What are some of your unpopular opinions about food?

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Replies

  • PAPYRUS3
    PAPYRUS3 Posts: 13,259 Member
    okay, not really an unpopular opinion but more just an annoyance... I feel like there are WAY too many "healthy" baking mixes on the market now.

    That goes for so many things out there that keep coming out...stating that they are "healthy"...and most of them just SOOO are not! (annoying for sure!)
  • pancakerunner
    pancakerunner Posts: 6,137 Member
    PAPYRUS3 wrote: »
    okay, not really an unpopular opinion but more just an annoyance... I feel like there are WAY too many "healthy" baking mixes on the market now.

    That goes for so many things out there that keep coming out...stating that they are "healthy"...and most of them just SOOO are not! (annoying for sure!)

    just what we need is another "grain free" pancake mix
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited January 2021
    I do like Bob's Red Mill 10 grain pancake mix. I used to make it with 2 eggs (instead of the recommended 1 egg plus oil) or just do a half serving with one egg, and then top it with microwaved frozen berries, and it was good if one wanted a low cal pancake fix. It's not super healthy (and it doesn't claim to be), but it fits my macros/cals better than classic pancakes would.
  • PAPYRUS3
    PAPYRUS3 Posts: 13,259 Member
    I love new products for sure - but it's when they state and plaster to consumers that theirs are SOO healthy, etc., etc., but when you look at the ingredients, it's not accurate to their claims!
  • frankwbrown
    frankwbrown Posts: 12,041 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I do like Bob's Red Mill 10 grain pancake mix. I used to make it with 2 eggs (instead of the recommended 1 egg plus oil) or just do a half serving with one egg, and then top it with microwaved frozen berries, and it was good if one wanted a low cal pancake fix. It's not super healthy (and it doesn't claim to be), but it fits my macros/cals better than classic pancakes would.
    I like Bob's Red Mill -- I've had their 13 bean soup mix and vegetable soup mix. I haven't had that pancake mix, but I did try Kodiac Cakes "Power Cakes". I'll give that 10 grain mix a try.
    PAPYRUS3 wrote: »
    I love new products for sure - but it's when they state and plaster to consumers that theirs are SOO healthy, etc., etc., but when you look at the ingredients, it's not accurate to their claims!
    I know, and everything is "new and improved". Makes me wanna ask, "What was wrong with it before?" :D
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Yeah, I've liked a number of Bob's Red Mill products, including that 13 bean soup.
  • corinasue1143
    corinasue1143 Posts: 7,467 Member
    edited January 2021
    PAPYRUS3 wrote: »
    I love new products for sure - but it's when they state and plaster to consumers that theirs are SOO healthy, etc., etc., but when you look at the ingredients, it's not accurate to their claims!

    I just read the label on a protein shake mix. It had 21 grams of protein and 565 calories. Whaaaaat?

  • PAPYRUS3
    PAPYRUS3 Posts: 13,259 Member
    PAPYRUS3 wrote: »
    I love new products for sure - but it's when they state and plaster to consumers that theirs are SOO healthy, etc., etc., but when you look at the ingredients, it's not accurate to their claims!

    I just read the label on a protein shake mix. It had 21 grams of protein and 545 calories. Whaaaaat?

    😐 holy!
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    One of my dorm friends in college was a rugby player who was always trying to put on mass, and he consumed some kind of protein powder shake (Joe Wieder brand, I think) that was intended to be high cal to help with muscle building. I just looked at something similar, called Mega Mass, and even it is only 400 cal and 26 g protein. But if a protein shake is that high cal, I wonder what the purpose of it is -- could be for hard gainers.
  • frankwbrown
    frankwbrown Posts: 12,041 Member
    edited January 2021
    Just imagine if one's difficulty was in trying to gain weight! :D
    (I had a college roommate like that, he's still a string bean)
  • pancakerunner
    pancakerunner Posts: 6,137 Member
    Do people still order Frappuccino’s?
  • frankwbrown
    frankwbrown Posts: 12,041 Member
    Do people still order Frappuccino’s?
    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".
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    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.
  • frankwbrown
    frankwbrown Posts: 12,041 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    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.
    You're right, it appears to be an unpopular opinion, but I share it.
    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. :D
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited January 2021
    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.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    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.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    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.
  • corinasue1143
    corinasue1143 Posts: 7,467 Member
    Agree so much.
    Miss real fruit juice gummy snacks.
    Bet if crazyravr/justtomek was still here, he could come up with a recipe!