You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith and I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter.
This week I’m on vacation, so I’m digging into the archives and pulling out another one of my favorite episodes of Comfort Food, the podcast I did with Amy Palanjian of Yummy Toddler Food. This episode originally aired on January 17, 2019, just so you can put yourself in the right place and time.
Our guest on this episode was Lisa DuBreuil, who is an incredible fat activist and clinical social worker who specializes in eating disorders and addiction. I have had so many valuable conversations with Lisa over the years, including when I interviewed her for my first book. She was one of the first people to help me start to understand why feeling “addicted” to food is not the same as an actual addiction and she also helped me work through how feeling “out of control” around food is usually rooted in restriction, which can be a hard concept to wrap your brain around. This is a great conversation if you are navigating sugar anxiety as a parent or just for yourself, I think you’ll find it really useful.
We’ll be back next Thursday with a brand new episode of the Burnt Toast podcast for you. In the meantime, I also wanted to mention that the Burnt Toast book club will be meeting via a discussion thread on my Substack on Wednesday, August 31. The thread will go live at 12pm Eastern you can hop on anytime to join the conversation. This month we are reading Essential Labor by the incredible Angela Garbes who was on the podcast a few months ago. So, if you love that conversation, love Angela, if you have read or even just want to read her book, I hope you will join us. It’s going to be a great conversation.
Okay, here’s past me, past Amy Palanjian, and past Lisa DuBreuil with answers to all of your questions about sugar addiction.
Episode 58 Transcript
Virginia
Hello and welcome to episode 24 of Comfort Food! This is the podcast about the joys and meltdowns of feeding our families and feeding ourselves.
Amy
And this week, we’re talking about sugar and whether we can really be addicted to it, if it makes our kids hyper, and how we can have a saner relationship with it, both ourselves and with our kids.
Virginia
I’m Virginia Sole-Smith, I’m a writer, a contributing editor to Parents Magazine, and the author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America. I write about how women relate to food and our bodies in a culture that gives us so many unrealistic expectations about both of those things.
Amy
And I’m Amy Palanjian, a writer, recipe developer, and creator of Yummy Toddler Food and Yummy Family Food. I’m a contributor to Allrecipes Magazine and I love to help parents relax in the daily challenge of feeding their kids.
Virginia
As we’re recording this episode, I am just finishing the first month of my book launch and wrapping up my book tour for The Eating Instinct. I really loved all of the events, and if you guys are listening, anyone who has come out to the events, thank you so much. It’s been a total joy to talk about the book with people. But there’s one question that comes up at every single event, which has been really interesting, which is, “But what about sugar?” What I think happens is people hear me talking about the importance of trusting our bodies and listening to our hunger and fullness cues and not being afraid to take pleasure in food and how comforting eating should be at its core. And everyone’s with me. Everyone is nodding along like yes, yes, yes, we want to do that. We want to do that. And then someone raises their hand and says, “But wait, surely you don’t mean sugar?” And it’s so interesting that we just have, right now, this phobia around sugar. This cultural moment we’re having where we classify sugar in this different category from other foods. We really have started to think of it almost like alcohol or drugs.
Amy
And in terms of kids, there’s this giant fear of juice. There’s all of these fears of going to birthday parties and kids eating birthday cakes, that the kids are going to have these flaming meltdowns due to the sugar. And I think a lot of us believe these things because we hear our friends talking about it. But we don’t actually know what’s true and what’s not.
Virginia
So, we wanted to sort through all of this. And we wanted to bring in a really great expert to help us. So, we have Lisa DuBreuil with us. She is a therapist from Salem, Massachusetts, who works with clients on both eating disorders and addiction. So she’s kind of the perfect person to help us sort through these different issues. So Lisa, welcome! Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work and your family?
Lisa
Well, thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here with you. So yes, I’m a clinical social worker. I work at Mass General Hospital in Boston, working with people who have substance use disorders and my particular clinical specialties are folks that have both eating disorders and substance use disorders, and also people that have developed different problems after weight loss surgeries. I also have a private practice in Salem, where I live with my family, and up here I see mostly people dealing with binge eating disorder, body distress, trying to recover from diet culture, things like that.
