Is your diet different than how you grew up?

Southernmiss

I am hazed everyday
Joined
Aug 27, 2011
Or than others you regularly interact with?

Now that I'm over 45, I am eating differently than others to avoid health challenges and medication. Easy to do at home cooking for just me, not so easy cooking for the 6 members in my family. More tricky when cooking for others outside our immediate family. Or when away from home.

For example:
I don't eat traditional American breakfasts, eggs make me ill and I stay away from breads and grains. Dmil loves a big farm style breakfast when we're together. I'm not even convinced breakfast early in the a.m. is necessary any more. But I do offer sausages and fruit and there's always Daves killer bread for toast when she's here. She is very gracious and no complaints. The kids are big enough to fend for themselves for breakfast-last night's leftovers or cooked frozen chicken strips and waffles warmed in the microwave . So I rarely make breakfast.

This morning I had baked tilapia and some avocado. Yesterday I had baked sweet potato, avocado and sausage. And was just thinking how different it was from the traditional eggs, bacon, cereal, toast American breakfast. And wondered about others.

Dh still gives me the 'you're weird eye' sometimes with what I eat. He's not convinced that the diet we grew up with needs to change, but maybe one day.
 
I never have liked cereal.

I'm not great about eating breakfast but it's a necessity to eat early which is something that is different from how I grew up. I didn't eat breakfast much in my teens or twenties- I am not a morning person- but I function much better if I do now.

I actually think your ideas sound great- except the tilapia. Not a fan.

But my childhood diet has changed dramatically. My mom loves meat, dairy, and casseroles. My sister and I are now dairy intolerant-ish and I can't eat much processed food. I also love veggies which I didn't as a kid. And that's certainly part of no longer being able to eat much dairy. (We aren't allergic like my sister thinks- I can eat some cheeses and whole milk. Just not processed or reduced fat, it's weird).

Anyway...it's not a diet, or concern for my health, it's actively avoiding being sick. Which sometimes is the motivation people need to change. You could always tell your dh and in laws you're trying other culture's breakfast...:D
 
Diabetic now, so definite change.
But even before that, I didn't eat like I did as a child.
We had lots of beef, lots of fat....even fried the fat that was cut off the meat.

I do like cereal, but avoid it now.
 
I was born in 1960 so I grew up in the 60's and 70's. Casseroles were huge during that timeframe. Pushed by companies like Campbells to sell their soups, plus they were economical for families like ours (which were a lot) where mom never worked and pinched pennies so hard they screamed. We still eat traditional breakfast, but eat a lot more oatmeal. I do not like milk and haven't since I was less than 1 year old so I do not do cereal, except as a dry snack occasionally as some are good alone. As for other meals, we eat much more lean cuts of meat and brown rice vs white, steamed veggies vs canned boiled ones. Always had fresh fruit around and still do. My dad insisted we have veggies at every dinner, which we did and fruit was our usual snack. My grandparents always had a garden and my parents did for a few years so we ate a lot of fresh beans (overcooked), canteloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, onions, etc. I still love a good fresh really vine ripened tomato.

I'm really surprised how many type II diabetics avoid foods. DH was diagnosed a few years ago and took the education classes through the local hospital. They taught you can eat anything in moderation and with offsets, such as higher fiber foods. Nothing is off limits, but we try to have more veggies and fruit (berries are great for type II) and whole grain, high fiber carbs.
 


Breakfast yes lunch I eat sandwiches now compared to lunchables and dh is on this health kick like last night he made meatloaf with turkey and spinach
 
I don't eat anything like I did growing up. But I grew up in the 70's and pretty poor. So fresh fruits and veggies were few and far between. In addition, I have since been diagnosed with Celiac. So no more gluten for me.

But that said, I can't ever see me eating what I equate with dinner for breakfast. Tilapia and sweet potato for breakfast just doesn't work for me.

Maybe he is thinking you will come around to his way of thinking, rather then him moving to your way. I know I would be.
 


Yes and no.

Regretfully, Mrs. Homie and I still eat a lot of so-called "convenience foods" like boxed dinners or frozen pizza, like I did when I was a kid. We eat a few things that weren't oft on our plates when I was a kid, though; certain pasta combinations that Mom would have never dreamed of, that sort of thing.

However, when we go out it's a different story entirely. Long story short, we try to eat at local places whenever possible, and avoid chain places. Whereas my family, when we could afford to eat out, was all about McDonald's or, on rare occasions, Red Lobster.
 
I eat a lot less processed and junk food as I did as a kid. My mom cooked dinner every night, but breakfast and lunch I generally recall sugary cereal or stuff like pancakes, French toast, or waffles, donuts, and bagels. Lunch was frozen pizza, Kraft macand cheese, grilled cheese, Campbell's soup, etc. Lots of Hostess cakes, chips, soda, cookies,candy. A fair amount of take out pizza, McDonald's, etc.

I don't eat most of that stuff now. I eat a lot more whole foods, more lean protein, more fruits and veggies, and haven't had McDonald's in over 10 years.

I'm in my late 30's and these changes aren't a result of health issues at all, but simply my tastes have changed.
 
