The Food of My Youth

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/09/the-food-of-my-youth/

by axiomdata316 • 8 years ago

160 89 8 years ago

nybooks.com

sctb• 8 years ago

We've updated the link from https://longreads.com/2018/07/18/defined-by-want/, which points to this.

taion• 8 years ago

This was such an unexpectedly powerful piece of writing. Thanks for sharing this.

teddyh3• 8 years ago

Again, I find myself obliged to link to this excellent article:

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-devel...

#5 You Develop a Taste for Shitty Food

maxerickson• 8 years ago

I know quite a few kids that are at least "comfortable" financially and they prefer boxed mac and cheese and simple hot dogs and cheese pizza and so on because that's what they get at day care and school.

AdmiralAsshat• 8 years ago

My mother is an excellent cook, but to be honest it took me until my 20's to prefer homemade mac and cheese over the boxed kind, simply because I had developed a taste for it as a child. And my mother, ever the pragmatic one, wasn't gonna waste her time making something from scratch when her worthless children preferred the cardboard crap.

I've done a full 180, and now I'm the pretentious hipster who refers to it as "Elbow macaroni with bechamel sauce".

nightski2• 8 years ago

Then you grow older on a professional level of income, learn to appreciate great food and realize your food budget averages $1000/month. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

codeafin• 8 years ago

As Misao Okawa who reached age 117 said, eating delicious things is the key to longevity - though western "delicious things" are way different to Japanese "delicious things", I still like to lie to myself and proceed to order the bread pudding.

thatfrenchguy3• 8 years ago

If you cook, no.

perlpimp• 8 years ago

I was an exchange student who became Canadian after some time , later traveling to outside of north america I found Aunt Jemima's was not what people are thinking of what is maple syrup(something that the host family was buying as a staple and sometimes adding to corn and barn flakes).

For me this is the only kind I would put on pancakes.

52-6F-622• 8 years ago

God that whole article struck close to home.

I was lucky with food, though. While my parents would stock up how they could, we lived in an agricultural community and there was plenty of fresh vegetables around. My mother also grew them in the back and we learned young to love raw, fresh vegetables instead of eating [too much] candy or other stuff. Even when we did have something like boxed mac and cheese, there was almost always broccoli in it. We didn't get a lot of meat, let alone good meat, and to this day I suffer a B12 deficiency partly for it, but I still love getting my fresh greens, raw or cooked. Lucky that way.

nicholas733• 8 years ago

Do you suffer a deficiency because it takes a long time to build up B12 levels, or because you are used to not eating much meat?

thatfrenchguy3• 8 years ago

Culturally interestingly though, he mentions needing a new dryer right now, when you can just air-dry them.

teddyh3• 8 years ago

That isn’t an option if you either have a small enough apartment that you don’t have any space to hang clothes, or don’t have enough presentable spare clothes to be able to wait until the washed clothes are dry.

xutopia• 8 years ago

This hits me in the feels. My parents weren't the richest in the world but I was fortunate enough to have food on the table without resorting to the equivalent of food stamps in my country.

The struggle is real for some people and we just don't know how much it hurts us years later. Even today whenever I have access to cereals other than the cheapest kind I have this uncomfortable feeling like I shouldn't eat something that expensive.

hprotagonist• 8 years ago

And when the Man handed over our food stamps, we were called moochers, a drain on our country. It’s no different now—worse even, as those people on the Hill try to pass a bill that would make people earn their food stamps. Tacking on work requirements—implying that foster kids are too lazy to pay for their own food, that mothers like mine, whose husbands went off to serve and never came back quite the same, are just not trying hard enough to make ends meet.

Ow.

sharadov• 8 years ago

That was powerful, made me tear up.

joefourier3• 8 years ago

Why are stereotypical American "low-income" foods largely processed meats and junk food (e.g. boxed macaroni and cheese, spam, Vienna sausages), instead of staples like rice, oats, beans, lentils, etc. which also keep easily but are far more nutritious, tasty and just as cheap, if not cheaper on a per-calorie basis?

