Lately I’ve been feeling a bit out of sync with society about my eating habits.
My first clue was on Monday when I went out for lunch with a former coworker. We had gone to high school together and used to work for the same agency in my building, a publishing agency. I now work for the relief & development agency of the same organization. So I emailed her and asked if she had any ideas for lunch.
“How about Steak & Shake or Applebees?” she asked. “Oh wait, Pizza Hut! I love their buffet!”
When I read that, I was like hmmm, how do I tactfully say that those would be the absolutely LAST places I’d consider? And how would I explain why I choose to support local businesses, plus the food seems healthier at non-chains? So I chose to write “sure. Although, I rarely go to chain restaurants. Any mom & pop places sound good?” Not sure how tactful that was, but it was my best attempt.
I could just imagine what she was thinking. “Oh yeah, she works at that granola agency now. The one whose employees bring their own plates to company picnics out in the parking lot instead of using the Styrofoam ones provided by the caterers.”
“Of course!” she wrote back. “Real Food is closed on Mondays, how about Schnitz?”
So that’s where we went. As I was eating my simply delicious Mexican chicken chili and freshly baked bread, I realized that my whole lunch was under $5. No way could we have eaten that inexpensively at a chain. And, the place was nearly empty. I wonder why that is?
The other clue this week was my homework assignment for this weight loss class I’m taking at my local YMCA. We had to find five food products in our home that had more than 10 grams of sugar and write the various kinds of sugars that were included in it. We were provided with a list of more than 20 ingredients that are really sugar (which was a kind of scary list, to tell the truth).
Their example: Yoplait Original Cherry Yogurt.27 g sugar, ingredients: sugar, High fructose corn syrup and beet juice concentrate.
I opened up my pantry. Potatoes, flour, some canned vegetables. Sugar. But it didn’t have a label on it. Popcorn. Pasta, rice, some onions I forgot about that need to be tossed. Nothing that would qualify there!
I opened up my freezer. Tater tots, some frozen beans, a two year old chicken pot pie slow cooker mix. Bacon. Pie crust? Nope, not enough sugar.
At this point I started getting desperate. I opened the refrigerator. Bingo! A can of whipped cream? Nope. Aha! I did find some Sweet Baby Ray’s leftover from last Saturday’s Brew & Barbeque. I had one!
Sweet Baby Ray’s, 16 g sugar. HFCS, pineapple juice concentrate, molasses, corn syrup, sugar.
One down, four to go. I picked up a ketchup bottle. Nope, not enough sugar. Dang it! Wait . . . apple juice! Leftover from injecting in the pork butt on Saturday.
Apple Juice, 26 g. Apple juice, apple juice concentrate.
Milk, eggs, vegetables, and other various non-sugar selections rounded out the selection in the frig. At this point I was feeling desperate. So I opened up the cupboard. OK, it is probably cheating, but here’s what I used to finish my assignment:
Pure Maple Syrup, 53 g.
Clover honey, 17 g.
Molasses, 12 g.
Is it weird that I don’t have more processed foods in my house? It might explain why when I don’t meal plan or really want a snack I have to go out to eat.
When I turned in my assignment, people were talking about how they had all this stuff in their house with high fructose corn syrup in it. I was really surprised, since these are people trying to be more healthy. Our next assignment is to do the same thing as above, only with sodium. The trainer said the highest sources of these would be canned soups, frozen dinners, etc. Well, I do have some cans of soup I keep at work in case I don’t have leftovers from the night before. After class I asked if I could use items that weren’t in my house, but just at the grocery store. She smiled and said sure.
So even though I feel like a weirdo, I guess I should be glad that my sugar and sodium intake is a lot less than if I ate a lot of junk food at home. Eating out is another story, one which I really need to work on.
If nothing else, this week has been a good reminder that were all on various stages in this journey of eating real food and eating locally. Instead of beating myself up over not being local enough, or “clean” eating enough, I should celebrate the steps I HAVE taken and continue to try to do the best I can, and learn as much as I can.
This post linked to Fight Back Friday
Neat assignment! Good for you for not having sugary junk in your pantry. I am sure I have lots.
.-= Amanda´s last blog ..Five things to consider BEFORE you start to work on your blog design =-.
I’m doing a 3 month group thing at my Y too. We are eating a limited diet for 9 days to cleanse. But it’s not really that different from my normal one. Except for my weakness – sugar. I can’t have any for the next 3 months. But we can have all the fruit and sweet potatoes we want, so I’m doing surprisingly well.
