105 Comments
Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

I am parenting a teen through ED recovery and WOW have we been on a processed food journey. I'm so grateful that I've learned about the ideas that "all foods fit" and that, if she is to recover fully, she's gotta be exposed to as much as possible. So I've recently bought pop tarts (kinda underwhelming, honestly), Swedish fish (AMAZING), those "fancy" Pepperidge Farms cookies (also kinda disappointing), Klondike bars, Cheez-its and many, many boxes of Oreos (big cheers for these last three).

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

I have NEVER given up "processed" foods. The whole idea of "processed = BAD" is so bound up with classism to me. Like, the whole idea that well-educated liberal urbanites don't eat processed food, so if you do, especially while not being thin, you must be low-class. Which is why I BRISTLE whenever anyone poohpoohs processed foods. It reads to me as a passive-aggressive classist dig.

I love Cinnabon and those Pillsbury rolls that come in the cylinder-shaped container. Especially the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls that have Cinnabon icing. They're so gooey and wonderful. And I see pushback about this everywhere. One time I read a nonfiction book in which the author passed a Cinnabon in an airport, and was so knee-jerk about how gross and off-putting it was to him, as if anyone literate enough to read his book would automatically agree, and I couldn't help but notice that he had gone to boarding school, so I was like, "How much boarding school do you need to have attended in order to really hate Cinnabon with all your heart and soul?"

I went to an elite liberal arts college, and in the 26 years since I graduated, I have seen so much smug, self-satisfied rhetoric on the part of fellow alumni on this topic. Someone had a blog all about how they were raising their baby with only homemade food, and there was a post where the baby ate yogurt, and I thought, Do you milk the cows yourself and add the probiotic cultures by hand? Honestly.

Or there's this meme I've seen around the internet about "habits Americans have that people from other countries find weird" and they mentioned "canned bread," i.e. the Pillsbury cylindrical packages, with the implication that if you're worldly and well-traveled, if you're as sophisticated as a EUROPEAN and you aren't an UGLY AMERICAN, you will be grossed out by "canned bread."

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Boxed mixes. Pancakes, muffins, whatever. I went thru a phase of thinking it was strictly homemade or nothing so I could avoid the negative “are those blueberries even REAL?” crap. I have forgiven myself for a) not being super mommy and making everything from scratch with my special recipe that I’ll hand down to the kids and their kids and b) thinking the boxes are generally more tasty anyway!

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

I've come full circle from being a full "Michael Pollan Fan" to eating whole fruits and veggies, whole grains etc. AND loving the ease and convenience of frozen veggies, pre-made pancake mix, and my COSTCO sized bag of peanut m and m's in the freezer (the freezer gives them an extra satisfying crunch!). For me, it's both/and. I've found somewhat of a balance, and while I'm not great at it, I'm at least on the journey.

Side note- I'm thinking of subscribing, and trying it out for a month first. Do I get access to back issues at all? I'm interested in some articles you wrote earlier this month... Keep up the wonderful work Virginia!

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Honestly, I feel like so much diet food *is* processed food. That said, BAKED CHEETOS.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

S’mores! I went camping with my family last weekend and on our last night I made myself a s‘more. For years I have denied myself s’mores while camping, but doing the work of intuitive eating and discarding diet culture I thought I’d give it a try. It was so delightful in every way. I can’t wait to go camping again and try out giving myself free access to s’mores the entire trip!

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Although it's advice that I first read in the 1980s, in Fat is a Feminist Issue, it's taken me until now to stock my house with lots of snacks and sweets. I have a candy jar, big storage bins full of sweet and salty snacks, usually dark chocolate almond bark in the fridge. This works for my kid and me -- we have the assurance that we can eat what we want, when we want to eat it.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

All of them. Seriously. I always have chips and candy in my house. It's the most radical thing for me now. I let my kid make a marshmallow and sour patch kids snack bowl yesterday. I don't like cooking so when I do it's invariably from something frozen (frozen veggies and fruits, frozen protein, etc.). For actual health reasons, my husband and I have to incorporate certain foods that otherwise I'd not give a wit about but other than that? No more making food the enemy.