My parents ran a small grocery store when I was a kid. Mom worked 12-14 hour days so mostly we ate something cooked fast. TV dinners many nights. And when meat prices started going up in the 70's we ate the meat that wouldn't sell in the store so a lot of beef. Steaks and ground beef mostly.

Now I cook a lot more chicken. Don't really like beef as much probably due to getting burned out as a kid. A lot more fresh vegetables-Mom always had a green salad and canned English peas and sometimes corn.

Breakfast was only cooked on the weekends when I was a kid. Weekdays was usually cereal if anything. But on weekends it was usually eggs, grits, bacon and/or sausage and if mom could get fresh garden tomatoes from somewhere, sliced tomatoes, and homemade biscuits. I still do that occasionally on weekends depending on who is here. Dd's favorite weekend breakfast is biscuits and sausage gravy. Yds's is biscuits and tomato gravy. Ods and dh like the eggs and grits. Weekdays everyone is on their own. I usually have yogurt, granola and fruit.
 
I was born in the late 50s so grew up in the stay at home mother era so we always had home cooked meals for supper. For breakfast on weekdays in the winter Daddy would get up before he went to work and make a big ole pot of oatmeal which we all ate before school. 6 kids in my family, 5 boys and me. We all started school at different times, me being the latest so by the time I got up and got ready to eat, the oatmeal was usually concrete (ironic since my daddy was an engineer and built roads and bridges most of my life). I would add lots of butter and milk to mine to kind of cream it up a bit. In the warmer months, it was a bowl of cereal. We took our lunches to school, I remember when I was younger I had a bullwinkle lunch box, loved that thing. Anyway, in colder months it was soup in a thermos and milk in another one with some saltine crackers. In warmer months it was a peanut butter and syrup sandwich (which I will not eat now no matter how hungry I am) and milk in my thermos. As I outgrew my lunchbox it was in a brown bag. We were very poor. Mama cooked every night and I'm sure it was very healthy since it was all home cooked, we always had loads of vegetables and she was a master at cooking hamburger in a million ways (I hate meatloaf so on those nights it was just vegetables for me). We sat down as a family and ate supper and you ate what was on the table or you didn't eat. If you were a picky eater, oh well, you made do. I was probably the most picky out of the bunch in that I didn't like meatloaf and wasn't a fan of mushrooms, I love them now. A lot of the casseroles Mama made had mushrooms and, of course spaghetti did. When we had spaghetti, I had mine with just butter on the noodles and a salad and garlic bread. When we had casseroles if they had mushrooms depending on what they were I either picked the mushrooms out or just ate salad and bread. We had salad with every meal and bread with every meal, mama made homemade bread. Weekends we had the big breakfast of eggs, grits, bacon and toast. Still sandwiches for lunch but usually something like ham.

Now, my honey eats mostly fried meat, which I don't eat and wouldn't touch a vegetable if his life depended on it. I don't eat fried food (strange for a Georgia girl I know) so we rarely eat the same thing but we do try to eat around the same time. He works from home and I work outside the home so it's just supper we eat together. Sadly, most of the time I eat a diet TV dinner just because it's easy. I work out when I get home from work and by the time I'm done, cooking isn't what I want to do and I don't enjoy doing it. I eat breakfast and lunch at work, usually something like Jimmy Dean's delightful frozen something and a sandwich and carrots for lunch.
 
Much, much different, and probably less healthy.
Oh yes, let me count the ways! I grew up on a farm in a pretty remote region and it wasn't until the mid-80's that bigger retail chains opened and a lot of prepared foods and imported produce became widely available. Where I came from almost everybody ate the same; kind of farm-to-table before that was a thing. Meat that was raised and butchered by our own Dads and produce grown by our Moms. In the winter practically everything we ate was home frozen, preserved or from the root cellar and meals year-round were hearty meat, starch and vegetable affairs ended by home baking for dessert. The odd, very lucky ones came from an ethnic background of some kind and would have foods that seemed so exciting and exotic, albeit always completely homemade from the available ingredients. I remember seeing tv commercials for convenience foods and imagining how magnificent they must be! ( :teeth: I was probably 10 before I had my first Oreo cookie and to save my life I couldn't figure out what a "slurpee" might consist of. )

Nowadays at my house, we eat a ton more junk than I did as a kid. I use a fair number of prepared foods and convenience items and we eat out more in a month that I would have some entire years as a kid. But it's not all bad - our diet is quite produce-heavy because there are countless choices available to us now. I'm also a pretty darned good cook and our menus are so, so much more varied and interesting now. And even with all the junk, I'm sure we eat much less saturated fat, salt and sugar and simple carbs than the home folks did.
 
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I grew up eating pretty healthy. I strayed for awhile, but I am back to eating healthy. I am eating less diet food. My mom always had some sort of low-fat, low sugar, and diet versions around the house. I try to eat things much more closer to their natural state. I cook from scratch a lot.
 