I’m with you! I hate Applebees and all of those…have you seen the reports on Macaroni Grill and how fattening their crap is? YIKES!
And personally, I can’t stand buffets…they always seem dirty. Eew.
Sorry this is long, but clearly you’ve provoked a lot of thoughts from me! I don’t think your eating habits are weird, because they’re very similar to mine. I enjoy cooking from raw ingredients rather than boxes and cans, and I don’t enjoy chain restaurants (I have certain family members who will only eat at chains, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to confirm that preference). But I will say, it’s not out of health or weight loss concerns, but only because I like the way “real” food tastes!
However, these habits are out of sync with the majority of Americans, which I think has a lot to do with our busy lifestyles these days. I’ve recently returned to work after two and a half years at home with my kids, and I can tell you that as a full time working mother I find it very difficult to continue providing the meals I’d like to serve my family in the extremely limited time I have at home (which I also want to spend with my family, not entirely in the kitchen). Further, it’s a lot more expensive to make fresh, home cooked meals than it is to serve hamburger helper five nights a week. All I have to say is thank goodness for my slow cooker, though I’m still learning how to make meals from there actually taste good – wish I’d seen your tip about injecting apple juice into a pork butt this morning! I have one going in my crock pot right now!
.-= Amy @ Cheerful Cookery´s last blog ..Ham and Mushroom-Stuffed Chicken Roulades =-.
I hear you! I’ve had a pound of ground venison in the refrigerator for about a week, fully intending to get to the store to buy tomatoes and beans to make chili. Finally DH used it for making a fattie in the smoker. Hamburger Helper would probably have made better use of it quicker, rather than me not getting the ingredients and instead of cooking at home go out for Thai food. Funny thing is, I have pasta on hand and probably could have made something like Hamburger Helper but that would have meant finding a recipe or experimenting. So there is a place for convenience foods, or maybe I just need to improve my ability to throw things together.
I have been feeling the same way lately. I’ve been cooking so much for myself and buying fresh ingredients almost exclusively from the farmer’s market, that even when my mom comes to cook for me I feel really terrible when she buys supermarket chicken and frozen microwave-steam veggies and low-fat artificially sweetened yogurt and my response is “ughhh it’s just NOT AS GOOD.” And I feel really guilty for thinking that, because I am grateful that she’s helping me out. I just have different standards when it comes to buying food than almost anyone I know and the price I pay is that absolutely nobody else understands it, not REALLY.
I am lucky that we do have a few great (and growing) farmers’ markets in Houston and that we have so many locally owned restaurants who use locally-sourced ingredients. And that my friends love those places, because I have the same reaction to chain restaurants as you do.
It’s kind of sad that truly, truly loving food and wanting to eat it at its very best has somehow made us into “food snobs” in the eyes of our fellow countrymen. And very, very frustrating.
.-= melissa´s last blog ..deep sleep and lazy soup =-.
Weirdo? Screw that… this is why you’re dropping the pounds weekly woman. As for eating out, if a new acquaintance recommends some bullshit to me and says “lets hit up McDonalds”
Here’s my tasteful response:
“I think I almost puked in my mouth…”
or
“It’s ok, not everyones creative, so lets hit up X place”
or my favorite…
“why do you want to kill me? Why? You hate me that much?!”
😉
.-= FitJerk – Fitness Blog´s last blog ..Just Change Already… =-.
wendy! first, great post. weird people who like actual Food in their food, unite!
second, there IS a great made from scratch (and so much better because of it) version of hamburger helper. we use it on a regular basis, and sometimes i’ll use sweet potatoes and venison breakfast sausage instead of reg potatoes and hamburger meat… among other variations.
i’ll send you the recipe as i just discovered that Eating Well Anywhere is no longer an active blog.
blast! good thing i copied it down for my christmas cookbooks!
I hear ya. The other weekend one of my friends invited me to her sister’s 4-H talent show thing. It went over lunch and she said she was getting fast food, I just told her I would pack a lunch. I have a life threatening food allergy which means I can just use that but sitting at the talent show with my packed lunch of leftover organic pasta, a small organic salad, stainless steel water bottle, cloth napkin, the food was in a lunchbot in my PVC-free lunch box.
I got some weird looks while most others were eating Burger King.
.-= Lisa @Retro Housewife Goes Green´s last blog ..<a href=\ =-.
I personally LOVE when I compare my foods to others because I am so much healthier than everyone else! I do not own ANY processed food… and I really truly mean it. I don’t even have honeys, sugars, syrups, etc… the sweetest thing I have in my house is Stevia!
Take PRIDE in being healthy!! 🙂