This is genuine curiosity, as I grew up in a region where the average income was much lower than the USA, but the food consumed by lower-income individuals was much healthier and fresher. We'd eat things like red beans and rice, curries, acar (a type of spiced pickle) and often cook meat over wood fires to save money on gas for the oven.

_mrniceguy_2• 8 years ago

Because processed foods are made in a factory.

Two things this affords. 1. Massive automation, so more profits can flow to less people 2. Far more calories can be packed into processed food than what is natural. But it's far less nutritious. Your body can't handle it and that's why there's so many fat kids and fat Americans.

m_ke• 8 years ago

3. Shelf life, which means no spoiled food and lost revenue for the stores.

4. Marketing / Branding, you can market packaged food and build a valuable brand. Hard to do that with fresh produce since you can't really control the supply.

nitwit005• 8 years ago

The staples are effectively made in a factory as well, or at least industrially processed. You don't just hand people a bunch of wheat.

While it's true that a lot of processed food is sweetened, if you look at the caloric density of traditional staples, it's usually pretty high. No one would have planted those crops otherwise.

moate6• 8 years ago

Fat is just calories. Fat doesn't care about vitamins, or minerals. It doesn't care about anything but calories in vs calories out. Your body can absolutely handle calorie dense, low vitamin/mineral foods and not get fat, but there's a whole bunch of other factors that play into it.

Lower income obesity can be linked to the quality of the food, but OP asking why the US seems more interested in processed packaged food vs "simple staples" that other countries cook. The answer there is availability and cultural perceptions (both of what the people should be eating, and of what the observer thinks the people in that culture are eating)

tbomb• 8 years ago

I think the reason is 2 part.

Part 1 being often these "junk" processed foods are cheaper to buy for more quantity. eg. a box of macaroni and cheese can feed a family of 4 on $2USD. Possibly mix in a couple hotdogs which on the cheaper end can cost under $5USD for 16. in the end your feeding a family of 4 dinner for under $5.

Part 2 being time. Typically in lower income families (I grew up on the low end of the "middle class") both parents are working. my mother didn't have the time or energy to come home from and 8-10 hour work day and then cook for the next 90 minutes. that same box of macaroni and cheese (with hotdogs) can be made in ~30 minutes with little attention to it. and once my sister and I were old enough to help out, it was something we could do for her.

Thats my anecdotal and oversimplified answer anyway :)

joefourier3• 8 years ago

You don't have to buy 20kg of rice for it to be cheap. You can buy a 1kg bag of potatoes for $0.50 - $1.00, and cooking them is as easy as putting them in the microwave for ~10 minutes. A single kilo of rice can be had for under $2.00 by itself, and cooking rice is quick and easy. Add a can of beans on top, some spices and you got yourself a dirt cheap vegetarian meal.

Outside of the USA you have plenty of families surviving on less than $10 a day, they don't wait for their paycheck to accumulate to buy food.

It sounds more like a cultural issue, or perhaps such staples are not easily found in most of the USA and/or are marketed as "health foods" and suffer a corresponding price increase?

JackFr• 8 years ago

I don't think that's necessarily true. Rice and beans are cheaper than mac & cheese. (Though only marginally better nutritionally.)

I think a lot of it has to do with availability. People in poverty are typically less well served by large grocery stores, and are more likely to shop in convenience stores. Convenience stores are less like to stock low margin products like bulk rice and dried beans, and more likely to stock higher margin processed foods.

I'm not an expert though, could be many factors.

simonsarris• 8 years ago

Part 2 being time.

I really don't think so. All the statistics we have point to poor people having more, often much more, free time than middle class people or rich people.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191558/average-daily-tim...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/the-fre...

Thirteen year old children can also be taught to cook and prep reliably, as I'm sure you know.

Part 2 is probably more likely a basket of cultural issues. Sampling my middle income and lower friends, almost none of their parents taught them a thing about cooking. (Those that did of the very poor had 13 year olds cooking.)