Virginia
I should mention, Lisa is also quoted pretty extensively in chapter six of The Eating Instinct. So there will be more of her in the book.
Lisa
And I’m married, I have a husband and a 13 year old daughter.
Amy
So, let’s start with the big question here. Is sugar addiction a real thing?
Lisa
In a word? No, it’s not. There’s obviously way more detail to that. But bottom line? No, it’s it’s not an addiction.
Virginia
I think that is so important and so refreshing for people to hear. I hope people are breathing a sigh of relief, because this really is this misconception. It’s everywhere. So I really appreciate you saying that. Let’s get into that detail a little bit more. Why don’t you tell us a bit about the biology of addiction? And why is sugar not classified in that same way as drugs or alcohol?
Lisa
The first thing I want to want to say is, I really understand why people have this concern, because we are living in a cultural time when we’re being told that sugar is dangerous and addictive. I want to make it really clear, I have total sympathy for people that are worried about this and parents that are worried about this. But when we look at the science, we’re just not seeing the evidence that we respond to sugar the same way that we respond to what what are called “substances of abuse.”
One of the most important things, I think, for people to know is that our entire nervous system requires sugar. It runs on sugar. That’s all your brain uses for energy is carbohydrates and all carbohydrates break down, in the end, to sugar. So, we do have a drive for sugar because we can’t survive without it. But that’s not the same thing as having an addiction. So that’s the first piece I think it’s important for people to know.
The biggest piece I think that can be helpful to people is understanding the concept of habituation, which is what happens when a person is exposed to something and because of the exposure and the access, is able to regulate themselves around it. When I work with people with who are dealing with both a substance use disorder and an eating disorder, with the substance use disorder, we can we talk a lot about restriction and abstinence, because that’s the best way we know right now to help people stabilize and live a balanced life. When I’m helping them with their eating disorder, we are moving away from restriction. We’re moving away from abstinence, because that’s the best way we know how to help people be able to live in balance and feel like they can regulate themselves.
Amy
I think a lot of what stresses adults and parents out is just that it often seems like treats and sugar are everywhere that we go. That in itself can make it seem like sugar is out of control, because it’s all over the place. But that’s a very different thing than being physically addicted to it.
Lisa
Yes. And the piece that parents need to understand is that the more restrictive they are, that the more special and forbidden they make them, the more a child is going to be interested in them. That’s Parenting 101. The minute you say to your child, “don’t touch that,” what happens? That’s all they want. That’s all they want to touch. So, it’s the same thing with foods.
Virginia
It sounds like one of the key differences we all need to kind of wrap our minds around is that if you are talking about a substance that is physically addicting, it is important to avoid. An alcoholic can’t drink, a drug addict needs to avoid drugs, whereas in terms of managing our feelings of out-of-control-ness or anxiety around something like sugar, we actually need to be okay having it. We need to be comfortable with the exposure.
Lisa
Right. So with with a substance use disorder, the exposure to the substance, heavy use of the substance—because of neuroplasticity, because of our brain’s ability to adapt, and change—we develop tolerance. Anyone who has struggled with substances can tell you, there was a time when one or two drinks was enough, and now I can’t seem to stop. And that has to do with physical changes that occur in the brain. And obviously, I also want to say that addiction is much more complicated than this. It also involves psychosocial factors and oppression and all these other cultural influences. It’s not just about someone’s biology, but when we are talking about the biology there’s this tolerance that develops because the brain adapts to the heavy use. And we don’t see that with fruits. We don’t see that with sugar. What we see is that through exposure, and abundance that people and animals actually are able to regulate. It’s the restriction that creates the drive, the over over attention to to these foods.
Amy
Is it the restriction that causes some people to then binge eat? Is that like an emotional response?
Lisa
Yes, yes. Really all eating disorders involve restriction, which also we can call dieting. I mean, that’s what dieting is, it’s restricting calories or restricting certain foods. And so when that happens, you can create a strong drive to then overeat, and ignore your own hunger and fullness cues. Because, oh my god, now it’s available, and I better get it while it’s still here.
