Are You Changing Your Eating Habits?

[Fragile Bird]

We haven't had a good food fight lately, not that I expect any fights to break out here, but what we eat has often made a contentious topic.

McDonalds stock has been suffering as sales have been dropping, and they just announced a turn around plan today. Quality of food and flavour of their food has been under attack, and, of course, sales of soft drinks have slowed. Coca-Cola has suffered as well. Among other things, McDonalds is going to remove GMO foods, go to suppliers who don't use antibiotics, eliminate some sandwiches and offer breakfast all day.

A&W has guaranteed their beef, chicken and eggs have been raised without antibiotics, at least in Canada. Is it the same in the US as well? Perhaps McDonalds is too late in the game?

And, of course, as another thread has discussed, Pepsi is eliminating aspartame from Diet Pepsi in the USA.

These moves are not being made in a vacuum, they're a response to market demand. Have your food habits been changing?

I've been buying more grass-fed beef and organic chicken. After reading Consumer Reports' story last year about very serious levels of bacteria on chicken and other poultry sold in grocery stores, I decided to try organic chicken. I was shocked to find out how much better it tasted, it brought back childhood memories of how chicken once tasted. But, worse, sort of, I also discovered the regular chicken I bought afterwards was almost tasteless in comparison.

What changes, if any, have you made?

[zelticgar]

trying to cut out red meat and pork as much as possible. I'm almost 100 percent chicken/turkey and fish.

[lessthanluke]

I can't afford grass fed/organic stuff so nope.

[Iskaral Pust]

Definitely no sodas and very rarely any fast food. My son occasionally asks for McDonalds for a treat and he gets it maybe once or twice a year. I don't know why he likes it. I happily take him out for a much higher quality burger at Epic (still fast food) or Burger Bistro, but McDonalds exerts some fascination. We get Chipotle once a month or so, which is our biggest fast food indulgence.

We have the luxury of eating high quality foods. Whole Foods is great: the food tastes so much better (especially the meat), it's healthier and it costs only slightly more than far lower quality food at any generic grocery store.

We've also reduced our usage of restaurant delivery -- such a temptation when living in the city -- so we're eating more home-cooked meals these past few months. I'm lucky that my wife is a SAHM and has time for meal preparation. That and reducing carbs in the evening meals are the biggest changes over the past year or so.

We don't drink alcohol or soda. I drink mostly water. My son drinks milk. My wife drinks mostly water or dandelion root tea, with an occasional decaf latte.

[Theda Baratheon]

I want to eventually become vegan but at the very least when I finish University and I am not living with a perpetual sense of doom and anxiety dragging me down with every moment which makes it difficult to even make basic meals I would like to start actually eating like a healthy vegetarian and not the awful slob I am at the moment lolololol :P

[Lily Valley]

I have been reducing my alcohol intake by eating far too much ice cream. As a result I have way fewer hangovers and a LOT more gas.

The doctor insists I come back in for another cholesterol check so this is going to have to stop. I want to try dietary changes before I get on medication. Total cholesterol at 280. Apparently that is not good.

Normally I eat really healthy. Lots of beans and rice, cook with olive oil. Plenty of vegetables and fruits. Been that way for years. I'm planning to add flax seed and a great deal more fiber and see if that helps. If anyone else has suggestions for lowering cholesterol, please feel free to chime in.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Mine have changed last few years. I try to avoid store bought meat. I'm not really strict about it, but for me it's two fold. One, I do legitmately believe grass fed beef tastes better and has a much better texture. And if you go in on half a cow, or a quarter cow, and have the freezer space, you can get a years worth of meat for less than you'd spend at the grocery store. Of course, part of this depends on having the space, having the money up front, and not eating meat every night. I probably eat meat 3 days a week, but when I do it's really delicious. I've noticed I eat a lot more eggs since I started doing this.

Sure I still order a burger out once in awhile, but I'm really lucky to live in an area that has a lot of local farms, and I really don't stray too much from the freezer meat. I usually barter with someone for 50-100lbs of venison a year too, which mostly gets made into chili and frozen, or traded for chicken. A couple of close friends raise meat chickens. Beans are your friend. Especially if you buy them dried, they are cheap as dirt, and the prep isn't so bad once you get used to it and get a routine going. They also freeze, so I make a big batch a couple times a month and freeze them into 3-5 portion size bags that I thaw and then keep in the fridge for sides, breakfast burritos, etc.

I avoid fast food, but yeah I'll get it a couple of times a year in a pinch. My change in diet was two-fold, one was the health angle, being skeptical of some of the pesticides used in factory farming, mostly from working at a garden center for four years and talking to the reps from the product distributors, and seeing what shape the guys that worked at the commercial flower farms were in after 20 years of handling the stuff. This ties in with my inner-tree hugger about land use and conservation so it wasn't a big leap to make. The other reason was (basically the Inverse Fire) watching footage of slaughterhouses and the conditions that animals in the meat and dairy industry live in.

