Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Food We Ate as Kids

So I've been thinking...what processed foods do you remember eating as a kid?
Here is my list of five

1. Fish sticks
2. All soups-never had "real" soup as a kid
3. Tang-the astronauts drink
4. Frosted Flakes
5. Canned vegetables-rarely had fresh

Most nights for dinner we had meat, potatoes & a canned vegetable. Milk to drink, bread & butter always on the table & sometimes desert. When my parents went to play pinochle once a month or out to eat for their anniversary or birthday we would sometimes eat TV dinners. Most often though, we would eat pancakes for dinner those nights. My parents were "frugal". One piece of meat, you know, the "old size" not the new super-sized portion. Fill up on bread if you were still hungry. Actually I am grateful for that "portion control" of my youth. None of us have had a weight problem as we got older & I think it might have something to do with that.
Breakfast was usually cereal from a box or oatmeal with a glass of milk. Lunch was soup & sandwiches & again milk (or Tang when that came out. We really thought we were cool drinking what the astronauts drank). Bedtime snack was a small glass of milk or when we were older, Coke-A- Cola. The caffeine/sleep connection apparently wasn't made yet :-)
So that in a nutshell was my youthful diet. It kept me thin but not healthy. I suffered with asthma from the time I was seventeen until I changed my diet six years ago. Live & learn.

So...what are your top five processed foods as a kid?

13 comments:

Rabbit Hill Farm said...

Ooh! Great question and so revealing.

1. Bologna
2. Cocoa Puffs
3. Spaghetti-O's
4. Chips-Ahoy! Cookies
5. Frozen Pizza

Yucky! I would never feed that crap to my own kids. Live and learn I guess.

Claire MW said...

I didn't have much processed food as a kid. Much of it wasn't allowed in the house! We lived in the city, but my Mom made bread, Tang would have been out of the question, veggies were either fresh or frozen, we didn't have pop/soda. When I went to friends homes and had mac and cheese for lunch, I developed a taste for the packaged stuff. My mother was mortified. However, I definitely remember having fish sticks! Occasionally she would buy a package of Oreo cookies, which I thought were really cool.

The Three Little Bears said...

1. peanut butter
2. mac n cheese
3. milk

But that's really it. My mother stayed away from it. (made homemade jam, etc).

Kelle at The Never Done Farm said...

We ate lots of deviled ham, spam, tuna because they were cheaper than most meat. Our red meat was mostly wild game

We didn't drink pop but Kool aid was a big part of our drinks, along with milk.

My Mom cooked alot from scratch, only remember having TV dinners once. Oh! yes, we did eat the Banquet Pot pies though and Banquet Fried Chicken.

I thought this through a lot when we encountered our Dd's genetic disease. It had to start somewhere and neither myself or Dh have this genetic disease. This was a HUGE part we began changing our foods, not that we ate bad to begin with but we made the effort for grow as much as we could, this way we KNEW 100% it was all natural.

Blessings,
Kelle

A Bit of Colour said...

We ate a lot of meat and potatoes, 1 helping with a large family of 6 kids.Did grow a garden, nothing like eating a tomatoe right from the garden. Bread & ketchup sandwich was a snack for me.

Meadowlark said...

1)Spam (I still love spam sandwiches)
2)White bread
3)kool-aid
4)canned veggies
5)?

We ran cattle and had a garden, so I mostly remember eating steak and potatoes every night.

Soda on the other hand was an occasional treat during wheat harvest only. Otherwise water (from those ultra-cool burlap water bags) or koolaid or coffee.

I miss those days.

ChristyACB said...

Wow...how do I limit it to 5?

1. Kool-Aid
2. Mac n Cheese
3. Fish Sticks
4. Pasta Products
5. White Bread

Of course, there is packaged and then there is packaged. Simple heat meals were too expensive so generally anything packaged was a primary ingredient.

A Farmstead Pilgrimage... said...

This made me smile, as just the other day, my husband and I were talking about our favorite foods, when we were younger.

Growing up, my family ate healthy, very much like what my husband and I eat now. We did not eat prepackaged foods. Everything was made from scratch.

However, I had a friend who ate foods like these- prepackaged/ processed. I would eat there sometimes, and I found the following (at the time) to be my favorite:

Captain Crunch Cereal
Prego Spaghetti Sauce w/white noodles
M&M's
Frozen Reese Burritos

Yikes! What a list. [grin]

Thanks for the fun rememberance.
Kris

Barb said...

Thanks for all the responses. It fun to see what was eaten as a kid. Good for you if you didn't have much of it!

Heidi said...

OH - We didnt have much processed food - but the one thing I wanted BAD was cheese slices... yummy..
Thanks for the comment - Do you by chance know the farmers wife? He blog is on my sidebar link - if you dont you should! Thanks again - Heidi

Chris W said...

1-Frozen turkey slices and gravy over toast (mom called it rattlesnake steak for some reason)
2-Some generic god-awful pot pies that the beagles would even bury rather than eat
3-malt-o-meal...man I miss that stuff!!!
4-Marathon bars-mmmm mmmm twisted caramel dipped in chocolate
5-Super Sugar Crisp cereal-remember when they bragged about putting kids into a 3 hour sugar buzz?????

Meadowlark said...

Heidi... we sold hay to the Tillamook hay farmers. I thought EVERYBODY had 7lb blocks of Tillamook cheese in their fridge ;)

angie said...

Kraft Mac 'n Cheese
TV Dinners (we thought the ones with the dessert in the middle were especially neat.)