"Factory Food"

[amborin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/business/04metrics.html?ref=business

[MineralMan]

1. It's the Time vs. Money thing.

You either have time or money. It's rare to have both. If you have time, you cook what you can buy with your limited income. If you have money, you let others cook it for you, since you don't have the time.

There it is, in a nutshell.

[amborin]

3. true, to a large extent

except, there's lots of packaged food in Japan, w/o so many bad additives

also, it's possible to cook frugally and quickly with beans, soups, etc....isn't it?

so maybe it's also the culture and the influence of advertising

[MineralMan]

5. Hmm...cooking frugally and quickly, eh?

Not so much. Especially if you're working with dried beans. And proper soups take time and attention. I can go either way. I cook a lot, but I also eat food others have prepared when money is more available than time.

The thing is that cooking with individual ingredients also requires that you obtain those ingredients, then process them into finished meals. It also requires that you have the knowledge and tools needed to do that. All of those things take time, and many people have neither the knowledge or tools.

Now, I can whip up several substantial meals in half an hour or less, but that's because I have all of those things in the paragraph above. Give the average person a bunch of raw ingredients, though, and most will look at them without seeing a meal there. We don't learn to cook any longer. I did because I wanted to, and still enjoy food preparation. But proper food is neither fast nor easy. It's just not.

Besides, what many people do when they think they're cooking for themselves is little more than assembling meals out of collections of "factory" foods. Even meats are purchased pre-cut and ready for simple preparation. The average person, faced with a whole, raw chicken has no idea how to turn the thing into pieces. Give them a live chicken, and they're completely befuddled. The factory is part of the meal in the USA, even for those who think they're actually preparing food.

Only a tiny percentage of our population can or will prepare food from actual "scratch." And almost nobody starts with the real raw materials, from grinding wheat into flour to churning their own butter or pressing their own oil.

We don't do that any more. There's always a factory.

[amborin]

6. you're right! "we don't learn to cook any longer"

that's probably the main culprit

parents are too stressed and rushed and lacking time, as you said, plus it's not taught in the schools or encouraged in mass culture

[MineralMan]

8. I learned to cook out of necessity, actually.

When I was a college student, following my USAF stint, I lived in a house with three other equally impoverished veterans. We often had little money for food, so I bought a couple of cookbooks at the thrift store and started cooking.

We ate lots of beans and veggies, along with fish we caught, since we lived near a fertile Pacific bay. But that wasn't the extent of it. We needed bread, so I bought flour. I found that I could buy things like chicken backs and necks for $.15/lb at the market. Beans, potatoes, onions, etc. were cheap when you bought big bags of them. I discovered I could grow tomatoes and peppers and salad greens pretty easily.

So we ate well, and I learned to cook. In doing that, I discovered that I actually enjoyed it.

Here's a dish I discovered by accident:

I was at a garage sale once, near the house I lived in with those other vets. There was an unopened 50 lb. sack of chicken scratch at the sale for $5. Cracked corn, wheat, rice, peas, and other grains were the ingredients. I didn't even have to think about it.

We ate lots and lots of chicken backs and necks, combined with some of that chicken scratch and a few onions and other cheap vegetables, along with a heavy hit of seasonings and Tabasco, into a very tasty soup or even a sort of gruel. It tasted great, filled us up, and was a huge hit at the parties we threw from time to time. Combined with the crusty big loaves I learned to make, we ate like the peasants we were.

[amborin]

10. sounds healthy and nutritious, too!

you had initiative! plus, there maybe were no other options such as cheap fast food

ps: there is some ny times article about baking bread from scratch a very easy way; i think it was mark bittman's column a year or so ago

[MineralMan]

13. Kept you really regular, too.

:rofl:

[amborin]

15. LOL!

[MineralMan]

16. First rule of cooking, when you don't know what you want to cook:

Chop an onion and start cooking it in a little butter. Look in your fridge and other places, and slowly add some things to the onion. You'll be inspired by the smell to work with what you have. It all starts with the onion. Leftover meat, poultry, fish? In the pan. Garlic? check. Carrots, celery? Sure, why not. Oh, look, there are a couple of tomatoes over there on the counter. In they go. We've got a ragu (or a ragout) going here. Add some seasonings to suit your mood. Italian style? Mexican flavors? Indian? Whatever. It's all the same ragu.

