It was a slow week for new things. I did try these:
Verdict? Not that good. They took me back to the 1970's, when my mom would put a candy dish, filled with roasted soybeans, in the living room. Which makes sense, since edamame are just young soybeans. No one ever ate them and a thin layer of dust would develop on top!
I won't be buying them again. But it jogged my memory to some of the health food fads (and some not so healthy) that my mom subjected us to:
Verdict? Not that good. They took me back to the 1970's, when my mom would put a candy dish, filled with roasted soybeans, in the living room. Which makes sense, since edamame are just young soybeans. No one ever ate them and a thin layer of dust would develop on top!
I won't be buying them again. But it jogged my memory to some of the health food fads (and some not so healthy) that my mom subjected us to:
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| Along with soybeans, there were sunflower seeds. I didn't mind the taste, but they were just too tiny for me to sit around and eat. I've put them on salad in recent years, but they usually just fall off and land at the bottom of the bowl. More of a nuisance food than anything else. |
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| The dreaded Vitamin C tablets, which went alongside a chewable Vitamin E pill and a Flintstone vitamin on my placemat each morning. Even if I never ate a piece of fruit, the Flintstone vitamin gave us enough Vitamin C to negate the purpose of the extra tablet. Money pissed down the drain, literally. |
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| One of the weirder foods of the 70's. Nutrition snack? It was basically a long Tootsie Roll. Mom put these in our lunches. They actually didn't have much flavor. |
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| Another dumb 'space food' idea. I suppose it was cheaper than orange juice, and that's why mothers bought it. Might as well give your kid a glass of orange Kool Aid for breakfast. Sugar water, enriched with Vitamin C. |
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I have no clue where my mom got the idea to buy this stuff, and it's rather surprising that our local grocery store even carried it. It's a bar of tahini paste (sesame) molded to resemble a block of cheese. It had a similar consistency as well. I guess if chocolate cheese appeals to you, you might like this. My brother and I were rarely tricked into consuming this.What health food fads did your parents subject you to? |
Liver!!
ReplyDeleteNever again.
I like those edamame things right out of the pod with sea salt.
I have only eaten them fresh mixed in with something.
DeleteI remember Tang. I can't even imagine how much of that crap I consumed.
ReplyDeleteLove the phrase "nuisance food" and I'm going to end up using it.
Tang was the worst! Nuisance food is any food that's not worth the trouble! Glad you like it!
DeleteOMG, I clearly remember the television commercials for TANG when I was a kid. They were about how the astronauts used to take TANG into space with them.
ReplyDeleteI also remember those Space Food Sticks. What a hoot!
I agree with you about sunflowers seeds - too small. I eat a lot of walnuts (on my salads) and sliced almonds. LOVE them!
As a kid, my parents never subjected us to any kind of health food because they never even thought about health food back then. Plus, may family is Italian, and Italians (especially back then) only thought of one thing--EATING. HA! If anything, I subjected THEM to health food because as I got older, I became more conscious of health food.
FUN post, my friend!
My husband is part Italian and there was never ANYTHING halfway healthy in their kitchen! My mom would go on kicks with the health food, probably because she read a lot of odd medical books! I had a strange childhood, in many different ways.
DeleteMy parents were not health-food types; pretty sure they thought it was all a crock. I remember Space Food Sticks, but that was more about''space-age efficiency' than health. . .
ReplyDeleteI came to 'health food' all by myself, during my college years. I'm with you on the Halvah bars. We also did carob as chocolate-substitute and chickory as coffee-substitute. Carob was OK, chickory was awful. And of course, the multi-grain crust pizza. But, you know, it was still pizza, so the 'health-food' thing was pretty much a rationalization. . .
We still try to eat healthy, but it's more about fresh stuff, less meat and no sugar (it always blows my mind a little when something gets marketed as 'healthy' and sugar - or 'high-fructose corn syrup' - is the first ingredient).
Oh man, I completely forgot about the carob!! My mom would buy us carob bars from the GNC Store. It made no sense, since it wasn't to substitute any actual chocolate bars. I think we only had chocolate at Halloween and Easter.
