used to have on hand when I made bread, but not for ages.2 -
I love the idea of adding unsweetened cocoa to savory foods. I love chocolate with hot peppers... like a good mole sauce.5
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LOL5 -
Agree so much.
Miss real fruit juice gummy snacks.
Bet if crazyravr/justtomek was still here, he could come up with a recipe!2 -
Decades ago, I attended a seminar at work on "Eating Right". At the time, Snapple was fairly new, and I had switched to it from cokes and other sodas. The presenter at one point took a Snapple, a teaspoon and a jar of sugar and began scooping sugar into a bowl, one teaspoon at a time, asking us to raise our hand when we thought she had added as much sugar as was in the bottle of Snapple. As I recall, it was around 10-12 teaspoons! Unfortunately, I still drank Snapple after that... but I no longer saw it as that much healthier of an alternative.
(I haven't had a Snapple in probably a decade)1 -
I can't understand the rational in not looking at food labels when purchasing...(I guess that's unpopular?) However I do think the majority of the population have WAY to much faith in food companies keeping themselves nutritionally healthy.
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I can't understand the rational in not looking at food labels when purchasing...(I guess that's unpopular?) However I do think the majority of the population have WAY to much faith in food companies keeping themselves nutritionally healthy.
I think it's more that most people don't know what to even look for. My aunt, for example, will say oh wow this juice is only 80 calories and 0 fat!! I can drink it all, it's so great and low calorie (when the bottle is a few servings). She does the same with ice cream. She doesn't understand the concept of serving size no matter how many times I explain it to her. Or people see 250 for granola and that doesn't phase them, they think that is low amount of calories. Others simply just don't know how many calories/sugar/etc they should be having in a day.3 -
I think the reality is, most people don't really look at the nutritional info. At least, I know I didn't in decades past. When I first started looking at labels to track my grams of fat, protein and carbs, I was shocked to find that one of my favorite foods (Marie Callendar's Chicken Pot Pie) had 46 grams of fat, which was more than I was supposed to consume all day! Some people are a little more aware these days, but still, a lot of people just eat what they want -- hence the large percentage of the population that are suffering from obesity.3
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Saw chocolate covered strawberries in the other thread and made me think of this, LOL.
I love fruit and I LOVE chocolate, but dislike chocolate covered fruit. I'd much rather have a bar of chocolate and a bowl of fruit separately. I don't like the texture of fruit and chocolate together. Something about the juiciness of the fruit ruins the chocolate. I like fruit and chocolate flavored things or bars with fruit and chocolate, just not chocolate covered juicy fruit.8 -
^I get this...I can't say strawberries/chocolate are my favorite - but I've enjoyed the ones I've had I guess... I, however, absolutely love chocolate w/ dried fruits/nuts/nut-seed butters.2
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^ I'm no fan of chocolate and fruit either, except Terry's Chocolate Orange. It works for me because there's no fruit liqueur/syrup, like a chocolate-covered cherry. Instead, the orange flavor is infused into the chocolate. There's a similar Chocolate Raspberry that's also good.1
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I don’t like chili and chocolate together, not in a chocolate bar, not in mole, no chili in my hot chocolate. Just no!
Love chili! Love chocolate!2 -
frankwbrown wrote: »^ I'm no fan of chocolate and fruit either, except Terry's Chocolate Orange. It works for me because there's no fruit liqueur/syrup, like a chocolate-covered cherry. Instead, the orange flavor is infused into the chocolate. There's a similar Chocolate Raspberry that's also good.
oh yes...I forgot about cherries/raspberries and chocolate - pretty yummy stuff! (I think I'm not the 'strawberry/chocolate' fan is because strawberries aren't a favorite fruit of mine)0 -
frankwbrown wrote: »I think the reality is, most people don't really look at the nutritional info. At least, I know I didn't in decades past. When I first started looking at labels to track my grams of fat, protein and carbs, I was shocked to find that one of my favorite foods (Marie Callendar's Chicken Pot Pie) had 46 grams of fat, which was more than I was supposed to consume all day! Some people are a little more aware these days, but still, a lot of people just eat what they want -- hence the large percentage of the population that are suffering from obesity.
I had that same experience with their pot pies. I use to love them2 -
pancakerunner wrote: »
LOL
Also these... I used to think they were sooo healthy because “‘no added sugar” and just fruit juice but 290 calories for a tiny container.
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Ugh, do not even get me started on the tragedy that is consumer nutrition education.
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pancakerunner wrote: »Ugh, do not even get me started on the tragedy that is consumer nutrition education.
I think the problem is at least as much consumer nutrition *learning*. Pretty much everyone in the developed world got adequate arithmetic and story problem *education*, probably most even some on-ramp algebra.
How often, despite that, do we see posts around here that don't know how to figure the calories in 8-slice frozen pizza when the label calories are per 1/3 pizza; or how to deal with a database entry whose default quantity is 85g (let alone 3oz!) when they ate 53g of it; etc.
It's shocking. IMO, lots of life is an arithmetic story problem (taxes, mortgages, investments, retirement savings, more), and a big segment of the population Can't Deal.
It isn't always the education (system) that's the problem. Sometimes it's the attentiveness/interest of the students. I had nutrition education in school (waaaaaay back decades). Some of the people who went to school with me are hapless and helpless, despite.6 -
Eating mushrooms is like eating slimey poop growths3
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I'll take all the mushrooms you don't want, but if you like you can have all the battered/deep fried fast food onion rings...I can't even stand the smell of them either - 🤢2
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I love coriander (Cilantro for those of you in the US!)
Seriously, I'll put it on pretty much anything.1 -
Cucumbers (and anything remotely similar) are the devil!
An yes I know they are something like 95% water. But its horrible water!3 -
Daiya is one of the worst tasting vegan cheeses. There are so many way better tasting brands.
I always hear people raving about daiya and using it at restaurants when there are so many way better tasting ones.1 -
Carrots are disgusting.1
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