Why do you buy processed foods for your kids?

[Anonymous]

Do you have literally anything else going on in your life, OP?

[Anonymous]

I made ALL food for my kids when they were babies and toddlers. The youngest decided between 2-3 they she would no longer eat fruits or vegetables. I used to be holier than thou about what I feed her but now my goal is to just get calories and nutrients in her. I have a strong willed and stubborn child. I can't fight about food for HOURS a day everyday. So yes, she gets processed food. I try to balance it when I can but her power struggles are too much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love frozen waffles. Wait till your kids are older. We did all homemade when little.

Lol, yep. Just wait till they go to school and get their first taste of strawberry yogurt and animal crackers. Careful not to make them forbidden food or you'll have the kid binging on snacks at their friends houses.

Their kid's gonna be that girl in the dorm who eats nothing but Fruit Loops for like a month because their parents were crazy about their food.

That was me, although my mom would occasionally buy cookies, but ration them out -- because of expense and worry about calories. I discovered pop tarts in college and ate them constantly. Drank soda and ate chips all the time because they were restricted to weekends and "company" food, as in, save those for friends/relatives when they come over. Gained that freshman 15 super fast. (Ironically went to college super thin but that was because I basically starved myself my senior year of high school when I was in "love".)

[Anonymous]

All things in moderation.

[Anonymous]

Well, I prefer to cook from scratch. So I buy premise food for one of three reasons:

1. Meal kits/shelf stable ingredients: To keep on the shelf for when I’ve had no time to cook and have nothing I made frozen ahead in the freezer (hardly ever happens, since I batch cook)
2. Bars/snacks: for sending to school or taking to an activity, when being able to check the Ingredient list is required; premade sealed food is required!
3. Snacks/desserts: for parties, cookouts, and field trips, so that I don’t have to cook large quantities and keep most in the house; I cook healthier versions (desserts) for our use and freeze what won’t be eaten before spoiling.
4. Dairy: weekly, because I don’t have time, space or energy to keep up with household needs for kefir, yogurt, hard cheese, fresh mozzarella, cottage cheese, ricotta, etc. Our dairy needs vary weekly, based on kids’ activities and our meal plan, but the amount of time I would need to spend would be insane, let alone the space requirements to ripen cheese...
5. Canned/frozen: when the produce is frozen at the peak of nutritional value and would have degraded by the time I could get it fresh (spinach), when the alternative to frozen is unripe fresh produce (berries), when canning helps the nutritional value (tomatoes), frozen is the alternative when produce is out of season in my area
6. Dry goods: because I don’t like to collect and dry my own beans, seaweed, rice, etc. I also don’t like shelling my own nuts.

I love to cook. There’s no judgement of others’ choices, just an explanation of when I buy different types of food. FWIW, I do look for the following: no gluten or corn, no added sugar, normal to high fiber from appropriate sources, very little salt, no preservatives or additives, etc.

[Anonymous]

I do think posting something like this during a pandemic is particularly knuckleheaded. Lady, I'm currently both trying to do a full time job and provide childcare, as my son's daycare is closed. Do you have access to Hermione's time turner?

[Anonymous]

Because chocolate improves lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Store-bought yogurt is such an innocuous thing to complain about! I make my own because I prefer the taste, but if I liked the taste of store-bought I would switch in an instant. In general, buying store-bought things with just a few ingredients is fine.

I do judge UMC families who rarely cook and continuously rotate a selection of take-out and frozen food. Cooking should be something like laundry or dishes - you just do it. People should be disciplined instead of lazy.

Because you say so? Ok then, I’ll get right on it! If I’m not doing it your way then clearly I suck at parenting. Can you please send me your email address - I’d love some more of your pearls of wisdom. I need all the help I can get!

[Anonymous]

Ain't nobody got time to be making yogurt at home, hon! Perhaps it is GOOP posting?

[Anonymous]

I thought this would be about “snacks” and goldfish.

But yogurt?!?

[Anonymous]

I prefer to make many of the items in my home -- I've knit and crocheted blankets for the children, and I prefer to make most of the art on the walls myself - including paintings, fiber art, etc. I think it's kind of tacky to put up things from big box stores -- but I consider crafting to be my hobby. I'm good at it and I enjoy it.
It sounds like the OP wants everyone to have a cooking hobby -- even if they're not good at it and don't enjoy it. I"m a terrible cook and I hate it. Why are you making it sound like I'm a bad person because I don't do it. Do I say you're a bad person because you bring some baby gift from JC Penney's when I've handmade a gorgeous baby blanket? No, I don't because I unerstand that people are different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ain't nobody got time to be making yogurt at home, hon! Perhaps it is GOOP posting?

you are joking right? It literally needs a few seconds to set yogurt with starter.. the time you took to post on dcum..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Store-bought yogurt is such an innocuous thing to complain about! I make my own because I prefer the taste, but if I liked the taste of store-bought I would switch in an instant. In general, buying store-bought things with just a few ingredients is fine.

I do judge UMC families who rarely cook and continuously rotate a selection of take-out and frozen food. Cooking should be something like laundry or dishes - you just do it. People should be disciplined instead of lazy.

Because you say so? Ok then, I’ll get right on it! If I’m not doing it your way then clearly I suck at parenting. Can you please send me your email address - I’d love some more of your pearls of wisdom. I need all the help I can get!

Sorry but I'm with PP on this. I do get that life gets crazy sometimes but I find it stunning when people with kids tell me they don't cook at all. It's one thing to get takeout once or twice a week or feed less healthy things to a truly picky eater, but cooking is a basic life skill. My spouse grew up eating pre-prepared foods and takeout all the time and there are serious health problems in the family as a result. I'm definitely not snobby about everything being fresh/totally unprocessed, even if you're just throwing cans of beans and tomatoes into a pot to make chili that's still cooking in my book.

[Anonymous]

Also the inconvenient fact that all those preservatives keep stuff from molding. Home made yogurt isn't going to do me any good if it's got a fuzzy blue layer on top.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ain't nobody got time to be making yogurt at home, hon! Perhaps it is GOOP posting?

you are joking right? It literally needs a few seconds to set yogurt with starter.. the time you took to post on dcum..

12.21 again. So you only need to it the starter in your milk? Really?

Yeah no. You’re either using freeze-dried culture or store bought yogurt as culture. And while some heirloom cultures work at room temperature (very runny, ime), others have to be kept warm (with a pilot light in the oven, I’d be fine leaving it overnight; with the oven running, it’s during the day while I’m available). Regardless, you skipped scalding and cooling the milk! You don’t scald it and it doesn’t work as well, in addition to having who knows what microbes in it. Then there’s the straining if you prefer Greek yogurt (I do).

Making yogurt is time consuming. Making cheese (fresh mozzarella and hard cheese) is time consuming. Making ricotta and cottage cheese is time consuming. It’s all possible, to one extent or another. (I’ve never made cream cheese, no inclination to try.) Kefir is the only one that’s easy to do, but I end up smooshing the starter through the sieve, then I need more starter.