Such is my observation, anyway. Most will gladly hoover down twinkies, red jello, Mountain Dew, etc., with no regard for the health consequences (all the while "observing" the WoW).

There a persistent minority, howver, who swing to the other end of the spectrum. These few (and there are some in every ward) will become health food fanatics, and consume horrible, tasteless stuff with dubious claims in its efficacy for your health.

I remember once going over for dinner to a home of the latter type of TBM. The main course consisted of tofu-filled egg rolls in a whole wheat wrapping. Tatsed like wallpaper paste in cardboard. Truly horrific.

Mine went yet a third direction. Away from the crap food, for the most part, it was seriously restricted and shamed.

But there was some kind of competition going in the wards/stakes locally. Who could feed the most, the cheapest.
This meant I was fed crap food of a different sort. As much filler as possible, as little taste AND nutrition as possible as well.

I'm paying for it, I'm much shorter than I should be, and have health problems.

My mom still bitches about the cost of food. I hate it. I remember hearing that it was just tomorrow's poop, so eat up! No sense flushing money down the toilet.
This is so wrong headed, I don't know how to change their thinking!

It's not tomorrow's poop, it's tomorrow's energy and body!

Well, they desperately needed that 10% for the church, and my nutrition was sacrificed for it.
I can't believe how important food is and how little she cares. If she'd stretched meat by making stock of carcasses I'd approve, _I_ do that! But no, it was more like one can of tuna in a white sauce over rice. To feed four people.

That and... please! Nobody subject your children to low fat anything! Reduce your sugar and flour carefully, but fat is very necessary for growing brains!

Sorry you had to go through that.

You must have met some of the extremely frugal ones? How to feed ten children for the price of three!!!

that is the most discusting thing I have ever heard...yet at the same time very funny..

I only see food as " tomorrows poop " when I am paying for it with a credit card..

Then I see it as " tomorrows poop" and not being paid off until next month..

Im 'between the goal-posts':

1, maybe 2 cans of pop a MONTH;

I don't buy 'health food', but Im trying to consume less, eat more nutritious food.

an occasional glass of wine, OJuice rather than coffee.

a Yogurt most every day, perhaps with a plain-cake donut.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 06:45PM by guynoirprivateeye.

I've told this story here before. I went to Las Vegas one year to spend Thanksgiving with a TBM friend I grew up with. Her parents were (and still are) very, very frugal. And it rubbed off on her.

And I swear, every damn thing she brought out to eat she had to tell me how much it was, where she bought, how it was a nickel cheaper where she bought it across town than it was in the store down the road, and on and on and on. I remember her telling me about the great deal she got on Ranch dressing by buying a 50 gallon drum of it at CostCo. (Ok, I'm exagerating a little, but she bought a gallon of it in order to save 10 cents or something.)

I was so tempted to just hand her a couple of twenties and tell her to shut the hell up about her shopping until I went home!

Oops, just ate a HoHo. In fairness I haven't bought them for a long time, and the box is gone, so I won't buy them again because they are SOOOO addicting!

I only have 1 kid, so I have the problem of getting stuff eaten before it goes bad....

I think some people take the food thing to extremes. They act like addicts.

I had a sil that refused to buy anything with out a coupon. We had a family get together and decided to go to a pizza place that she didn't have a coupon for. I was paying for the everyone's dinner, and told them ahead of time. She refused to order anything. She sat there with her arms folded doing the power pout the whole time. When we were done, she gathered up the leftovers and took them home to feed her kids the next day. This was in the early 90's. Her husband was making almost $200,000 a year. It wasn't about money.

One of my aunts had 6 kids. She lived 400 miles from us. She would load her kids up every summer and come to the big city to buy sugar for canning. She would load up her 6 kids, my mothers 6 kids and hit every store in town that had sugar on sale. There was a 2 bag limit. She would send all the kids in to buy two bags. It probably cost more to drive 800 miles than it did to just buy the damn sugar. She pinched pennies like nobody i've ever seen. She died when she was 49. She never enjoyed anything in life. She had hoarded a hundreds of thousands of dollars. My uncles new wife lived a very nice life all paid for with cash.

I've noticed this, too -- the caffeinated sodas, the jello and ice cream, the gooey casseroles. They'll eat the most nauseating stuff -- particularly at ward parties!

Frugality is definitely an issue. A lot of DH's TBM relatives (who all have big families) tell with pride stories of making spaghetti for a large family with just one or two cans of tomato sauce. They think this is cool.

My theory: they eat the goo-and-glue foods that are cheapest, then they compensate and self-medicate with sweets and soda.

In the last few years I've become a little more critical of food and foodstuff. And the more I learn....

well anyways, I hate hate hate all those chemical additives and GM crap that is in our food these days. So I try my best to avoid that stuff.

I use nearly every available inch of our garden to grow food. Fruits and vegetables. We keep a few chickens for eggs as well. Unfortunately, that is about all I can get away with in our little city house/garden.
I am pretty much what is now popularly being called: an urban homesteader.

in the mean time....