Virginia
So when people say, “Oh, I can’t trust myself around the Oreos. I’ll eat the whole bag,” we’re kind of focusing on the wrong piece. It’s not actually the food, it’s everything you did leading up to encountering the Oreo with restriction that got you there.
Lisa
Exactly. And when I talk to people, how I try and break it down for people is, with permission plus abundance, you can get discernment. When you have permission—honest to God, deep in your heart permission—to eat as many Oreos as you really want, and you have plenty of Oreos, you can get to a place where you can actually tell how many do I really want?
The other part of this is eating regularly throughout the day, eating lots of different kinds of food, making sure your nutritional needs are getting met. Because that’s the other piece is that if you’re undereating in other ways, you’re going to make it harder for your body and brain to hear the signals for all the different kinds of food your body needs. In the end, if you’re undernourished at the end of the day, your brain is going to prioritize its needs. And what does it need? Carbohydrates.
The last thing I want to say about that piece is, this is a feature, not a bug. Because for most of human history, the biggest threat to our existence was starvation. So we have an amazingly powerful, not in our direct control drive to keep us alive. And so trying to push against that is like trying to train yourself to need less oxygen.
Virginia
Yeah, you’re just never going to do it.
Lisa
You’re never going to do it.
Virginia
I think we’ve all met these people who give up sugar for some period of time. And they say, “Well, as long as I don’t eat it, I just don’t crave it.” What’s going on there?
Lisa
So, here’s the thing. I’m a big believer in believing people when they tell me about their lived experience. So, if someone says to me, “I have to tell you, I’ve cut out sugar,”— although I have to point out that no one can completely cut out sugar because it’s present in lots of different foods and we would die without it. But I know what they mean, they mean added sugar treats, etc. So, if someone says to me, “I’ve done that and I’m functioning well. I go where I want to go. I don’t get preoccupied, I feel satisfied. And life is going well,” I’m going to believe them. It’s not my job to convince people that what they’re doing isn’t working, if what they tell me is that it is working.
But that said, lots of times in my experience, most folks find that in order to maintain that kind of restriction, it requires a lot of other limits in their lives. Places they don’t go, people they don’t hang out with, preoccupation that they have to manage. One of the ways you can think about it is, if I asked you to stand up and balance a quarter on your index finger, you probably wouldn’t have a hard time doing that. If I asked you to do it all day long, this simple task over time would start to get really difficult because you get muscle fatigue and focus fatigue, and it would it would start requiring more and more of your energy, psychological energy and physical energy, to continue that hold, right? So that can be what happens when people try and have such a restriction because carbs are present in so many of our foods. And nutritionally most human diets, 50 to 60% of it is carbohydrates. Because our brains need such a large amount of carbs to run. So, for most people, it’s very hard to pull off over an extended period of time. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some people that maybe can do that.
Virginia
That’s really good to be aware of, if you’re thinking about something like that. The odds are a little bit stacked, in terms of how your body’s gonna respond.
Lisa
Yes, and the more of a history you have of restricting and foods being forbidden, the more of an emotional pull those foods are going to have on you. So, lots of times the beginning of recovering with eating disorders is really healing from a lot of that restriction. So, in the beginning, sometimes people do over focus on those foods because they’re making up for all the years they weren’t allowed to have them.
Virginia
But then you see, as someone continues in their recovery, you see sort of a balancing.
Lisa
Yes, you do. Absolutely. And when I work with people, we don’t do it willy-nilly. We very planfully think about how to help someone move foods from the “forbidden” column into the “it’s okay to eat” column, and we do it in a way that feels safe and is planful. Because it can be very scary for people because they are afraid of getting completely out of control.
Virginia
Lisa, you work primarily with adults struggling with food in these profound ways, but I’m curious to know if there are any particular strategies that you use with your clients, particularly when it comes to overcoming these anxieties around the so-called forbidden foods, that you think are also useful for parents to incorporate.
Lisa
So, the first thing I would recommend is to look at the resources available through the Ellyn Satter Institute.
Virginia
We love Ellyn Satter on this podcast.