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Jul 24, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Just wanted to say that this thread convinced me to subscribe. What a bunch of cool, hilarious, supportive people! See you all next week.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

I will say, my kids both have ASD and are extremely picky eaters, so that’s really helpful to me in terms of thinking of all food as equal. I struggled a bit when all my son would eat was brownie Z-Bars, but I didn’t want to build an anxiety around it so we just keep them available. Some days he has four bars and nothing else, some days he has none and eats a stalk of celery with peanut butter and a pint of halved raw cherry tomatoes two at a time. He’s gonna eat (or not eat) what he wants, and nothing I do is going to make a meaningful difference. I have to let go of my own food issues to not pass them on. (Which everyone here knows. ha)

For myself, I’ve accepted processed breakfast foods. Cereal, those little Belvita breakfast cookies, yogurt with little mix-ins. I struggle with breakfast in terms of time and wanting to eat, so something palatable that I can eat quickly and also enjoy is huge. Enjoying what you eat makes it easier to eat, who knew?

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Definitely still early on the food reclaiming and food neutrality adventure, but WHEW, Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles chips. I can't wait for the day those are guilt-free.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

American Cheese, it’s gold, man! There’s nothing like it in a cheese omelet or a grilled cheese - ooey, gooey, good! (And yeah, if you asked me a year ago, I would have said it was “poison.”

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

American cheese--the Land o' Lakes block from the deli. I used to eat American cheese on saltines as a kid, and thought it was the greatest thing ever. About a year ago I bought some American for the first time in a looong time and redid the childhood snack. It's not quite as transcendent as I remembered, but it sure is comforting.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Foods available in my house that adults and/or kids (ages 6 & 8) eat but you would not have seen here five years ago: Eggos, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, cheez-its, cheetos, frozen french fries, bagel bites, nutrigrain bars, cup o'noodles, kraft mac & cheese, that kraft parmesan cheese knockoff in the green can, and I am sure there are more.

Here's the thing--none of us go for these foods all the time and open packages have been known to get stale just because no one chooses them and all options are open. When I never bought cheez-its, I couldn't "trust" myself with them and now they are always here and I have some when I feel like it but I legit just don't feel like it that much because I'm busy eating some other kind of cracker with cheese on it.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Wheat thins! Gave them up when I was following strict rules for “health” (actually dieting). Now I eat some most days with cheese and they are perfect. My toddler actually doesn’t even like them.

One food I’m working on is little debbies. My mind sees them as the worst for some reason and I won’t give them to my kiddo either (I give him lots of different foods). For some reason they are a different type of food to me??

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Ritz crackers... I love them, my kids love them, but I still have a hard time bringing them into my house because I just feel like they're so nutritionally empty, I guess? Sigh.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

When I first started my anti-diet journey there were so many! The main ones were chips and french onion dip, Welch's gummies, pop-tarts, "kid's" cereal, and slice/bake chocolate chip cookies. Also Taco Bell.

Stream of consciousness writing and journaling in general really helped me to work through any guilt I had with eating the foods I wanted.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Oreo soup! I used to break a bunch of oreos up into 3-4 pieces and put them in milk and eat them like cereal. I still enjoy oreos happily now but haven't done it this way since I was a kid, so am going to push myself to do it soon! <3

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Kraft mac & cheese - I like to add garlic powder & bacon. So good!

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Ok, my favorite food snack (as a very young kid) was Bugels and cheese. My mom would cut up some Colby cheese into small pieces and I’d put a piece inside of each Bugel and joyfully eat. I’d love to eat that snack again, I don’t know if Bugels even exist! I think about this snack every time I listen to Julia Turshen’s awesome podcast where she asks her guests, “what was your favorite thing to eat growing-up?”. Bugels & Cheese!!!

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Animal crackers used to be one of my main binge foods in college. I'd get them from the vending machines and use them to dull my inadequacies and I loved the gummy residue around my teeth gave me something to work on. Now we have a gigantic tub of them in the basement that we never dip into for some reason (I think because it doesn't come in pre packaged bags, so, forget it.) The one time we dug into them was a few weeks ago when we had to go into the basement when the tornado sirens were going off and we were all amped up and they were delicious.

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Jul 24, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Fruit snacks! These may have been my two year olds first “two word” phrases and he chose wisely I’d say. They are so good, and I love having them in our home and enjoying them with my kids.

I also would never envisioned celebrating this before reading your work Virginia, so thanks for all you do. I am a newb but I am getting the hang of it!

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Jul 24, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

I recently gave myself permission to buy the store-made chocolate chip cookies at Costco and I’m so glad I did. They are so delicious and satisfying, and scratch the same itch as homemade cookies without having to turn the oven on.

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Jul 23, 2021Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Microwaved popcorn that isn't mostly plain. When I dieted, I would buy the Orville Redenbacher stuff that's barely flavored, almost no butter or anything to make it taste, you know, good. I don't eat it that often because it gives me some digestive trouble, but now I buy the butter kind because it's what I really love and what I crave when I want popcorn. (Movie theater popcorn is my favorite thing, when I'm actually going to movie theaters!)