I love, love LOVE my coffee.
I love a good latte Machiato.. I love a beautiful espresso.
A good bottle of wonderful scotch can send me into a delerium of happiness...
and most nights my husband and I have a glass of red wine.

I have only just recently stopped smoking. Simply because it has become far too expensive. I still like it. Just lovely to sit outside in my veggie garden, with a mug of Latte Machiato, and a ciggie... sigh.... lovely..

well.. no more ciggies anyway..

but see,
I am trying to keep a balance. Mind your health, eat good nutricious, healthy and tasty food, but don't go fanatical and deprive yourself or your children of lots of tasty, fun, and yummy stuff out there.

My children are allowed soda on the weekends, the are allowed candy and all sorts of junk food.. as long as they also eat lots of the 'good stuff' to balance things out. And they do. Because they think the healthy stuff is just as tasty as the crap.

What's funny to me about this weird frugality is cheap foods are government subsidized (which is why they are cheap). This is why a Big Mac costs much less than, say fresh vegetables. But the cheap foods really aren't cheap in the long run because they are all so high in high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and fat. So they cause health problems down the road, increase likelihood of obesity, diabetes, heart disease. Couple that with lack of exercise, no PE in schools, no exercise ethic and you've got a recipe for really poor health -- at what turns out to be a very high price when you factor in loss of productivity due to poor health and medical care, medicines and so forth.

Now my grandparents grew up during the Depression. Neither was college educated, and early in their marriage, both worked (this would have been in the early 40s). When the kids started coming, my grandmother stayed home to raise them, of course, because that's what you did back then. They had four children. They also had a fairly large in-town property upon which they planted a huge garden every year and filled the spaces with fruit, nut, and berry trees. They also kept a chicken coop. Aside from the very basics, flour, milk, sugar, coffee, etc., they were pretty much self sustaining. There was never a lack of fresh veggies or fruit at Gramma's house. What they didn't eat right away, they canned or froze. All four children -- and later all five grandchildren -- were expected to help out with the weeding, watering, harvesting, planting, canning and whatnot. (We were NOT expected to help with Chicken Slaughter Day, thank you Gramma! LOL) These people managed to feed and raise four kids on a minimal single income without any government corn subsidies, governement cheese, or any outside assistance whatsoever.

So you'd think, logically, if mormons have these large families and only one income, they'd find some space and plant a friggin' garden! That way their kids get whole fresh foods and plenty of them. The parents can spend their money on staples, which they should have plenty of in food storage anyway.

Sometimes I think people make choices out of willful ignorance. "Gee, we can't eat that pizza because I don't have a coupon..." A coupon? You can make pizza at home for pennies on the dollar and all you have to buy is flour and maybe pepperoni (the veggies -- including tomatoes for the sauce -- can all be grown/made at home). Sure it takes extra time, but when you've got anywhere from 2-6 kids underfoot, you do what our parents and grandparents did -- you put their butts to work. One kid picks the veggies, another helps freeze and can, another smashes tomatoes for sauce, someone else makes the dough -- all with mom's help and supervision. People used to be self-sustaining, but now we cannot function without Costco and coupons. It's like our collective cultural memory for how people used to live was simply wiped out. Cultural amnesia.

How do these people think the pioneers in Utah fed a dozen children in the dang desert? They planted, they brought livestock from back East, they canned foods and salted/cured/dried meats. And everyone in the family had a responsibility to participate in the care and feeding of the animals and the garden(s).

But no. Now days we just rely on Costco to stock our McMansions and then we wonder why food prices are so high. Hello.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2012 10:20AM by dogzilla.

My TBM SIL feeds her family of 6 canned chicken over rice or she buys prepackaged bags of chicken I can't imagine eating canned chicken, that's just nasty!!! They are not hurting for money by any means, I personally think she does it because she had no clue how to cook, those YW activities didn't do much for her, and she has no desire to learn how, she'd rather spend her day playing on FB than try something new, healthy, and good to feed her family. My DH visited them once and she made the canned chicken thing with cheese and rice, he said it was the most vile thing he's ever eaten. We make a similar dish, with real chicken, it doesn't take anymore time and it's much better for you, and it tastes better too!

I'm a natural foodie, avoid all processed foods and artificial additives. Organic if possible. No red meat, just occasional poultry bits and eggs. Mostly vegetarian. We have a great dairy locally, fresh and delicious grass-fed milk. Non-fat plain yogurt. Raw fruits and veggies. Whole grain and legumes. Nuts and seeds. Filtered rain water.

But exceptions are allowed on special occasions. Like for Hershey's Symphony or the rare cookie. :)

hello Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm a natural foodie, avoid all processed foods
> and artificial additives. Organic if possible. No
> red meat, just occasional poultry bits and eggs.
> Mostly vegetarian. We have a great dairy locally,
> fresh and delicious grass-fed milk. Non-fat plain
> yogurt. Raw fruits and veggies. Whole grain and
> legumes. Nuts and seeds. Filtered rain water.
>
> But exceptions are allowed on special occasions.
> Like for Hershey's Symphony or the rare cookie. :)

I want to live with you guys...just for the good food...yummie...