Lisa
My daughter is adopted from China, and when we brought her home, even though I was in recovery from my own eating disorder, I was really worried, like any parent would be, what if I pass this along to her? And a friend of mine said, “Oh, you have to check out Ellyn Satter.” And so I did andI discovered the Division of Responsibility. And that’s what I used when she came home. Although initially I just fed her on demand even though she was 18 months old, because she came to me undernourished because the orphanage didn’t have enough resources. She was very well loved, but they literally didn’t have enough food to go around sometimes. And so initially, I remember her eating big pats of butter because she was making up for lost time and her brain was growing exponentially and she needed fat. But eventually, as she was ready to do so, we moved into the division of responsibility and I found it incredibly helpful. So that’s always my go-to resource for parents.
Amy
I just want to jump in here and say if you guys haven’t listened to it, Episode 19, the whole episode is about the Division of Responsibilities. So definitely check that out.
Lisa
I think It’s even helpful for adults. Lots of times with binge eating disorder, as well as the other eating disorders, people don’t do a great job of making sure that several times a day they have opportunities to eat, and that they build predictability into their life. Even for grown adult, that can be a really great way to think about feeding yourself.
The other thing I think it’s important for parents to understand is, because I’ve seen this where people create this sort of bubble of safe foods at home. When you’ve got your little one, your toddler, you’re just starting grade school, your baby’s heading out into the big wide world where there are lots of different kinds of foods available at all sorts of different times, and going into all different kinds of households. I’ve heard from people about their kid’s friend showing up at their house and eating huge amounts of a snack because they don’t get access to that snack at home. We all want to keep our children in these safe little bubbles, but they’re heading out into the world. So, you really want to think about preparing your child for for this environment. And, again, that’s why I really like Ellyn Satter’s approach about creating eating competence. So your child is really connected and their connection to their hunger and appetite cues have been have been protected, so that when they head out there, and there are all these different things they can explore, that they can tell what they really want to eat, they can tell when they’re full. Because sooner or later, they’re going to have access to those foods that you’ve decided are not allowed.
Virginia
One strategy we use, we actually just use the other night. We had a bunch of pie leftover from the holidays and I put it down on the table just as part of dinner. We do dessert alongside the rest of the food. And it was really interesting. My five year old definitely had apple pie as her primary dinner, which I thought was a very excellent choice because pie is delicious. But she still was done with the meal just as quickly as she always is. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m gonna really like go to town on this pie, because it was just there on the table with everything else. So, do you use that kind of, like neutralizing treats?
Lisa
Exactly. One of the greatest pleasures I’ve had, as someone who’s in eating disorder recovery, has been to, to watch my daughter be able to take or leave treats that I would have been obsessed about. It just feels really good to know that she’s so in tune. It’s very bad when when we train children in diet culture to not trust their bellies, that’s a very bad message to send, especially for girls. Don’t trust your gut. Don’t listen to your body. That moves out into other ways that they’re supposed to be paying attention to what their gut tells them. I think that’s another important angle that people don’t think about. We’re constantly telling kids, especially little girls, don’t listen to yourself. Don’t listen to your hunger. Don’t listen to what your gut is telling you. I don’t think that serves them.
Virginia
Totally agree. Especially as your daughter is getting into the teenage years. I’m sure this is on your mind. There’s so many choices kids have to navigate as they gain that independence that we want them really trusting themselves for.
Amy
So, if a parent is feeling like there are just objectively a lot of treats in their life, what are ways that are not full of anxiety that we can help balance intake?
Virginia
You’re talking about like, every time you go to the bank and there’s a lollipop?
Amy
We just came off for the holidays and there are class parties and then parties after school and there just is a lot of that and I think some people, without getting into wanting to restrict their children, are just also wanting to make sure that their kids have an opportunity to eat other foods and be hungry for other foods.
