Processed Foods

RunningPirate

Barefooters
Mar 23, 2012
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Right, then...

I'm trying [operative word, there] to get away from processed foods and go towards fresh fruits and veg and some meat...but the cookies keep calling me*

I understand that after a period of time, after eating whole foods (not the store) one loses ones taste for processed food as it tastes...well...processed. Who here has been through this transition and how long did it take before you were no longer craving processed food? Also, how do you manage through the "You will eat it" scenarios where there's familiar pressure to eat something (e.g. Birthday cake), yet you know it will send you out of control again ('course, maybe this is just me...)

Because the cookies...they're calling me... :D

Thankx,

:matey:


*[Yes, I realize there's probably a way to make a nice, healthy cookie, but I have a throttle control issue, which means they get eaten by the dozen rather than individually. Thus, I have to stay away from them.]
 
For me the transition has been ongoing about 2 years. Don't get me wrong, I occasionally get the craving for unhealthy food, and it is critical to keep it out of the house. For the more common craving for sweets, I have some fairly tasty protein bars, which I have in the freezer and fridge. Some chocolate covered banana pops for the ice cream cravings. Some dark chocolate for the chocolate cravings.

It's a bit of trial and error, if the food is too good, then I need to throw it out or take it to work, since I don't want to down it in one sitting. This isn't necessarily your fault, since junk food is engineered to make you feel insatiable.
mobile.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

Since, I actually have to leave the house to get junk food, I don't eat junk as often. I'm more picky when I eat unhealthy foods and when eating out too, opting for exceptional gourmet food, rather than the common garbage. Really good gourmet gets expensive, so I don't have as much of that either. What others consider to be good burgers, fries, and pizza tastes overpowering and like crap to me. My taste buds are fairly delicate now, since I don't eat all that garbage. Junk food really dulls the senses.

I find that it's better for me to structure my environment rather than rely on willpower. I bring fruit and protein bars to work. Again, the vending machine stuff tastes like crap to me, now. This gets me through the day, and I'll snack on my food throughout work. The bonus is that this gives me time to take a short snooze during my 30min lunch. I have more variety at home, but again no junk food around.

On the rare occasion, I'll raid the wife's stash, but this doesn't happen too much, as we have dissimilar tastes, and I have to buy her more food, if I eat hers.

For special occasions, I've lost enough weight that most people don't bug me about eating their junk food. Though it hasn't come up yet, I've decided that I would make an exception for something unique, perhaps a rare homemade delicacy. In that case, I'd wrap up a piece to take home. I don't work in public relations or encounter positions where I have to eat something to be polite.

When I do dine out with family on weekends, I can get carb cravings. However, the boring food that I take to work usually nips that in the bud, so I don't gain too much weight just over a weekend. Though, I've been working off some weight that I gained over a recent vacation.

I still like sweets and rich foods. It's just that I no longer tolerate the overpowering generic processed garbage that junk food companies shovels at everyone.
 
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I used to have a sweet tooth. I could go through a third of a bag of mini peanut butter cups on my 30 minute commute to/from work. A few years ago I started eating nuts or seeds instead--walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, macadamia nuts, and sunflower and pumpkin seeds are my favorites. After 4 to 6 months I noticed I didn't crave sweets so much. Sometimes I roast them at home with a little sweetener, but mostly they are salty or unseasoned. Subbing salt for sugar is good for me and I reach my salt limit sooner than my sugar limit. They say that the nuts are good for you as long as they are just replacing other proteins and fat. Mine are still an addition, but it's a start, I guess.
 