Add some water, or a can of chopped tomatoes, or some broth, or a can of some sort of soup you find in the back of the pantry. Let it simmer as long as you like.

Remember those three boxes of pasta that you only used half of? Put on a pot of salted water and turn on the heat.

When the pasta's done, you can either pour the ragu over it or add more liquid, dump the pasta in it and have soup.

Correct the seasons with enough salt and pepper to make it the way you want, and serve. It's all good.

[amborin]

18. sounds great!

can add some barley, too


i'm afraid of canned tomatoes

[MineralMan]

19. Add what you like. Beans are good, too, but add to the cooking time.

Lentils cook in minutes, though. I keep a couple of pounds of mixed dry lentils in the pantry all the time. Finely chopped ham (like what will be left over from tonight's Easter meal), onion, garlic, and some lentils and you've got something special. Add a little curry powder or just some salt and pepper. Tobasco's good, too in this.

You can make it into a soup, or a thick gruel. Gruel's good. Nobody makes gruel any more. They should. It's how to use grains like barley, whole wheat kernels, and legumes. Make it thick and substantial, and add some of whatever vegetables and meat that's hanging around and you're set.

Even a hot dog or bratwurst that didn't get used takes on new meaning when chopped and added to gruel.

Damn! Now I'm hungry.

[amborin]

22. sounds great!

[Dr Morbius]

47. When I was younger, canned tomatoes were awful.

They've gotten better. Lots better; they've made all kinds of packaging advances in the last twenty years or so. In fact, diced tomatoes are one of the tastiest things you can buy in a can (IMHO, anyway). And tomatoes are, of course, a food which goes with many, many different meats and vegetables quite well.

I'd opt for the low-sodium kind, but they've got like a half dozen varieties out there! Diced tomatoes with green chiles, diced tomatoes with onions and roasted garlic, diced tomatoes with jalapenos, diced tomatoes with Italian herbs, Mexican-style diced tomatoes, petite diced tomatoes. And I think there may be more. And yes, they still sell stewed tomatoes.

And here's a fast, easy and terrific tasting meal: get a jar of alfredo or cheddar cheese sauce, a can of diced tomatoes, combine them, warm it up and blend it with a pound of fresh-cooked pasta. It's a great tasting meal alone, or it works with almost any kind of meat (or even fish, in the case of tuna or salmon). Diced tomatoes blend so well with cheese...

[amborin]

51. totally agree!

i used to use lots and lots of salt-free canned tomato products

they are good tasting, and very good for you!

But---an article said the cans are lined with bisphenol ( or some such; that may not be the correct name), a carcinogenic chemical; it said acidic products were particularly likely to dissolve the chemical and introduce it into the food content. So, i've looked for tomatoes in glass jars. I actually found some organic whole plum tomatoes in a jar, from Italy. But they were too expensive to get more than once. The stores here also now sell tomato products in paper cartons but the contents taste strange.

[tabasco]

29. I just throw a bunch of stuff in a crock pot.

It's really changed my life getting one of those things. lol.

Set it and forget it.

[MineralMan]

31. That works, too. I bought one of the big one. Makes pot roast

with all the goodies a simple job. I use it a lot.

[a la izquierda]

20. i'm stoked daily that i grew up in the family that i did

every summer, i went to "cooking camp" at my grandma's house. my mom's family is italian (and spanish, as i just found out recently) and cooking is THE thing to do at family gatherings. now, to be fair, only the women cook...but man, do we become good at it. cooking relaxes me and i can make do with very little.

[Luminous Animal]

21. I work a lot of overtime...

but my husband and I cook nearly every night even if it means we don't eat until 11:00 PM. It's far more fun and relaxing than TV. No doubt, many people who complain that they have no time to cook, spend a lot of time in front of the television.

[amborin]

23. +10

[wickerwoman]

37. Me too.

I used to work 60-70 hour weeks and didn't have a dishwasher.

The key is to batch cook 3-4 times what you need, freeze the rest and then eat that on the busy days. And it's a lot easier to drive past the fast food restaurants when you know you have a few options you can pop in the microwave at home.

So I only "cook" three or four times a week and then eat leftovers the rest of the time. And it is *way* cheaper than getting fast food... like 1/3rd as much. Anyone who thinks they are saving money with the "dollar" menu at McDonalds needs to check their math.