Lisa
So, the first thing I want to say is it’s normal for there to be feasts in our culture. And it’s okay if certain times of the year there’s more food available or more treats available. That’s not some sort of pathology. Every culture on the planet has feast days, and especially this time of year, because it’s the darkest, coldest time of year in many parts of the world, there’s lots of celebrations. And so that’s okay. That said, if a parent was worried about this, I think what I would recommend is, and what I’ve done with even done with my own daughter sometimes is said, “Yep, you can grab a lollipop, but I’m going to ask you to wait and have it at snack time. And that can be one of your options.” In my house, have always had a basket of treats that we’ve picked up hither and yon, that then are available to her for snack or dessert. So she might not be able to have something right now, but she knows that it will be available to her if she decides to have it later. So if you’re worried about that kind of thing, then as long as you’re making sure that there are opportunities on a daily regular basis for your child to have access to that, that has worked really well. And also like, if you’re in church service, if you’re someplace where you can’t eat anyways, there are always going to be times when we can’t stop and eat right now. So, building in regular snacks and meal times are opportunities to add that treat to the options.
Amy
So the American Heart Association has all these very specific recommendations for how many sugar grams we’re supposed to have each day. And I know that that has a tendency to freak a lot of parents out because it’s hard to actually keep track of that, like carrying a calculator around. But it does set up this model where we sort of feel like we have to be monitoring and keeping track of things. I think it’s confusing to get that message from that type of a large health association. And I just wanted to get some thoughts from you on that.
Lisa
That’s a fantastic question. So here’s the thing, anyone who’s raised a child from infancy knows that they tend to have like a protein day, and then they’ll have a carb day, you know? Or all they’re willing to eat is carrots, and then all they’re willing to eat is cheese. I think the idea that when left to their own devices that humans will eat three perfectly macronutrient-ly balanced meals every day ongoing, it doesn’t pan out. I think that what you need to think about is stepping back and looking at it, especially with younger children, in a bigger picture. I know that that some recent research done has shown that even though children are “overly” focused on one macronutrient day to day, that if you step back and look at a month’s worth of eating, it’s very balanced, because they’re listening to their hunger cues. So, yes, there might be a day when, Oh my God, we’ve mostly had these treats. But then again, assuming that you’re using the division of responsibility, and giving with permission and abundance, what you’ll notice is there will be other days when they’re not that interested in those kinds of foods. Even for myself, you know, I tend to, after the holidays, I tend to be looking for a lot of greens and soups and things like that. And I think it’s a reaction to all the richer foods that I’ve been enjoying in November and December.
Virginia
But it’s just a sort of natural balancing, not a furious like, Oh, God, I have to…
Lisa
Exactly. It’s not driven by “Oh my God, I have to make up.” It’s just literally like, wow, I’m kind of sick of those foods at this point. I don’t want any more. I’m looking for other things now. And it sort of balances itself out. The other thing I want to say is I know how scary it can be for parents. There’s so much pressure on parents to do it correctly and so much fear about children’s bodies and body sizes. And it can be really anxiety provoking for parents to step away from the the dominant culture and give this a different try. So, I really do want to encourage people to look into Ellyn Satter, to look into the resources out there for parents that are supporting children’s natural hunger and satiety cues. There are resources. There are other folks out there that are doing it this way. And it makes mealtimes so much easier when you’re not attempting to negotiate exactly what they’re putting in their mouths. There are other things we do need to be very controlling about what goes into our children’s mouths. It’s wonderful to be able to encourage kids that they can trust themselves around that.
Amy
I just want to say that like, that is one of my big goals with my website, because I just, it’s so much. Meals are happier, they’re less stressful, and you can just take this huge burden off yourself, if you’re not counting bites of broccoli, or worried that your child is getting enough and that if you just can get to a place of trusting them. But it of course does take a lot of work. And it’s not something that will just automatically click into place. It often takes some work and then take some more work. And it’s like a perspective that you need to keep reminding yourself is probably better.
Virginia
And wouldn’t it be nice if big groups like the American Heart Association could get on board? Because I do think, like Amy said, people get really freaked out about these serious recommendations. And it’s hard to recognize, oh, that’s another metric, just like all the diet culture metrics that we don’t need. Just because it’s coming from a bunch of cardiologist doesn’t mean it’s actually good for your child’s mental health.
Lisa
Right. And again, you can always ask about and get curious about, well, where’s that data coming from? Who told them that? And who’s influencing these campaigns? Because sometimes what you find out is they’re coming from pharmaceutical corporations or diet corporations that don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart.
Virginia
That is such a great point. Yes, absolutely.
Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such an enlightening conversation. We could talk about this stuff all day long. So thank you for making the time. Will you tell our listeners where they can find more of you and where you are on social media?
