Anonymous wrote:Not really. The reward is in eating the food itself: I find “whole”/unprocessed foods delicious and I know how to cook them well. I also prefer how my body feels and how my temperament is after eating these foods.
Maybe get a whole foods/plant based foods cookbook for some inspiration!
One of the biggest misconceptions of those eating the standard American diet is that eating whole foods cannot be enjoyable and delicious. Hence the need to "motivate" themselves to make the change.
I actually think that for most, the need for motivation is because of the additional time and money required to eat this way.
False. Rice, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, green vegetables, pasta, fruit, nuts, seeds, etc are not expensive. And preparing them does not need to be time consuming.
Look, most people just don't eat like this, due to a number of factors, so maybe try grasping the fact that we're not all as perfect as you and some of us need a bit of encouragement and motivation to prioritize this kind of cooking and eating? And yes, when I've come home after 10-12 hours out of the house, of course takeout is faster than simmering lentils, onions, and carrots in chicken stock and white wine. Duh.
??? Dump the lentils, some frozen onions, some frozen chopped carrots, and stock in an instant pot, set the timer for 8 min, and walk away. By the time you’re done changing out of your work clothes and changing your kid’s diaper, the instant pot will be done and dinner is ready.
Do you really think everyone has an Instant Pot? I don't know anyone who has this.
Red lentils take less than 20 min to cook. So does rice. Pasta is 8 min. Chicken cooks in under 30, fish under 15, vegetables can be steamed in under 10 min start to finish. I have a home cooked, simple meal on the table every night in under 30 min. The only reason you can’t do this is because you don’t feel like it.
YES!! That is the whole point! We don't feel like it, and that ok and why people are having this discussion. You speak as if you just discovered this concept called cooking that the rest of us do not know about.
Clearly a lot of people don’t- hence the OP topic.
No, OP started this topic because they don’t want to ingest a bunch of questionable chemicals so they were asking what resources people had for avoiding them. I guess “live on supremely boring food” is *an* option but it’s sure not an appealing one. Especially since sometimes even deeply boring food ends up having questionable chemicals in it (cf: most commercial breads).
What do you define as extremely boring food?
Plain lentils, plain rice, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Plain chicken, plain pasta, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Fried fish, plain rice, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Every. Single. Night. Aka the menu you just derided all of us for not following to solve our concerns about highly processed foods.
No one said anything about plain this and that or frozen anything. Season as you want. That isn’t a huge time consumption to mince some herbs, onion, shake in some dried seasoning.
C’mon.
OP is wondering how to avoid processed food and really, it shouldn’t be hard to do. This should be common sense and basic cooking skills
Exactly. Eating whole plant foods need not be time consuming. Someone can make it time consuming if they choose but it is not necessary.
Furthermore your taste buds will change along with your diet. When I went vegan several years back there were a bunch of foods that when I first ate them I thought were bland and boring. By the second or third time I ate them I thought they were awesome.
The problem is that the American taste buds are very used to salt, sugar, oil, butter, cream, and various chemicals and artificial substances. And “natural flavors” which have nothing natural about them.
Take those away and at first your taste buds will be bored but they will quickly adjust.
This is a very accurate post for any diet, not just plant based/vegan, and applies to the OP's goal of eating less processed foods. The taste for hyper-palatable processed foods does adjust once you elminate them.
Anonymous wrote:Not really. The reward is in eating the food itself: I find “whole”/unprocessed foods delicious and I know how to cook them well. I also prefer how my body feels and how my temperament is after eating these foods.
Maybe get a whole foods/plant based foods cookbook for some inspiration!
One of the biggest misconceptions of those eating the standard American diet is that eating whole foods cannot be enjoyable and delicious. Hence the need to "motivate" themselves to make the change.
I actually think that for most, the need for motivation is because of the additional time and money required to eat this way.
False. Rice, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, green vegetables, pasta, fruit, nuts, seeds, etc are not expensive. And preparing them does not need to be time consuming.
Look, most people just don't eat like this, due to a number of factors, so maybe try grasping the fact that we're not all as perfect as you and some of us need a bit of encouragement and motivation to prioritize this kind of cooking and eating? And yes, when I've come home after 10-12 hours out of the house, of course takeout is faster than simmering lentils, onions, and carrots in chicken stock and white wine. Duh.
??? Dump the lentils, some frozen onions, some frozen chopped carrots, and stock in an instant pot, set the timer for 8 min, and walk away. By the time you’re done changing out of your work clothes and changing your kid’s diaper, the instant pot will be done and dinner is ready.
Do you really think everyone has an Instant Pot? I don't know anyone who has this.
Red lentils take less than 20 min to cook. So does rice. Pasta is 8 min. Chicken cooks in under 30, fish under 15, vegetables can be steamed in under 10 min start to finish. I have a home cooked, simple meal on the table every night in under 30 min. The only reason you can’t do this is because you don’t feel like it.
YES!! That is the whole point! We don't feel like it, and that ok and why people are having this discussion. You speak as if you just discovered this concept called cooking that the rest of us do not know about.
Clearly a lot of people don’t- hence the OP topic.
No, OP started this topic because they don’t want to ingest a bunch of questionable chemicals so they were asking what resources people had for avoiding them. I guess “live on supremely boring food” is *an* option but it’s sure not an appealing one. Especially since sometimes even deeply boring food ends up having questionable chemicals in it (cf: most commercial breads).
What do you define as extremely boring food?
Plain lentils, plain rice, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Plain chicken, plain pasta, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Fried fish, plain rice, steamed previously frozen vegetables without seasoning
Every. Single. Night. Aka the menu you just derided all of us for not following to solve our concerns about highly processed foods.
No one said anything about plain this and that or frozen anything. Season as you want. That isn’t a huge time consumption to mince some herbs, onion, shake in some dried seasoning.
C’mon.
OP is wondering how to avoid processed food and really, it shouldn’t be hard to do. This should be common sense and basic cooking skills
You keep adding steps after getting called out for your BS but not accounting for the additional time each additional step takes (other than saying step one takes no time, step two takes no time, oh yeah and any other steps you can think of also take no time!). You remind me of work colleagues who bought houses far outside the beltway but insist their commute time is only the time spent on the highway and not including the time spent winding through their neighborhood and sitting at traffic lights and stopping at stop signs. Or maybe you really do have magic grits?
And for the record, I agree that cooking from scratch is well worth the time and effort it takes, and if people prioritized it MOST families can make it happen. But to pretend it’s easy and not time consuming is disingenuous and kind of insulting.
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