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*[Yes, I realize there's probably a way to make a nice, healthy cookie, but I have a throttle control issue, which means they get eaten by the dozen rather than individually. Thus, I have to stay away from them.]
I don't think it's just you. This article suggests that sugar, salt, and fat are unique, in that we always want more. Centuries ago, these things used to be much harder to come by.
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23well.html
 
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I understand that after a period of time, after eating whole foods (not the store) one loses ones taste for processed food as it tastes...well...processed. Who here has been through this transition and how long did it take before you were no longer craving processed food?

ah, well, I have some direct experience with that. Moving from the US to Northern Bavaria (in 1995, when I was 32 yrs old), I was literally forced to go through withdrawl symptoms, and it wasn't much different than a smoker going cold turkey. I had strong cravings; processed foods tasted like real food to me and were the only way I could feel dietarily satisfied.

But the basic diet here was and still is based more on whole foods without artificial colors/flavors/preservatives (athough for some reason, they used to use saccharin in the craziest places e.g. dill pickles and creamed herring - huh?). Real German brown bread is superior in every way to the crappy bleached-flour caramel-colored stuff I used to think of as 'whole wheat', yet it didn't satisfy me the same way, and I found it boring. And real pasta noodles with cheese sauce from real cheese seems bland compared to the weird pasty starch product that comes in a box with a foil pouch of toxic-orange powder that creates a kind of oozy, saucy liquid with an intense, unnatural flavor when you add 0.5% milk and heat it.

But I needed those preservatives and artificial flavors, not to mention the vivid colors, for quite a while. It's an addiction, one that the consumables industry created and continues to manipulate. I had to go to McDonalds regularly (luckily the only fastfood 'restaurant' in our little town) to get my fix of shite pretending to be food.

For a couple years ...

Now, 16 years later, I can't stand the stuff. Processed foods (I wouldn't count cookies in this category, btw, not all of them anyway) are repulsive to me. For example, potato chips. Real potato chips, made from potatoes, oil and salt, are great, I love them. But those phony, formed Pringles 'objects' are horrible, they leave a disgusting coating on the tongue that, if you aren't already indoctrinated to it, is very disturbing. But I used to scarf them down like there's no tomorrow. Ugh.

Visitors often bring junk food from the US when they comes here, thinking we all love the stuff, but, no, it's just weird, and doesn't seem like something that should be consumed. Even the kids here don't like it. Our daughter was given a HUGE bag of 'original' M&Ms, three years ago. Half of them are still in the gumball machine they came with.
 
it takes time. the knowledge of what that crap is and how bad it is for you will also help. i've never been a fan of boxed cookies. taste like crap compared to homemade. my ex makes incredible cookies, especially chocolate chip. i was impressed with myself for not eating not even one at my daughter's bday. people fight for and bribe her to make cookies, they are that good. probably best i've ever eaten.

now when i want something sweet i eat some nuts, usually raw and unsalted. not as tasty so you don't eat as many but the fat is filling and satisfying. i also like peanut butter, adams. i've been making some trail mix too of nuts with coconut shavings, oil, and sometimes honey with a few pieces of dark chocolate.

experiment so you don't go crazy when you're caught at a party and cake is brought out. give yourself a good enough reason not to eat it and you won't.
 
It wasn't dificult for me to eat whole foods because, well, I grew up eating fresh fruit because it grows wild in mexico and every house has quite a few fruit trees that when you're hungry for a snack you go to your back yard and picked it from the tree and our meals were always cooked from scratch with fresh ingredients and the best part is that we never baked cookies/cakes. The only time we had a piece of cake was/is for someone's birthday and that's it!
I still cook the same way in my hose most of the times except for the occasional pizza:hungry:
People here at work are constantly bringing bake goods and I can very easily ignored them:smuggrin:
 
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RP, I have the same problem, kinda. I have my breakfasts and lunches down pat now and I don't have problems with those meals. It's dinner and afterwards where I often have the problem. Part of it is my pregnant wife and her crummy cravings (she's off work before dinner) and part of it is I have a real love of ice cream. I've found for me, if I try to completely curb bad crap, eventually, usually in a couple weeks I will break down and binge eat pretty bad. I've been really good at following myfitnesspal's calorie suggestions for me, and if I have 110 calories left at the end of the day I can have a serving of Dryers Slow Churned Carmel Delight, if not then I can't. It really seems to help keep the massive craving away if I don't totally cut it out completely but just limit myself to when I can have it. I saw Mike suggested eating nuts with no salt, but for me I love nuts and can't stop. They don't make me feel full like he suggested either.
 
