Food price hikes changing U.S. eating habits

[jpak]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23882299/

Melissa Marks didn’t used to give much thought to her trips to the grocery store — if she needed a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs, she’d just hop in her car and get it.

These days, Marks, a single mom with three kids, is tying her grocery store trips to the day she gets her paycheck. Instead of making a run for just a few items, she’s thinking up menus and compiling a list beforehand. The kids are eating more generic brands and getting fewer luxury items like sweets. She’s also clipping coupons and choosing which store will get her business based on who has milk on sale that week.

With both gas and food prices rising, Marks, of Brownsburg, Ind., also is cutting back on restaurant trips, sending her kids to school with pre-packed lunches and eating last night's leftovers for lunch the next day.

"Things have been tight before, but we’ve never seen it like this," she said.

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[Virginia Dare]

1. Stupid me, I've been living this way for a while....

I lived within my means, and put as much as I could away in savings.

[InvisibleTouch]

2. The biggest change for me: milk.

Used to be my staple diet, especially chocolate milk. Last year it got so that I couldn't afford to go through several gallons of organic milk a week (and I don't trust the hormone-and-pesticide-laced conventional milk), so of necessity I cut way back, drank only water for several weeks - and thereafter found that my "milk addiction" had been broken. Turned out to be a good thing, too! They say you're most allergic to the very foods you crave, and milk was aggravating my asthma; I'm doing tremendously better now that I only use a few drops in my coffee. My next problem became how to use up a half-gallon of organic milk (still monstrously expensive) before it went bad - and I found that it freezes very nicely in small containers that can be individually thawed.

The next change I'm going to be forced to make due to financial necessity (because I'd never do it voluntarily): cutting way down on sugar.

[skooooo]

3. Sounds like a healthier way to live...

Planning menus? Gasp!

[Summer93]

4. Learned from elders

As a child I watched how generations older than me did things. They grew their food and preserved it as well. The entire family shared both the work and the resulting food. We had plenty of food through the winter stored in jars.(little or no need for refrigeration) When spring arrived it was a time to rejoice for there would be asparagus sprouting ready to eat, rhubard also sprouting and ready to be eaten. We were happy to be outdoors starting anew on gardens and perhaps gleening a few parsnips that had been left to winter over. Spring fever began when the soil was warm enough to work and get ready for planting. We would also be rewarded with spring flowers brightening the yard in their bright colors.

Now a days for people it is the same thing year round. Go to store buy what is wanted and go back to house and eat prefabricated food - stuff that has been manufactured by the corporation with the though of the latest whim of the public. I wonder whether the current generation will ever taste a strawberry that is soft and juicy and sweet and small rather than the current plum sized fruit that is white in the center and hard/crunchy tart. Will our children taste a tomato that is so soft and juicy that it is difficult to cut but oh so much more tasty than the crunchy ones available year round in stores.

We ate very well during the "old days" but, we also worked to make it happen.

[GliderGuider]

5. The food industry has promoted monstrous changes in the West's eating habits

I'm pretty sure the agrifood industry was behind the elimination of "home economics" courses in high schools, much like Goodyear and Standard Oil eliminated public transit in America. Those courses had taught several generations of young women how to cook from scratch. Nowadays the ability to make a pie crust or a cabbage roll from scratch is looked on as arcane knowledge.

I'm also sure the industry thought they were being helpful by providing so many packaged, pre-prepared foods, but once again the drive for profits on their part converged with affluence and a touch of laziness on ours. that convergence creates a dependence on industrial products and a loss of critical survival knowledge. Look at the shopping carts of in supermarkets. The ratio of raw flour to premade baked goods in those carts tells the story.