[MineralMan]

25. I'm the only man who cooks in our family, so I'm in the kitchen

at the big family gatherings with the wymynz, cooking away. It's more fun, since women talk about more interesting things while cooking than the guys do while sitting around telling stories.

My wife hates cooking, so she holds down my place in the men's area. My family thinks we're weird, but it's all good.

[a la izquierda]

56. Hah! Women in my family talk trash...

about relatives that I barely know (at least on my mom's side). My grandma on my dad's side always talked about current events. We didn't make dishes as creative on my Irish side, but the conversation (and the drink) was much better.
My husband can cook, sort of. He makes mean pancakes, eggs and smoothies. We're vegetarians, so that's usually a nice Sunday brunch for us.

[Mojorabbit]

35. I do it and once

you learn how to do it it takes no more time than other foods. This weekend I processed a whole hog my husband got with his bow. In one afternoon, I prepared a ham for the freezer, ground a ham and shoulder into plain ground pork, italian sausage, and breakfast sausage,cubed the other shoulder into bags for stew, and cooked the tenderloin and loin in a Portuguese dish with wine and spices. This pig will feed us for a good while. I grind wheat into flour for bread which also takes only a few minutes. I have an electric pressure cooker where I can do beans in no time flat and that is with out soaking. It is easy to do but the education on how to do it is sparse. That is the main problem in my mind. It is way cheaper to cook with unprocessed foods.

[happy_liberal]

48. I'm a vegetarian but THAT is impressive

Your husband bow hunts and you prepare the whole thing in one day!! I think you two should hold classes, there may be more and more people needing to learn these skills in the coming years.

I don't do it myself, but Alaska is perfect for hunting and these animals feeding on perfect organic material must be the best possible meat for those who like that sort of thing.

[SocialistLez]

4. +1

That too.

I remember in Food Inc. where they showed that family that ate out a lot.
It's cheaper to just buy the burger in terms of money and time than go to the grocery store, pick out all this fresh food and go home and prepare it.

My big weakness is eating out.

[MineralMan]

17. Then there's the $5 footlong Subway sandwich you see on TV all the time.

You can actually get some pretty good ones, and could not make the same thing yourself for that price, since you can't buy the ingredients in quantities that small. Lots and lots of elderly folks share one sandwich, along with something else as their main meal. They could do worse, really.

[KittyWampus]

7. crock pot= little time but big flavor. Edit- lentils cook relatively quickly.

[MineralMan]

9. True enough.

[amborin]

11. great northern beans, too

[MineralMan]

12. All beans. Beans are the true staff of life, as far as I'm concerned.

[amborin]

14. you're right!

very nutritious and all sorts of other beneficial qualities

[csziggy]

26. But their list counts them as "processed", therefore "bad"

That list is screwed up.

[Luminous Animal]

27. They count CANNED beans as processed food.

Which, of course, they are.

[amborin]

30. they're often loaded with sodium

[csziggy]

33. Canned foods can be loaded with all sorts of stuff

An excess of salt can be one of the more "benign" ingredients. I eat almost no canned vegetables and fewer and fewer canned foods of any kind any more. I do keep some in the house in case of disaster - if we have a hurricane with a prolonged power outage, the frozen foods I use when I cannot get fresh will have to be used in the first few days.

[amborin]

34. same here

also, the cans are supposedly lined with bisphenol or some such, which leeches out, particularly with acidic foods

[csziggy]

32. Look at the lowest category on the processed food side

"Processed, frozen, dried and chilled, and ready to eat foods" - I take that to mean dried beans, among other things. Since they count bagged rice as processed and bulk rice as not, but do not mention any difference between white and brown rice, I cannot believe their evaluations are valid.

[Luminous Animal]

50. They mean things like dried soups

spice mixes (that are included in rice mixes), mac & cheese, dinner mixes, potato mixes, pasta mixes, etc. It does not mean dried beans.

[csziggy]

52. Ooops - I missed the beans in with the nuts!

[Odin2005]

38. I love using my slow-cooker!

slow-cooked pot roast = EPIC WIN!!!

[KittyWampus]

39. you will make a good husband

:)

[Odin2005]

40. Why Thank you!

:evilgrin:

[Codeine]

46. Lentils are insanely nutritious.

My go-to staple for almost-daily consumption.