DeleteI've read how people substituted chickory for coffee during WW2. I didn't realize it was considered any better for you. And yes, most of that granola and other cereal bars are very high in sugar. Might as well enjoy a cookie!
Edamame....
ReplyDeleteLike or dislike?
Deletenow, I like it....sometimes, may be once a year, I buy it in Wholefood
DeletePringles, ice cream, McDonalds, and Veal Culets. Those were about the healthiest things Mom 'served'.
ReplyDeleteQuite unusual.
DeleteTo this day the brothers and I can't figure out where the hypertension and pre-diabetes came from .....
DeleteNever tried edamame. Might have to get them on a restaurant menu some time, LOL. I do remember Tang from growing up. It might not necessarily have been a "health food" growing up but I do remember, because we were on a tight budget, that my mom would get the powdered milk that would be reconstituted with water. Can we say "yuck?" and then repeat it 10 fold? The only way I could get it down was to drink it straight after it was poured from the fridge while it was still cold. Allowed to warm up in any way was just pure agony to drink later. Loved that my mom worried enough to get it for our calcium requirements, but after I turned 18 and started making my "own" money never bought that stuff again. I like sunflower seeds and would eat them from the shell. Not much of a reward for the effort to get them but delicious in the long run.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, if you guys are ever back in the Dana Point et al area, including Temecula, do let me know (sooner than later). Would love to meet up for wine tasting. We like the area, having spent time in various parts of it over the years and the weather (usually) can be quite pleasant :)
betty
I use powdered milk to make my own 'cream of' soups for recipes, but I don't think I've ever had it as milk. Thanks for heads up!
DeleteSpace sticks! I actually tried to track some down years ago to let my kids try them, but no luck. I liked them as a kid. Of course, I also liked tootsie rolls. Tang is just nasty, though.
ReplyDeleteFor a while in the late 70's my family belonged to a food coop that met once a month is a church basement to divvy up bulk food orders. We always went home with carob, kefir, raw nuts. I hated carob brownies. We also briefly tried powdered milk but none of the kids in the family would drink it. It was disgusting.
I actually love sunflower seeds. Any kind of nut or seed, really. Which is a good thing because they are so good for you. And while I'm not keen on dried edamame, we also order a bowl of salted steamed edamame in the pods when we eat at a sushi place.
Fortunately, my mom was a pretty decent cook. And from the time I was in 7th grade, we lived on a farm so we ate lots of fresh and canned vegetables that we grew ourselves. I do remember my mom used to make yogurt, too. I think we stopped taking vitamins pretty young. But when I was in boarding school, I would dissolve a fizzy vitamin in my orange juice every day.
That is so funny that you tried to find Space Sticks! But, I consider Tootsie Rolls a nuisance food, too . . . most ends up in my teeth.
DeleteYour family was ahead of its time! I've only heard of gardening co-ops, and that's been only in the last decade or so. My mom grew up on a farm and I'm convinced that's why she disliked foods like milk and chicken (from witnessing where it came from) and she had zero interest in gardening or canning (probably from childhood chores). We ate a lot of processed foods, unfortunately. I think her few attempts at health food were to keep up with the fads.
I tried Halvah years ago and didn't like it. We had Tang as a kid and I kinda liked it. I still eat sunflower seeds. I love them.
ReplyDeleteHalvah was just weird. I don't think I've seen it in a store in a long, long time.
DeleteGreen beans... and to this day I hate 'em. Oh, my mom did try to cut sugar out of sweet tea by using saccharine. It was awful. So in the mid-70s, we were the only house in the neighborhood drinking unsweetened tea (which I still drink even though I'm from the South). Tang was a lot of hype, wasn't it!
ReplyDeletewww.thepulpitandthepen.com
I like canned green beans over fresh, which is strange to most folk! Lol, I had never heard of sweet tea until about 15 years ago, it was one of my first blog posts. Northerners just drink iced tea.
