Gourmet or garbage ?!
Answers: opinions plz , why is it most kids nowadays consider fast food to be gourmet + the food cooked at home unedible ? i've never seen so many picky eaters b-4 . is it that the schools serve pretty much the same junk + now they are just used to it , or is it the parents , or all
The world started becoming an, I need it yesterday society, and with it came the invention of the fast food restaurants,or cholesterol corrals. Both parents had to start working in order to survive, so if you didn't feel like fixing a lunch to bring to work, you could run to a fast food place on your lunch break, eat it in the parking lot and go back to work. Then they realized, this works if I am too tired at the end of the day to cook supper, so I'll just stop at KFC and get a meal , get it home piping hot and I'm done. The kids loved it ,because it was a treat, something new besides the old TV dinners, an early culprit. Whenever the kids went to town with the parents, they figured they could stay longer if they ate at the fast food place, and it is cheaper than a regular restaurant, fueling a need for the yummy taste of added salt and fat to their diets. Add the sweet sodas and you,re in heaven. Then, when the schools were making monetary cuts, they noticed how much of this food the kids already ate, and instead of the healthy home cooked meals cafeterias use to provide , they started adding junk food, a small menu that stays the same, added a salad and called it healthy and balanced. Now we have the baby boomers, some of which want to regain some of the family values and guess what, little Johnny or Suzie , doesn't like vegetables, because they never ate them in their life, and they suddenly are suppose to develope a taste for them and eat several servings a day. Most kids don't even like fruit anymore, which when I was a kid, was like eating candy, it was sweet ,after all. So in comes the ruling that there are too many obese adults and kids in America, and now we still eat junk food, only with 0 trans fats,which if you look at most 0 trans fat foods, they still contain cholesterol and saturated fat, and if the fat is lower the sugar or salt content is extremely high, if the salt or sugar is low, the fat is high. If you take the fat and half the amount of sugar and salt out of most products, they wouldn't just still taste good, they'd taste better, because you'd actually taste the flavor of the food, instead of the food flavoring. That's why a lot of mom's bought juicers,and take fresh fruits and when the kids aren't looking add beets, or carrots, or tomato to the fruits before juicing them, to sneak the veggies into their kids. When I was a kid in the 60's, we had grandparents and aunts who owned farms, and the milkman delivered whole milk with the cream still in it. We had a little candy store 3 houses down from us, and all Summer long we ate candy and chips and soda , but we also ate tons of fresh vegatables,fruit, and pork or lamb roasts, and roast chickens with the fat, and white bread, drank a lot of water too. And the schools cooked regular meals for lunch, with whole milk. But we didn't sit in front of a computer all day. We ran and played and rode bikes. We played a slew of outdoor games like, croquet,badminton,jumped rope, tag, hide and go seek,red light, giant steps, and other games kids have never heard of today. In the Winter we ice skated,went sledding every day,made snow men and snow forts, played king of the mountain. In the Fall we'd rake leaves and jump in them, pick apples in the orchard. We would fight to stay out and play past curfew. We watched very little TV, mostly Saturday, cartoons,American Bandstand,Lawrence Welk,old movies,Sunday it was the Wonderful World of Disney,Ed Sullivan, then to bed cause you had school the next day. We didn't have a shower , we took baths,once a week, washing up at the sink in the morning during the week.. During the afternoons , after we got home from school, we hurried to do our homework so we could watch, Dark Shadows, and General Hospital or The Edge of Night. During the week, before bed there would be one show we'd watch each night,either, Donna Reed,Bewitched, the Flintstones(it was considered an adult cartoon in those days),Gidget,The Courtships of Eddies Father, Family Affair, the Adams Family, and the Munsters,or I Love Lucy. But until we were about 8 years old , we were in bed by 8pm or 9pm at the latest.
My point is, that almost every kid in my neighborhood was skinny, through to their teens or late 20's. You got a cold and the flu, once a year, and asthma was only in families that had a family history of it, now everyone is getting it. And now flu season last almost year round,and people get colds 2 or 3 times a year. It's not just the change in our diets that is to blame, it's because America is land of the Greedy and home of the Slave, we want everything, we want it now, and you don't keep up with the Joneses, you surpass them even if you earn less money, America wants you in debt and encourages you to use credit cards to own what you like, and they don't care if you have to take on 3 jobs to pay it off, and have to throw more junk food at the kids, not know where they are half the time, or even care, as long as they are home when you lock the door at night, and can be listed as dependents. They become overly stressed trying to live up to false expectations and get dieseases , and anxiety , and die younger, because they don't have time to exercise, or eat properly. The kids are pushed through school like cattle for the slaughter, with calculators and computers they use to take tests, and then go to college and the work force, not knowing how to manually do math,or spell properly. And with an improper diet as well, you end up with a bunch of machine controlled humans with undernourished bodies and brains. End of long story.
I would say it is the parents. Our kids ate what we cooked all the time and so does my Granddaughter. She loves to help in the kitchen and comes up with some neat ideas.
It all has to do with what they eat from the time foods are introduced to them. If they are given fast foods and junk as babies and toddlers then that is what their palette is used to. If they eat good home cooked meals, with variety, from a baby and toddler, then that is what they eat as adults.
It's difficult for parent(s) to put in a full day of work, travel in traffic and cook a gourmet dinner during the week. Parent(s) look for simple quick fix meals to feed their family. I really doubt that kid's think fast food is gourmet. That's just my opinion.
Well poor kids don't get any good old fashioned home made food. It's only natural that they like what they eat every day, i.e. junk! and they think that's food.
Parents need to make an effort to make their kids nutritious tasty food. It's all about planning it ahead and it can be done even if you have a full time job. Just plan ahead.
I would say that it has to do with the parents. My mother was a good cook and I grew up to be a serious food snob. I love to cook, and I love it when good food is prepared for me. None of the neighbour kids had parents who could cook worth a d@mn, and they thought that Big Macs were high cuisine. God knows why. I can't think of anything good to say about Big Macs.
My opinion is that if kids are introduced at a young age to home-cooked foods that are better than the average restaurant meal, they'll appreciate them more.