I have seen a total lack of interest in cooking and a total lack of planning. It takes essentially zero time to soak beans overnight, and no time to simmer them in a pot with olive oil or butter or anything else you have (carrot water/cabbage water/stubs of vegetables if-you-have-any water). Many times a week I make beans and scrambled eggs this way.

deadmetheny• 8 years ago

It's largely a side-effect of the heavy marketing of processed foods post-WWII in America. Companies producing rations pivoted into producing processed food for the consumer market, which was marketed based on its speed and simplicity. The result is that the poor are either working so much that they value the speed of processed food, or they simply don't know any better and buy the processed food rather than cooking their own more nutritious food.

moate6• 8 years ago

Alright, let's break this one down.

1- Because they're stereotypes? Because nobody actually understands how people eat. Poor Americans eat rice and oats and beans, but those aren't stereotypical American. Ask yourself, is rice an American food? Do you imagine Americans eating it? I'm sure poor Asian Americans and Latinxs are. Do you think about poor people in Louisiana sustenance hunting/fishing? The US has an image, and that influences what people show/are willing to see.

2- Food Deserts. The US has large urban populations where the vast majority of the food available is canned/prepared. You can't cook over an open fire in a city because of regulations. You might live in a high rise apartment where you can't really cook much of anything because of the lack of space available. In those types of situations, it's easier to get a 1 dollar cheeseburger from a restaurant to meet your immediate food needs than try to buy a 20 LB bag of rice, carry it through downtown, and then store it in your living room.

3-When you're dealing with food, most people's immediate desire is calories. Your body is stupid, and when it has nutritional needs it often expresses them as just blanket hunger. People are able to get cheap calories in the US, but many of them are nutritionally minimal.

4- Relative value of money. You grew up somewhere that was poorer than the US, but there was likely deflation of the price of goods consummate with that. Poor in the US is not the same as poor in China or poor in the Sudan. They each come with their own special flavors of terrible options available to you.

dbatten• 8 years ago

1) Cheap junk food is marketed, whereas cheap staples aren't. Basic white/brown rice is a commodity. There's no differentiation, and ultra-slim margins, so nobody's trying to market it to you. Easy Mac on the other hand...

2) Taste. To us adults (and mostly upper-middle class adults to boot) on HN, rice and beans may sound more appealing than cheap mac and cheese with mystery meat. Take a poll of 3-year-olds and you may get a different result.

3) Ease. Staples like rice and beans are only really cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process. (My wife and I recently tried to save on black beans by cooking ourselves rather than buying canned. The result was good, but by the time you chop onions for seasoning, add other ingredients, monitor the beans, drain and cool the beans, and wash the crock pot, cutting board, knife, various spoons and measuring implements, etc., well, it ends up being a lot of work.) If you're a single parent working two jobs to support your kids, 5 minutes of preparation is meaningfully better than even, say, 20 minutes of preparation.

felipemnoa2• 8 years ago

Staples like rice and beans are only really cheap when you're buying them in dry form, bulk. This means you need to season them and cook them, which can be a long process.

I don't know. You make it sound as if it were difficult to cook these staples. During my college years these were the easiest things to cook, along with pasta and tomato sauce. Basically it was just a matter of filling the pot with water, dropping the ingredients and then just wait.

Similarly with tomato sauce, add the ingredients in a pot and just wait.

woodandsteel• 8 years ago

Re: flavor: or you could just add some salsa, which is both healthy and reasonably cheap. Or just mix the beans in with something else healthy and cheap you are eating, like a salad. You don't seem to really applying your intelligence.

As to cooking beans, I do it all the time, and it's easy. Buy a couple of one-pound packs, sort for stones, dump in a pot with excess water, bring to boil, cook a pre-set time, dump into a collendar to drain off the excess, let set a bit to cool. Put in two zip-lock bags and put one in the refrigerator, one in the freezer, wash the collendar. A child could do it. Yeah, it takes time, but it's not like you have to sit there watching the pot the whole time you are cooking it. And you have beans for a week.