Lisa
My website, which is constantly in development, is LisaDuBreuil.com. And I’m on Twitter at @LisaJDuBreuil. And I think that’s my instagram handle, as well.
Virginia
I follow Lisa on Twitter, and she tweets, tons of great stuff. So I definitely recommend following her. Lots of good stuff out there.
Amy
Okay, so Virginia, you have had a busy few weeks, and you’re trying out a new approach to some dinners. So can you tell us what what happened?
Virginia
So, as everyone who listens to the podcast knows, I hate meal planning. See our episode with KJ Dell’Antonia for the full scoop on that. So we’ve had a couple of weeks where I have been on the road for the book nonstop, plus holidays. What I typically do is grocery shop on Fridays or Saturdays for the whole week and then just make up dinner on the fly from whatever I’ve bought. But there’s been a lot of weekends where I’ve been away for book stuff, so I haven’t been able to get to the grocery store. Dan has been doing the Walmart run to cover our usual staples, but it just seemed like we needed an easier plan. Often I was coming back from a trip just in time to make dinner, but not do anything in advance of making dinner.
Amy
That’s the worst.
Virginia
So yeah, it is kind of mind bending. And I didn’t want to totally go over to take out, mostly because we eat takeout so much I’ve gotten a little sick of our local takeout options. I know. So I decided, I got a coupon in the mail for HelloFresh, which is one of those meal kit types of services, like Blue Apron or Sun Basket or all those different companies. And so let me say right up front, I paid for this myself. I mean, I did use the coupon they sent me but I didn’t get it because we’re podcasters. I’m sure everyone has gotten these coupons in their mailbox. They don’t know who we are, so it’s not a sponsoring or endorsement kind of thing. But I was like well, let me give this a try because the whole concept is that you hop on the website, pick out a few recipes you want to make for the week and then a box of groceries shows up on your doorstep with all the instructions and everything. And it definitely solved that issue of I can’t go to the grocery store or think about dinner until I need to be cooking dinner. I did like spend five minutes on the website randomly picking a few things to try. But then the box arrived, one day it got there right as I was getting home so I was able to unpack the groceries. And it’s nice! They send you stuff to make three meals and everything is in its own little bag. So you just take out your bag and then unpack and it’s got all the vegetables and everything you need. I think you have to provide olive oil and salt. But that’s about it.
Amy
Does it come in a cooler?
Virginia
It’s a box that’s lined with cooler type material. And there’s an ice pack on the bottom. Everything was fresh, the ingredients all looked pretty good. The tomato was a little anemic looking. I mean, also, a tomato in November in the Northeast would be a tough sell. But everything was pretty good. So I really liked it for that ease of convenience. For non meal planners, I think it’s a great option because it totally takes away that 5pm panic. The downsides, I would say, are the meals are not very make-ahead friendly. So often when I’m not traveling, I want to get dinner figured out in the morning or on my lunch break. We’re busy doing something with the kids in the hour before dinner happens, like we’re at swim lesson or whatever. So all of these meals do require you to be able to be at the stove for like 30 minutes or so before you want to eat, which is a challenge for a lot of people juggling kids and work schedules. So that, I think, is a drawback to them. I would love to see them do more like “here’s a slow cooker recipe” or a make a head type of thing. I didn’t feel like they were marketing to families as much as I expected because you have to choose between a two person portion or a four person portion. But in my house, we are four people, but two of them are small people. So I wasn’t gonna get the four person portion, because that would have been way too much food. But there were nights where the two person portion wasn’t quite enough. Like there was one recipe that was like this taco flatbread thing, and Dan and I were both like, “Yeah, we want to eat this whole thing. What are we feeding the kids?” So I still had to figure out rounding it out with a few things to give the girls. So I would love to see them do like a parents eating with small children option. I mean, I feel like there’s a lot of us.
Amy
Yeah, there is another company called One Potato box. But they’re not available everywhere because I have checked. It’s the Weelicious founder and then the woman who runs Shutterbean, the website, does the photos. And so I can’t tell if I just want them because their photos are so good or like whether it would really taste like that in my house, but I couldn’t get it in Iowa anyway.