We've always basically cooked our meals from scratch. We don't make all our own pasta and buy some store bought breads for example, but we cook with staple ingredients. It has been surprising to me when people are shocked that we don't eat jarred this and packaged that. Once, when the kids were little I thought I would give them a treat and take them to McDonalds. They were all excited until they got their food. Hardly anything got eaten. Except some French fries. Most of us like the French fries. I don't think my cooking skills were above average when we started a family, although they might be now since I've practiced so much! But one thing that I learned quickly, as a matter of survival, is that meals don't have to be complicated in order to taste good. And it's okay to have a few basic meal plans that are regularly rotated through.
 
Nick, raw, unsalted nuts. way different than that big tub of costco nuts you can sit down and eat.
 
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It has been surprising to me when people are shocked that we don't eat jarred this and packaged that.

I hold back commenting whenever my American friends/family post pics of their 'cakes' at Facebook, so obviously made from some kind of easy-mix and with frosting from a can smeared on them. The most important thing seems to be color. The more garish and flourescent, the more 'likes' it's going to get (and, guaranteed, if we hadn't moved here, where the average housewife makes cakes from scratch as good as the best bakers in NY where I come from, I'd still get excited about the Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker).

One really disturbing trend I noticed when I was back last time is that EVERYTHING is sold in 'convenient snack packs'. That, to me, is just the epitome of laziness and inconsideration for the environment. There does seem to be a push for 'slow foods' among the people in my internet circles, but that's a pretty narrow demographic and I didn't see any of it while there.
 
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I hold back commenting whenever my American friends/family post pics of their 'cakes' at Facebook, so obviously made from some kind of easy-mix and with frosting from a can smeared on them. The most important thing seems to be color. The more garish and flourescent, the more 'likes' it's going to get (and, guaranteed, if we hadn't move here, where the average housewife makes cakes from scratch as good as the best bakers in NY where I come from, I'd still get excited about the Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker).

One really disturbing trend I noticed when I was back last time is that EVERYTHING is sold in 'convenient snack packs'. That, to me, is just the epitome of laziness and inconsideration for the environment. There does seem to be a push for 'slow foods' among the people in my internet circles, but I didn't see any of it while there.
And dare I say it is food stamps often being spent on these convenience "food?"
 
I just remembered something. You guys ever seen the original 'Gummi Bears', made by Haribo? They're available in the US, sort of. The Gummi Bears sold in Germany and I assume the rest of Europe, are actually quite good, no artificial colors or flavoring. Nice firm consistency, really a high quality snack. The colors and flavors come straight from fruits, and they're 100% made in Germany.

But for the US market, they set up production in Turkey (which doesn't mean anything per se, Turkey is an up and coming source country for a lot of things) and completely changed the formula. The US Gummi Bears are completely fake. Synthetic colors, synthetic flavors, and lower quality in general.

Did they do that to cut costs and maximize profit? Nope (not that they complain an about making profit). They had done market research and determined that American kids don't react to the original product as strongly as they do to the toxic chemical bombs they developed specifically for that market.

And that's pretty sad :-(
 
You dare. But are they less expensive? I'd think they probably cost a good 20-50% more than 'foods' sold in less convenient sizes.
Which is what I intended to imply. Generally, those who use other people's money are less careful about using it efficiently.
 
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Transitioning for the last 12 years. Every year I try to be even more careful, but I don't beat myself up if I occasionally have a processed item, but given the choice, I will always chose the most basic, raw and natural foods. Variety and moderation are the key, but I'm not going to preach because I have my vices of beer, coffee (gave up the sweetener, but not the half and half), and chocolate. So have a cookie once in a while if it is homemade. Just stash them 5 miles from your house.:)