over 30? you grew up eating what adults ate. now kids eat chickn fingers. pizza. mac n cheese

[betsuni]

25. What is most diabolical is the brand awareness.

A while ago on a news program, some American children were asked their favorite foods. Not only did they say mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, pizza, but which brand. Kraft mac 'n' cheese, McDonald's chicken nuggets, those Lunchables things, etc. Like living commercials.

When I was young we could do that with candy and snacks and breakfast cereal but not meals. it's cheaper to make things from scratch and our mothers were on a budget. My best friend's mother only bought generic stuff. There were no chicken nuggets. Salad did not come in a bag and dumping a box of something into a pan and heating it was not considered cooking. One did not buy frozen lasagna. It was still possible to live comfortably, if on a budget, on one salary per family and we were not brainwashed into believing cooking was too difficult and time consuming to even consider. But from television everybody knew the jingles -- "My bologna was a first name" and so on -- valuable space in my brains is taken up by advertising and now half the time I can't remember why I went into the next room. DAMN YOU CAPITALIST PIG-DOGS111!!!!!

It's like cake mixes. I grew up thinking that if you wanted to make a cake, you bought a mix. It didn't occur to me that it was even possible to make one from scratch. It's easy, what the hell. They tried to do that to bread, suddenly bread mixes were everywhere, but that didn't take hold as far as I can tell.

Eating out was rare, and there were many more non-franchise drive-ins or places where everybody ate the same thing. Sharing food is sharing culture. Americans certainly don't need any more encouragement to be stubborn and individualistic. I was watching a cooking show a while ago and a chef from India had to do a children's food challenge and he said "I feel bad for what children are subjected to. Chicken nuggets! It's a travesty."