Virginia
Well, I’m going to check into that because I felt like they could be doing a better job. This is a great option if you’re childless and just cooking for two people or if you have older kids and like the four person portions would make more sense for you. I will say the recipes were super straightforward. The time estimates were correct, which I appreciated. I was churning out dinner super fast that week. On the one hand, it feels wasteful because all the food comes in this big box, and there’s extra packaging. But we didn’t waste food that week, because I only bought the ingredients that I needed. Like, they only had the ingredients to make these exact things, which if you don’t meal plan you often don’t have that. I’m not saying there’s not an easier hack to that, but I’m saying I don’t do it. So, I did like that there was no food waste. But I just felt like I often ended up having to like add on a little bit to the meals or improvise a bit to make it work for my family. And Dan did say he likes my cooking better overall, which I thought was sweet of him to say.
Amy
That’s nice.
Virginia
As I’ve discussed, I’m kind of improvisational cook. So I did definitely play with the seasonings a bit and try to tailor things a little bit more to us. But it was great to have that starting point. Long story short, I definitely get why there’s a lot of pushback. I’ve always been really skeptical about this concept. I don’t know why I think I was just sort of being a snob about it.
Amy
I am too.
Virginia
Like, you can’t just like cook on your own? You need someone to like send you a box? And then I was like, Screw it. Yeah, I do. No shame in that game. Send me a box of food so I don’t have to think about dinner! That part was pretty great. So I think if you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to fit grocery shopping in, because that can be such a time suck on the weekends.
Amy
It’s much easier to just go and look at their options to pick what you want to cook then like have to like deal with the entirety of the internet and find a recipe.
Virginia
Right, it was really nice having all the noise cut out. That is totally true. Because they change the menus week to week but it was like, okay, here are these few choices that we are offering this week. Which, on the one hand, I was like, I’m really just picking three things with meatballs because I don’t think my kids will eat the other things. But on the other hand, I like that this has taken out decision fatigue for me. So, yeah, I think I might try some other ones.
Amy
So I’m not like a freeze-er. I talked about prepping for when baby comes a little bit, but I’m not a freezer meals person. But Pinch of Yum recently did this massive 12 recipe freezer meals and I was looking at recipes, and it was not what I expected. Because you don’t actually—so a lot of freezer meals, you cook ahead of time and then put in the freezer, at least I thought? Clearly I don’t do this very often. But this is just like you chop a bunch of things, put it in a bag, and then it has directions for what to do and like what to add after. That’s so much easier.
Virginia
Oh, that’s very similar to what this is, except it’s not frozen.
Amy
Because then you have all of your stuff and you put it in the slow cooker and you add three ingredients that are from the pantry and you have dinner! I’m totally going to do that. And also the recipes are like things that I would actually want to eat. Like there’s a chicken meatballs recipe. There’s Tandoori chicken, Korean barbecue beef, chicken tinga, stuff with lots of flavor in it. I don’t know if my kids will like it, but I want to eat this.
Virginia
I guess my question is, when are you going to do all the food prep?
Amy
Yeah, see, I don’t know. In theory, this is a great idea.
Virginia
For that random free Saturday…
Amy
Or maybe this is one of the things that I have my mom or the mother-in-laws do.
Virginia
When they when they come to help with the baby!
Amy
I hand them four recipes and then they prep them. Then all I have to do is add the—I’m just looking at what I would need to add for one of these. I’d need to get some tortillas. Done.
Virginia
Oh, that’s very smart. That sounds like a great strategy for that particular period of your life. Maybe I can just recruit general neighborhood volunteers who want to be nice. I’m not having another baby to get it.
Anyway, I think my big takeaway was just I don’t know why I was being sort of snobby about these things. I think f you’re feeling panicked about dinner, as we also often are, to try something new and see whether it’s a good fit for you. And if I do try other meal prep kits like this, I will certainly report back if I find one that feels better for those of us in the small appetite children phase.
Amy
Yeah, and if anyone has tried one potato box, I would love to hear what you think.
Virginia
Yeah, or any others that you think are really good that we should be doing.
The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.
Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.
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Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.
Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.
Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism.
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