What Foods Did You Eat Growing Up?

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craftylatvian
craftylatvian Posts: 599 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I thought it would be interesting to see how we got our "food start" in life by sharing what foods we ate while growing up.

Me:
No junk food, no soda, only natural peanut butter, no white bread,no Ding Dongs or Fritos, and the only cereals we could have were Raisin Bran, Cheerios or Malt-O-Meal. Once in a while my mom would buy "Saturday Cereal" like Fruit Loops, and we could only eat it on Saturday and she did not care if we ate the whole box, but only on Saturday. My mom is a very gourmet cook (as I am now) but she did not like all the preservaties and chemicals in our food. She was not a "hippie", she just wanted us exposed to good food and a variety of it. I ate calamari when I was 10 and still love it, I didn't even know what bologna was until I was in high school. My mom cooked things like a goose for Christmas, matzo ball soup, potato pancakes (we are not Jewish), eggplant parmesan. My friends thought I ate strange things growing up.
Needless to say, I binged on junk food when I moved out of the house. Now I am sick of junk and fast food, although I still crave it once in a great while. I crave flavorful foods and cook a lot of Indian, Asian and Thai at home now.
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Replies

  • RoniDoll
    RoniDoll Posts: 262
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    Fried chicken & German dumplings, Donuts, Soda, Candy, chips, all kinds of fried food, sweet tea.

    I ate a pure Southern diet LOL!
  • DyannAlvarez
    DyannAlvarez Posts: 162 Member
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    Fried chicken, rice and gravy and corn; chicken gumbo, chicken and dumplings, (wow... lots of chicken I guess), green beans with bacon grease! Good stuff and I rarely eat that now! I couldn't make gumbo if I had too! That's what mom used to hook up and boy is it good! :wink:
  • tiarra77
    tiarra77 Posts: 39
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    all i can remember is "YOU BETTER EAT ALL OF THAT FOOD GIRL! PEOPLE IN AFRICA ARE STARVING AND U WANNA THROW FOOD AWAY..." yea, even while full, i had to eat everything!
  • bachooka
    bachooka Posts: 719 Member
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    Anything you could count as a "big family dinner" and tonnes of casseroles... which can be super unhealthy and usually were
  • Melis25Fit
    Melis25Fit Posts: 811 Member
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    My mom couldn't really cook. We did alot of Mac N Cheese, Fish Sticks, EnCore Salsbury Steaks, Chicken Paremesan, etc.
    Tuna noodle cassaroles, broccoli cheese cassaroles....

    We always had cereal or some frozen pastry or pop tarts. She always pushed fresh fruits and veggies, but why eat that when we had all that other "awesome" food available.

    I don't think I'd touch a poptart for $10 bucks now...
  • Temporalia
    Temporalia Posts: 1,151 Member
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    all i can remember is "YOU BETTER EAT ALL OF THAT FOOD GIRL! PEOPLE IN AFRICA ARE STARVING AND U WANNA THROW FOOD AWAY..." yea, even while full, i had to eat everything!

    That and my mom use to make healthy meals too, but in big portions plus a cake/ cookies after every single dinner. Once in a while we would get fast food and they always kept chips.
  • monkeybelle83
    monkeybelle83 Posts: 141 Member
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    Oh man. My mother preferred to spend money on alcohol and smokes, so we ate things like Mayo Sandwiches, egg noodles with butter, and macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. Lots of soda (it's orange flavored so it must be like juice). HORRIBLE eating habits that I can't STAND now!
  • amysj303
    amysj303 Posts: 5,086 Member
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    We had a mix of junk and wholesome, we were poor so we didn't really have soda or chips very much, but we always had Kool-Aid, I don't think I ever drank water! We had Wonder bread and my mom made this snack that sounds really horrible now-it was frosting made with cocoa and powdered sugar and milk, spread on saltine crackers!
    Dinners were like spaghetti and meatballs, tacos, fried chicken, steak and potatoes, roast, and we didn't really see a green salad, vegetables came out of a can and were usually green beans, corn, peas, or potatoes.
  • austxdreamin
    austxdreamin Posts: 43
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    Spaghetti, lasagna, stroganoff, goulash...hmmm, notice a pasta theme here! I think it was more "what could last a while on a budget" food. haha! I also grew up around a baseball field, so during season, it was hot dogs during the game and pizza after the game. Probably why I can't stant those 2 things now! And my guily pleasure as a kid...Beefaroni...which also now makes me gag!
  • maz2007
    maz2007 Posts: 2 Member
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    Interesting thread!!

    I was very restricted to what I was allowed to eat growing up. My Mum didn't let us have junk and had 'homecooked' food. But the homecooked food wasn't necessarily any better for us, mainly due to the amount we were given. And everything was served with bread.

    I also left home and binged. Like eating was going out of fashion and I would never see chocolate again. I am still like this to be honest. I am a real 'treat' eater.

    With my daughter we don't ever refer to things as treats. She has sweets and crisps as well as meals made from scratch and fresh fruit. And she doesn't see the difference. She loves grapes more than biscuits. I hope this will give her a better attitude to food than I have. My husbands upbringing, foodwise, was similar to this approach and he is much better with his eating habits than me.

    Everything in moderation is a valuable life lesson I think.

    xxx
  • Kimdbro
    Kimdbro Posts: 922 Member
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    all i can remember is "YOU BETTER EAT ALL OF THAT FOOD GIRL! PEOPLE IN AFRICA ARE STARVING AND U WANNA THROW FOOD AWAY..." yea, even while full, i had to eat everything!