Your argument about marketing is more to the point.

dabbledash• 8 years ago

To replace canned black beans you need to put beans, water, and salt in a pressure cooker for ~40 min. If you want a tasty meal you’ll have to sauté some onions etc, but you’d have to do that with canned beans as well.

But yeah, I agree with the actual points you’re making. I also think a lot of people in the US literally don’t know how to cook.

MisterTea2• 8 years ago

2) Taste. To us adults ... on HN, rice and beans may sound more appealing than cheap mac and cheese with mystery meat. Take a poll of 3-year-olds and you may get a different result.

Depends on how the 3 year old was raised. I'm in my 30's, along with my brother, and my parents fed us what they ate. My mother cooked most of the week and weekends we would do takeout or the occasional restaurant visit. We were given portions from our parents meal and sometimes an extra side or appetizer. When old enough I got to pick my own meal which was never a kids meal of junk like mac n cheese or hot dogs. I wanted the good stuff like rack of lamb, steamed lobster with drawn butter, prime rib medium rare, fresh mashed potatoes, whole vegetables, etc. The good things my parents ate and shared with us. Sure there was junk food around, but it was kept to a minimum. The friends who became obese had parents who let them drink soda while feeding them deep fried frozen chicken, boxed mac n cheese, and a cupboard full of cookies, candies and other fattening snacks. Some are still morbidly obese to this day.

Kalium2• 8 years ago

Time, energy, and infrastructure.

People experiencing low income in the US aren't generally just low on money. They're also low on time, energy, and often infrastructure. It's hard to buy staples in bulk and cook healthy meals with them when you don't have the time required or a place where you can reliably and safely store the staples.

And, at this point, a lot of it is cultural. Not all people value healthy food.

mythrwy• 8 years ago

It seems in the US eating well is less valued than some places. Not sure why. This seems to propagate through generations, i.e people growing up around fast food and prepared food don't place value or learn to cook.

Also (and this is probably an "insensitive" opinion) yes, sometimes people really are too stressed and busy to properly prepare food. Other times (perhaps more frequently) they are just too lazy.

nightski2• 8 years ago

Far more nutritious? Hardly. Rice, Oats, Beans, Lentils are all just pure carbs just like the junk food (or worse, because the junk food contains fat which will make you feel fuller). Will spike your insulin hard and not keep you full long term.

everythingswan• 8 years ago

Lentils and most beans are low on the glycemic index and have a balance of protein in them. As a T1 diabetic for 10+ years, I personally find that glycemic index is the leading indicator for how large and sustained my insulin spikes are

GI Info from ADA: http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/what-can-i-eat... GI info: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce... Lentil Macros: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/macro-organic-gre... Black Bean Macros: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/publix-dried-blac...

moate6• 8 years ago

None of what you just said is entirely true. Beans, Lentils, Rice and Oats all consist mostly of starches, which are broken down slowly over the digestion process and contain many indigestible starches or fiber to fill you up and promote body health. Not to mention that beans and lentils are about 2:1 carb to protein content and they all contain some level of other micro-nutrients (vitamins/minerals). Not all carbs are the same, and many junk foods are spiked with glucose/fructose sugars that break down quickly and create the spike you're talking about.

vorpalhex2• 8 years ago

When you're poor, you can't afford to buy massive bags of rice and store them airtight to keep out insects, so instead you buy small portions which are much more expensive. You can't afford the time to cook the rice, and you don't have anything decent to season it with.

Instead you buy a microwaveable rice dish. It's about the same cost as actual rice (just a bit more expensive), far quicker to cook, tastes better than unseasoned undercooked rice, and is usually pretty unhealthy.

When it comes to spoilable things like meat, it's difficult to know ahead of time when you'll be able to cook a proper dinner and therefore plan your purchases. You might well end up just catching a burger at a fast food place and never get a chance to cook the $8 of meat you bought.