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Morning Star veggie sausage! I grew up mostly vegetarian and this was a weekend breakfast staple and god I love it. I don’t love a lot of fake meat (oddly most of it is TOO meaty) but Morning Star products have a flavor profile that is baked into my DNA.

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What I find so interesting about this whole thing is I definitely learned / hear a lot about processed foods being bad but (and you talk about this, Virginia) there is just this whole new wave of packaging/marketing about "better" (read: more expensive, "organic" sometimes meaningless other labels) processed foods.. like, Annie's cheddar bunnies instead of Goldfish, Annie's mac n cheese instead of Kraft, Kashi cereal bars instead of NutriGrain bars, Kind choc chip bars instead of Chewy, etc etc etc... some of it has some value like I do prefer things that are full fat and have sugar instead of fat free and sugar free/aspartame loaded, because I do think it's healthier for my toddler to have "real" ingredients but I just get freaked out by all the chemicals ... anyway, our house is LOADED with processed foods and we usually have both the more expensive versions and the less expensive versions because we dont' consistently shop at any one store so when I go to Whole Foods we get the Annie's products and when I go to Giant we get the classics ;) so to speak.

I think I'm of the millenial crew that used processed foods to diet.. like my friend ONLY ate gummy candy for like, a month, as her diet... then she only ate tastee de light for a month on another diet, then JUST peanut butter but the Skippy light peanut butter .. so I think my relationship with processed foods is unhealthy in that often I'd have processed foods to replace meals (never as extreme as that friend but I'd have a bag of Doritoes instead of dinner in law school, for example) so for me I'm working on finding the healthy balance between how and when to eat processed foods as part of my intuitive eating journey.

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A part of me believes that processed food has always been a part of my life - I mean, bread, pasta, dairy, all are processed, and a belief that I have had ultra-processed foods in my life, meaning baked goods, chips, ice cream, snack foods, puddings, etc., in addition to foods that nourish my body to reduce disease risk, etc. Yet, it's the "belief" those need to be limited that I'm losing. Yay!

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I give my four year old all the snacks that weren't allowed in my house in the 90's. Goldfish, frozen chicken nuggets (thawed, of course), cheetos etc. It continues to be strange to have these things in my house because they scream no! to me. Also, Friday donuts have become a ritual for us. I can remember as a kid thinking donuts were the shit. I could eat an entire box then and now. I'm still working on giving myself permission to eat one. It's also hard as hell to find the cut off point for her when I know she could possibly make herself sick or become a crazy sugar-crazed toddler if she eats a few. It feels really good to see her enjoy these foods guilt free.

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I have been on a chipotle obsession for months now. I get the burrito bowl with extra steak and spicy salsa with a lot of chips. I have been feeling guilty about it, not because of the food, but because of the expense. It’s like multiple times a week. 😬 But it’s definitely my comfort food. I call it my emotional support chipotle.

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I’ve loved canned corned beef hash since I was a kid. My parents served everything at home and we had a very diverse mix of foods. My dad was a great cook and loved hash, too, but he would make the “real stuff” out of leftover corned beef, with fresh potatoes. I’d be like, “Cool. Uhh, can I get that can of Prudence, though?” Which he was fine with. I still buy canned hash and eat it if it’s something I want to have. It’s a very shamed food, but I don’t buy into food having good/bad labels anymore. That has helped a lot in my recovery. It’s still hard, though, to listen to the judgments others make about how simply liking the taste of a certain food reflects on an individual’s sophistication or “palette.” 🙄

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Jan 13, 2023·edited Jan 13, 2023

I was just talking with my friend last night about the joys of those processed snacks invented in the first half of the 20th century, back when we were learning how to mass produce foods and use all these new technologies. It's interesting to think how processed foods used to be seen as very "wave of the future" in contrast to how they are viewed today. Shouldn't it be exciting that we have all these ways of feeding more people more easily and affordably? And making sweets accessible which was not always the case for a large chunk of history!

I grew up with a mom who loved to try new foods and gimmicky limited edition snacks and flavors, and this love has been passed down to me. I seem to really enjoy all the stuff that other people hate, like candy corn, Necco Wafers, and Tootsie Rolls. I bought like 5 types of Moon Pies in Nashville last year, which has to be the most oldey-time snack ever, and I concluded that the vanilla reigns supreme. Also, when I studied abroad for a semester in college, the things I found myself craving were very American processed foods, particularly Bisquik pancakes, Reese's everything, and seasonal stuff that normally would have been available in the spring like Conversation Hearts and Girl Scout cookies.

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