DeleteI don't remember my parents having any food fads. We just had the typical instant meals of the post-war era - veal and ham pie with potatoes and veg, followed by ice cream or mashed banana - that sort of thing. My father was partial to chocolate fingers in between meals.
ReplyDeleteI rather like halvah, but not the chocolate-coated variety.
Mashed banana? That's what we serve babies. We occasionally had frozen pot pies similar to what you described. I liked the crust the best, of course!
DeleteOh, I like sunflower seeds but as an ingredient of something else, like multi-seed bread or stuffed peppers. They're pretty boring on their own.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I remember my mum giving us all cod liver oil capsules every day....
Yes, I don't mind sunflower seeds in things. I think my dad might have been cod liver oil by spoon.
DeleteYeah, there were a few of those fads like crummy fish oil or vitamins. And you're right, which many people don't even know, most of the time you just end up piddling them out.
ReplyDeleteSupplements are the biggest racket out there!
DeleteOmg. I was a 70's kid and the only one of those I remember is Tang. My parents were real fruits and veggie people but my mom did eat those diet candies called Ayds... Like little small chocolate caramels? We used to sneak those. They were gross and those Space Sticks look like dog treats. Did your mom not like you??? Hahahahaha :D
ReplyDeleteLOL, I was thinking about using Ayds in the post! Yes, my mom bought those too, but mostly for herself!
DeleteYe gods, Tang!
ReplyDeleteI remember the commercials claiming astronauts drank that stuff up in space. I don't know if that was true, but I avoided NASA just to be safe. I don't like edamame either.
I remember eating granola bars because we thought they were healthy, but then I saw Bruce Jenner on TV--back when he was Bruce--warning not to eat them.
Oh, the stuff our parents made us consume! Great post, Bijoux!
Bruce Jenner said granola bars weren't healthy? Was he speaking as an athlete and not a Kardashian?? LOL!
DeleteTwo things:
ReplyDelete1. I devoured those Flintstones vitamins like candy. Literally. One time I got into a bottle of them when I was 8 or 9 and must have eaten half a dozen or more. I'm still alive to tell the tale.
2. I loved Tang as a kid and rediscovered it as an adult, about a year before I was diagnosed with diabetes. Coincidence? Hmm......
I guess those vitamins were similar to Sweet Tarts. I think gummies are more popular as a vitamin now. And no, I don't think it was a coincidence!!!!
DeleteThe space food stick just seems weird. Glad I missed being subjected to that one.
ReplyDeleteMy immediate family has food issues on top of food issues, so we were subjected to lots of weird things as kids. One that comes to mind is the fruit diet my mom decided we should all go on. It was supposed to last five days, and you literally ate nothing but fruit. We only lasted 2.5 days. We were still in public school, so would have both been under 10. I'm not a parent, but I'm going to guess putting us on a diet like that as kids that young wasn't good. When Mom picked us up from school that afternoon she took us straight to McDonald's for happy meals, pies, and milkshakes. Thus began our food issues.
Our parents also went on an herbs and supplements kick for a while, and were constantly giving us nasty pills and potions as we called them.
And let's not forget Ultra Slim Fast. I do remember at least liking some of the flavors with that.
Oh dear. That all sounds quite dreadful. I guess I shouldn't complain about the bowl of soybeans!
DeleteI do like edamame but usually only get them steamed, as a side dish, when we go out for sushi. Sunflower seeds... makes me laugh because I've been adding nuts to salads lately and just for a variation I sautee them with either garlic and oil or maple syrup. Last night I threw a assorted nuts in the pan, and when I turned my back to do something at the sink the sun nuts being so small started burning and I ended up with a blackened smelly mess.
ReplyDeleteI've not heard of people sauteeing nuts! I bet it tastes great.
DeleteI didn’t arrive in the U.S. until 1980, so some of your 70’s “health food” mentions are unfamiliar to me. I do remember Tang and probably had four or five drinks of it.
ReplyDeleteI like steamed edamame, the kind you suck out of the pod.
The steamed is much better than the dried!
Delete