    I got "people in Etheopia are starving" so yeah same... but I did have home cooked meals, nothing came from a bag, or a packet. Full nutrients, albeit, pretty rich I suspect. The gravy on the mashed potatoes, and butter on the carrots. Hamburgers, Meatloaf... there were sauces on the vegetables. LOL.
  • ♥♥YoungMrs♥♥
    ♥♥YoungMrs♥♥ Posts: 178
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    ahhh freakin casseroles..thats all we ate. And almost everything that is terrible for you. My mom (105 lbs soaking wet) ate all the time and always wanted us to eat when she did..some kind of bonding :ohwell:
  • PNCTink
    PNCTink Posts: 232 Member
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    I never ate breakfast and lunch was usually a sandwich, juice box, and some sort of sweet treat (like devil dogs) or chips. Dinner was almost always meat, potatoes, and veg. since that's what my father wanted. After dinner is when we'd have cereal or ice cream. Soda was always stocked in the house, as well as other sweets.
  • b00b0084
    b00b0084 Posts: 729 Member
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    I grew up with fast food, southern (fatty) foods, pizza, grilled cheese, fried bologna, vienna sausages, mac and cheese, cereal, anything little debbie and hostess, my mom baked when she was feeling down or depressed so the stuff was in the house all the time. Also we ate until we were stuffed (not till we were not longer hungry, but sick to our stomaches stuffed). I grew up with no healthy eating established, so it is really hard trying to eat healty now, I dont like healthy foods so I have to get used to it.
  • CallMeMamaBoo
    CallMeMamaBoo Posts: 295
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    meat and potatoes! and veggies from the garden. Lots of chilis, soups, chowders made from scratch. Lots of breakfast types of foods. They were probably the easiest given that we always had a house full of people to feed. Saturday was always donuts from the bakery. My dad was always the type to be on the go and making us all on the go with him was hard because he never allowed time to eat 3 solid meals a day. We usually had to fend for ourselves or starve til mom could get home to cook dinner. When it was meal time, we had to eat everything on the plate or we couldn't be excused from the table (something I refuse to do with my own kids now!)
  • alecta337
    alecta337 Posts: 622 Member
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    Crafty,

    I ate much like you. We were not allowed to have soda in the house, sometimes if I went out to lunch with my parents I was allowed to get a coke (not at diner because of the caffeine). No bacon, no fried food, no veggies out of cans, no chips or any junk food.

    For treats we had ice cream and cookies (the fancy pepperidge farm type) and homemade cakes (poppyseed and banana nut were the favorites), but it wasn't every day.

    I also ate a ton of veggie based meals, lots of pastas, I don't ever remember eating anything ground-beef based. We went shopping at the farmer's market every Sunday for our week of fresh veggies. I always wanted to eat fast food when I was a kid, but by the time I was making my own money and was allowed to spend it on anything I wanted, I was not interested in it anymore.

    Even when I was a baby, my parents didn't buy canned baby food, they made their own by blending up the food they had for dinner. Apparently I have loved eggplant my whole life =]

    Something interesting that I have found is that my boyfriend was raised in the south and he has a whole different perception of food than I do. He thinks a meal is worthless without meat and chicken isn't worth eating unless its fried. When I serve him a full meal, he leaves the starch/carb and the veggies on the plate. He believes that "healthy" is synonymous with "gross". Its a day-in day-out struggle to cook a meal that both of us will eat, especially because I'm trying to cut down on beef in my diet and I'm definitely not going to eat fried chicken.

    I believe that raising a kid to know how to eat is very important and I will raise my children the way I was raised, eating delicious healthy foods made from scratch.
  • yodacho
    yodacho Posts: 90 Member
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    My mom was Korean, and my dad of German/Dutch descent, so I had quite the range of foods. Traditional American home cooking (pot roast, spaghetti) with Korean stuff that Mom preferred (kimchee, hot fish, lots of vegetable type condiments). Always rice with every meal. We also had a huge garden in the backyard, so homegrown veggies and seasonal berries. Melon for dessert if Mom's preference, ice cream if Dad's. More than a little Spam. Ham hocks and beans one night, sukiyaki the next. Hot soup or fish and rice for breakfast some weekend mornings, Dad's pancakes that absorbed half the syrup bottle other Sunday mornings. Captain Crunch during the week. Combine that with many local restaurants having a health food/granola spin, and that's probably why I cook and eat the way I do. Fun question!
  • Loveebbs
    Loveebbs Posts: 300 Member
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    all i can remember is "YOU BETTER EAT ALL OF THAT FOOD GIRL! PEOPLE IN AFRICA ARE STARVING AND U WANNA THROW FOOD AWAY..." yea, even while full, i had to eat everything!

    LOL, my parents would tell me the same thing so I had to eat up everything on my plate even though I was full.
  • Jessaamine
    Jessaamine Posts: 111
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    Baked potatoes, mac and cheese, a million casseroles, and canned green beans with every dang dinner...lol
  • joybell32
    joybell32 Posts: 252 Member
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    We ate at a lot of buffets. There was 7 of us in the house so when we ate out, we usually did that so everyone could get enough. When we ate at home (which was most of the time) we ate big family dinners: meat, veg, potato, bread and butter! We seldom ate casseroles, but we ate BIG!!! We also ate a lot of junk. If BK or McDonalds had sandwich specials, that was dinner. My step-dad was big into little debbies. We had swiss cake rolls in the house at all times. We only ever had diet pop though because both my parents were diabetic (even the swiss cake man). If we wanted any regular pop we had to buy it ourself. And, we were only aloud to have 2 pops a day.

    Alot of my eating habits of today are linked to home when i was younger. VERY BAD!!!

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