If the culinary scene was the same now as then - it'd probably be identical, but in the suburb I grew up in, we didn't have sushi until I was in middle school - indian, african, korean, etc. not until I left for college. My folks are what I call "bougie hippes" and mom owns a huge farm (I did not grow up on the farm, even though I grew up in a suburb, it was still a proper city with a large university in and we were 20 miles from Nashville.) so we grew up eating organic vegetables and rarely had canned (tinned) vegetables/fruits from the grocery - my mom and grandmother canned and froze the produce they grew. I eat fresh veggies pretty exclusively now, although I won't do chick peas from dry just to whip up some hummus. My folks have pretty darn broad food experiences and eat healthy. We ate at the local places, although I do remember going to Red Lobster regularly when I was little, and we'd beg for Pizza Hut or Taco Bell on Saturdays which were date nights for my folks and their friends and we all got to hang out together. Red Lobster seemed much nicer then, but probably because I was a kid and didn't know better. The world has gotten smaller and more accessible, so in some ways, its the same as a kid, but we have access to uni any time we want to go to the market, ya know? Availablity means expanded choices. So while Thai and Indian weren't normal meals eaten once a week like they are now, if that had been an option it would have been the same.

OP - this is a great thread!
 
Oh yes, let me count the ways! I grew up on a farm in a pretty remote region and it wasn't until the mid-80's that bigger retail chains opened and a lot of prepared foods and imported produce became widely available. Where I came from almost everybody ate the same; kind of farm-to-table before that was a thing. Meat that was raised and butchered by our own Dads and produce grown by our Moms. In the winter practically everything we ate was home frozen, preserved or from the root cellar and meals year-round were hearty meat, starch and vegetable affairs ended by home baking for dessert. The odd, very lucky ones came from an ethnic background of some kind and would have foods that seemed so exciting and exotic, albeit always completely homemade from the available ingredients. I remember seeing tv commercials for convenience foods and imagining how magnificent they must be! ( :teeth: I was probably 10 before I had my first Oreo cookie and to save my life I couldn't figure out what a "slurpee" might consist of. )
.

The farm to table before it was thing - I get that. Sometimes I thought my mom was downright weird compared to my friend's mom, and then I started realizing how terrible things like corn from a can are:) I definitely had Oreos though. Not really sure why canned tomatoes were going to kill us, but wheat thins were in every lunch ever... The fresh butchered meats though make me miss my grandparents so much! My mom inherited like 1200 head of cattle, so its better that she got rid of them, but god, I loved the meats from my grandparents. Even the local butcher from local farms isn't quite the same.

Thanks for reminding me of the smell of a root cellar!

Slurpees are like Icees, which are underrated by adults, IMHO.
 
Oh yes, very much so!

My mom didn't care much for cooking so she wasn't into trying new recipes or cooking very healthy. She made meatloaf and mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese quite often. I remember her tossed salad was lettuce with tomatoes and cucumber then dressed with pure Miracle Whip. I ate a lot of Chef Boy R Dee spaghetti and ravioli. And jello. She made a lot of jello. We had better meals when my grandparents were visiting, or when we visited them, which was often. Grandma was a wonderful cook and enjoyed it. She cooked 3 meals a day. Meat, potatoes, vegetables, dinner rolls, etc. All from scratch. She was no sooner done with the dishes from one meal, when she started in on preparing the next one.

When I got married I knew how to make spaghetti, and macaroni salad. Those were the only things I learned how to make at home. The Betty Crocker cookbook became my instant friend, as did the wonderful Mennonite cookbook my mother-in-law gave me as a bridal shower gift. I took after my grandmother in the cooking/baking department.

I do make a lot of comfort foods like meatloaf, lasagna, spaghetti, goulash, but also a lot of grilled chicken dishes, fish, etc. And lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. I don't do as much baking as I did when the kids were at home, but still chocolate chip cookies sometimes. I enjoy trying new recipes, and sometimes have our adult children/families over for dinner as my "guinea pigs" when I try something new, and if it doesn't turn out well we'll just order pizza. :)

Breakfast is my most difficult meal. Growing up I generally skipped breakfast when I was in school. My Mom didn't understand how I could do that as she was the type of person who wanted to eat the moment she woke up. Me, I would rather wait a couple of hours and that wasn't possible when I was school age. I occasionally make eggs and toast, but most times it's fresh fruit and cheese, cold cereal with fresh fruit, or oatmeal. I love breakfast muffins, especially those with a lot of dried cranberries, apple, coconut, etc. in them. Never had muffins when I was growing up. If grandma was cooking it was usually pancakes.
 
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My parents both worked long hours and neither really ever learned to cook. We'd go to the store on Sunday and pick out 6 TV dinners each for dinners and then we'd eat out on Saturday nights.

And my dad was big on every meal having to involved "protien" by which he meant meat. Peanut butter or eggs or beans did not qualify. We also pretty much only ate more standard American foods or Mexica or Tex Mex. I never had lasagne as a kid, or pasta except eating out. No chinese, or Spanish or German foods, etc.

I haven't eaten red meat or pork since I was 16 rarely use prepared foods. I shop mostly at farms and local stores and try to shop in season. And many of our favourite recipes we've picked up as we travelled the world, so there is a lot of variety.

I like to think we're overall healthier now. Much less processed food. More produce. Motre whole grains. etc.
 

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