[Lorien]

54. It's a priorities thing

believe me. I can no longer eat sugar, HFCS, white flour, anything processed, meats, gluten, etc. so I have to cook or bake everything myself. I make the time, and I manage even though I have very small funds. Many of my friends only eat whole, unprocessed foods as well. They're insanely busy people, but the high quality, nutritious foods that they eat give them the energy they need to get everything done. If you eat crap you'll feel like crap. If people can make the time to watch TV or post on a discussion board they can also make the time to prepare a decent meal.

[SocialistLez]

2. Not surprising

I'm pretty proud of myself, I am eating a lot more fruits and veggies.

My girlfriend is a vegetarian yet I eat more fruits and veggies than her.
She likes those little frozen vegetarian meals and eats a lot of starchy stuff.

You'd think I'd be the overweight one if you saw the way I eat but I also try to workout 3 times a week, if not more.

Of course I know even with THE "perfect diet," whatever that may be, it's still possible to be overweight.

I know some people have thyroid issues and all that other stuff.

[csziggy]

24. They skew it somewhat - "loose" rice is unprocessed while bagged rice is processed?

If I buy long grain brown rice at the supermarket, it is the same thing as the long grain brown rice I can buy at the health food store - I've seen the fifty pound bags they pour into the bulk bins and it is the same brand. While I prefer to buy it in bulk to save on plastics, sometimes I do not have time to drive across town to the health food store to pick up a pound or two of rice. So how does buying it in the two pound bag magically turn it into "processed food"?

Just that one item skews their figures, making it look as though China eats incredibly healthier than any other country. I wonder how the figures would change if white rice were included in the processed category, and brown rice were counted as unprocessed whether bulk or packaged for either. I suspect China's apparent lead in better eating would shrink tremendously.

Then they lump meats into "unprocessed food" - the meat at the local supermarket is factory processed. We recently tried to buy some chicken scraps to bait a live trap for some sick foxes. They don't cut up or process the chicken there - it comes already cut into pieces and shrink wrapped on the foam trays. Aside from considerations of factory farming, hormones, feedlots, antibiotics and such, the meat is by no means "fresh".

Do they count frozen vegetables as processed? If you read the label in the kind I buy, the only ingredient is the vegetable(s), nothing added. How different is that from buying the fresh vegetables, other than not having the cleaning, trimming, and cutting them prior to cooking? Those are my main time savers - or even life saver when I only had one usable arm this time last year. While I do buy fresh vegetables when I have time and physical ability to process them at home, I simply cannot do it every day. Unless you can buy your vegetables locally, frozen vegetables are really the most efficient way for large farming operations to distribute as close to fresh quality as possible all year round.

[wickerwoman]

36. Good point about the meat.

I think their broader point still stands though about US v China and processed foods. I lived there for years and *everything* is cooked from scratch. Students eat a lot of instant noodles if they don't have a burner, and you can buy frozen dumplings at the store but that's really it for processed foods. Almost everyone who can afford a burner and a rice cooker makes 99% of their food from scratch.

And more than half of any given meal is always vegetables. There's an open-air veggie market on every other city block... you're never more than a five minute walk from fresh(ish) produce. Their version of "fast food" is fried rice with bok choy and eggs or steamed buns with pork and spinach, not exactly health food, but a damn sight better than Mickey D's and cheaper too.

So I think you can definitely argue with their definitions, but if you lined up what the average American family eats in a week next to what the equivalent Chinese family eats in the same time, it would be absolutely obvious why we have an obesity epidemic.

[csziggy]

42. Yes, Americans have been sold on eating crap

But that is no reason for the creators of this chart to skew their results in such a blatant manner. In my mind that invalidates their conclusions since it shows a bias that could have easily been eliminated.

[amborin]

41. when i get

frozen veggies or fruit, i try to get it where i know it's organic; otherwise, how can you be
certain the pesticides are thoroughly washed off the produce?

you're right that many frozen veggies are just the veggies, nothing else; but some contain salt and other ingredients, it depends.

[csziggy]

43. Yes, I know - and I am working in that direction for frozen ones

But the health food store has a poor selection of frozen vegetables and they are way over priced. The supermarket chain I go to has their own brands which are pretty good, though not organic all they have in the basic vegetables are the veggies themselves. At my age I will take a chance on pesticide residue and the like. After all, I grew up around the plants where they were producing that stuff, so I had plenty of exposure growing up!