Now I'm in a place where I cook all my meals. I can go to the store twice a week and buy nice cuts of steak or chicken. I can take two hours to make a fancy meal. I have no shortage of things to season with (imported oil, foreign spices, etc). I eat much better now for less total cost, but I have more upfront costs and much more time invested.

dionidium3• 8 years ago

When you're poor, you can't afford to buy massive bags of rice and store them airtight to keep out insects, so instead you buy small portions which are much more expensive. You can't afford the time to cook the rice, and you don't have anything decent to season it with.

This sounds like it was written by an alien trying to reason about poverty from first principles. I've been poor. Nothing prevented me from buying big bags of rice. I wouldn't have had any trouble keeping insects out of that bag. And, despite myths about the noble, ever-working poor man, I had more than enough time to cook it.

I mostly bought shit food because I liked eating shit food. There's no reason to imagine further impediments. That one's sufficient.

teddyh3• 8 years ago

Why are stereotypical American "low-income" foods largely processed meats and junk food (e.g. boxed macaroni and cheese, spam, Vienna sausages), instead of staples like rice, oats, beans, lentils, etc. […]?

To quote from (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-devel...): Fresh food […] takes forever to prepare.

Rice, for instance, takes about half an hour to make. If you’re poor, you most likely work all the time, and are constantly tired. No way are you going to waste half a hour to make rice (just plain rice!), when you can get something much more tasty and almost as cheap which takes five minutes at most to make?

We'd […] often cook meat over wood fires to save money on gas for the oven.

That is not a possibility in urban environments.

_mrniceguy_2• 8 years ago

This food is disgusting. Cheese whiz in a cheetos bag? Processed crap like this is the invention of greedy opportunists and their factories built to feed people drivel. To long for such things is to long for suicide.

moate6• 8 years ago

When I was a kid there was a time we were on food stamps. My sister used to make "poor man's ice cream" (basically chocolate milk poured over ice) and the food I remember the most is ALDI brand frozen burritos. Eventually we got more money because my mom got a job working in New Jersey for a large insurance company. After high school I went to culinary school because I wanted to cook, in part because poor people food made me feel poor.

After I moved out, I was working in restaurants and wasn't making much by American standards, but I could make myself food that wasn't poor people food.

This stuff clings to you. Some people fight it, refusing to go back. Other people remember the little comfort they were able to get from the foods of their childhood.

Food is so fundamental to life in so many different ways. It's about being cared for. It's about showing someone else you care. It's about literally providing life to another human. There's so many strange cultural hang ups about what it should and shouldn't be. It's used as a way to identify people who don't belong to your group, to shame "the other" or to try and fit in when you don't feel comfortable. People convinced that there are right and wrong choices.

mirimir• 8 years ago

Damn, very moving article!

I don't want to get into what I ate as a child. Too crazy.

But I was for sure poor as a young adult in the US. So we ate lots of rice, beans, and whatever veggies were discounted or ready to trash. And for additional protein, eggs and beef heart.

swaggyBoatswain• 8 years ago

Offtopic but the thumbnail was really misleading to me, because there is such a thing as a prison burrito and the process you make it is actually similar to the thumbnail (pouring something into junk food bag, and using it as a mixing container).

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSKpDwDhq24

I wonder if the inspiration for these menu items came from similar recipes in low income areas? E.g. the prison burrito might have derived from "hot cheetos". Mostly, recipes born out of a desire for fancier food with limited ingredient choices / availability in food banks / nonperishables

leekyle333• 8 years ago

1. For children mac and cheese tastes better (and a lot of adults). It's highly palatable. 2. Rice and beans are cheaper but are small bags of rice and canned beans cheaper than some other highly palatable thing that's easier to make? (It takes a lot more time to make dried beans). 3. Decision fatigue- it's really hard to make healthier decisions when you're poor, overworked, and tired. When you go to the grocery store I'm sure your looking for something that will quickly release some dopamine. 4. America has a pretty sad food culture and while they're might be some amazing asian or Mexican grocery stores with good cheap stuff, a lot of non recent immigrant people have super negative stereotypes about these types of places.

The Food of My Youth

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