Last year I was enrolled in a community supported agriculture program with a local organic gardener and I am still using up some of the vegetables we got from her that I blanched and froze. But that was a big problem for me since I had surgery in June and some times could not process the vegetable before they went bad. The CSA was not a good match for us - far too much of the kind of produce neither of us like and not enough of what I do like and use.

Once I use up the old vegetables, I plan to visit the local farmer's market on a regular schedule and get back in that routine. But it will be another month or so before the freezer is empty of old stuff!

[amborin]

44. sounds as if you have enough

veggies for now

here, i sometimes go to TJs to get organic frozen berries

or some organic frozen veggies such as spinach to add to soup or what not

TJs is fairly reasonable

[csziggy]

49. All I have left are various concoctions with yellow squash

While I like yellow squash, it gets really old after a while. We were getting 2-3 weeks worth each week from the CSA farmer and I made up packs of squash in different combinations and froze them. I thought I had used it all, but yesterday I found two more packs in the freezer. :(

The other stuff that we got an over abundance of was greens - turnip, collard, mustard, and other more exotic greens. I don't much like greens and they do not agree with my digestion. I tried every recipe I could find for greens and never found one that I could stand to eat more than once. Once was OK for testing, but the second time, it just didn't appeal to me. I do not even want to think about the quantity of okra or my attempts to use that vile vegetable.

I know we are lucky to live in a community with a variety of organic gardeners and where a wide range of products can be grown. And the "health food store" is a really great place that is actually a cooperative, customer-owned. I can't imagine living in a city where it would be hard to get fresh, locally grown products!

[Overseas]

28. K&R. Fascinating info. //nt

[Karmadillo]

45. I just watched Food, Inc. This country is crazy (no offense). Too many corporations

owning too much of our government and too many people with too little education. We simply need to change the way we interact with the world. Sitting around waiting for rich people and the leaders they authorize to solve our problems simply isn't going to work. We need to demand change and take to the streets if necessary. These people are killing us and they don't really care.

"There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop, And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all." (1964)

Mario Savio

[upi402]

53. Food Inc. is a great film

Now there's a circle jerk; Corporations can contribute unlimited funds to get Corporatist politicians elected. Then the corporatists politicians make laws that corporations want. Then they reward the politicians the next election cycle.

We're utterly screwed.

[Karmadillo]

57. I hope not, although it sure looks that way. The movie does point out the

way the influence of Big Tobacco was successfully reduced in the US. Maybe we can meet the challenge of corporate hegemony head on and win. If we did, the possibility of making the world a better place would be increased tremendously.

[upi402]

59. I agree. But it took decades and countless deaths to change

I doubt the corporate lords will allow their TV propaganda box to utter a word about this. Even 60 Minutes had a dilemma trying to get the obvious out about cancer sticks.

[Lorien]

55. + 1 nt

[madville]

58. I like cooking and making things from scratch, it is healthier and cheaper

I keep all the staples around, flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda/powder, herbs, spices, etc. I also buy a 50 lb bag of rice about once every year or so along with around 50 lbs of various dried beans. I also deer hunt during the season and fish several times a week, helps keep the freezer stocked. I also grow corn, peppers, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, acre peas, okra, etc. As soon as I am back home full time from this assignment I am going to get some chicks and raise some chickens for meat and hopefully eggs.

Once you do it awhile it just becomes second nature. Soak your beans the day before make enough for supper and to take to work for lunch the next day or freeze leftovers to reheat later if you are crunched for time one day. Wash the dishes real fast as you use them (I have a little brush with the soap reservoir built in the handle) don't let them pile up. Have a plan for the week. I don't even watch TV anymore and spend less and less time on the internet, mainly just to read the news and political happenings. I like one pot meals also, especially soups and stews along with some homemade bread. I rarely buy anything processed anymore unless it's for something like my son having some other kids other for a sleep over or whatever, and even then I buy sale items or save coupons.

I hate when people say fast food is cheaper and quicker, BS. I can make burgers on a Foreman grill or hot plate cheaper and just as quick as any of the fast food places. Plus I get to control what goes in them.