I"m not that strict about it at all, probably won't ever go full vegetarian, but my eating habits have definitely changed. A lot of it's situational too: I live somewhere it's easy to make these changes cheaply because there's a lot of agriculture nearby, and I'm able to barter for a surprising amount of chicken. If I lived in Boston or NYC there's no way I could do this without spending like 50-100% more a year on food. By the same token, I spend way less than most everyone in my family that lives in the same area because I don't buy stupid shit (snack food at the grocery store, name brand stuff, etc). It definitely takes a bigger time investment though, because I have to track shit down (whatever veggies I'm not growing, go pick up chickens and eggs at the farm, waiting for stuff to be on sale and stocking up) instead of just making one stop a week at a supermarket.

It is nice to see people skipping the Mickey D's for better stuff, but I understand that there's a convenience aspect to diet that isn't easy to change. Big Agriculture is definitely trying to cash in on the local/organic movement, which is pretty easy to do if you look at the loopholes in organic labeling. The food desert concept is real. So part of me feels like this is a change for the better, but it's also not available to everyone, and there's definitely a kind of douchebag hipster-yuppie-whole foods- aspect to it too, but if it gets people to think more about what they're eating and what's actually food worth eating, and where it comes from , it can't be a bad thing.

tldr: Yeah, changed them some, I like eating good food, but it's tough to change the culture of mass production, fast food, crazy packaging, and lowest possible price.

[Quorra]

I have been reducing my alcohol intake by eating far too much ice cream. As a result I have way fewer hangovers and a LOT more gas.

The doctor insists I come back in for another cholesterol check so this is going to have to stop. I want to try dietary changes before I get on medication. Total cholesterol at 280. Apparently that is not good.

Normally I eat really healthy. Lots of beans and rice, cook with olive oil. Plenty of vegetables and fruits. Been that way for years. I'm planning to add flax seed and a great deal more fiber and see if that helps. If anyone else has suggestions for lowering cholesterol, please feel free to chime in.

I noticed no mention of meat. Are you vegetarian? If so, was it because of cholesterol?

[Quorra]

I notice more and more people making dietary changes regarding organic food and locally sourced food but I often think it's because of social pressure or they've gathered from various sources that it's the "right" thing to do but they're not really sure why.

[Theda Baratheon]

if social pressure is encouraging people to not eat food from factory farms then bravo social pressure. continue.

[HexMachina]

Kind of this. Meat is something of a luxury these days, so beyond the occasional £1 bacon lardons from ALDI I've been eating a lot more tinned beans/tomatoes and rice. Try to steal tuna every time I go home though. Sausages are usually pretty cheap but they're not worth the havoc they cause trying to defrost half a pack. I buy free range eggs though, and I go through them pretty quickly.

Alcohol aside, I don't drink anything other than tea and water. Mostly tea.

The two things I've cut down most on for health purposes have been lunch/tea beers, and pizza. Coincidentally, also two of my favourite things.

Same. I never ate much meat before uni tbh, but now I eat even less. When I go home I actually find I want meat dishes for a change. Most of my dishes are vegetable based, not least because it's a cheap way of bulking up a plate of food. And what goes better with veg than veg? :p

Most of my 'staples' (I.e. Pasta, coups cous, rice, bread, etc.) are all the very cheap home brand stuff. I'm sure the tinned tomatoes and stuff I buy that are cheap own branded are probably loaded with added sugars and salts and whatever else but meh, don't care. They're cheap....

[Lily Valley]

I noticed no mention of meat. Are you vegetarian? If so, was it because of cholesterol?

I was for 15 years. I eat it now. There's usually meat stock in those beans and sometimes sausage, but it isn't a major part of my diet.

[Larry of the Lawn]

if social pressure is encouraging people to not eat food from factory farms then bravo social pressure. continue.

boom. :agree:

[Quorra]

I was for 15 years. I eat it now. There's usually meat stock in those beans and sometimes sausage, but it isn't a major part of my diet.

What changed to make you start eating it?

[Lily Valley]

What changed to make you start eating it?

I quit eating meat out of nowhere after having a horrific nightmare about what I was eating. I started right after a break-up 15 years later. I don't really know why. One night I put the meat in my mouth. I had been cooking it for my family the previous ten years, so it wasn't like it wasn't around. Now that my son's not home anymore, I rarely buy it except to make stock or if I have company. I always ate fish, so really pescetarian, not totally vegetarian.

[Quorra]

I was a strict vegetarian for 9 years - basically from the time I left my mother's house to go out on my own. It was an act of defiance and of defining my identity. I felt like it somehow made me better than my family, more concerned about health and morality, and more respectful of my body. So silly, such ridiculous arrogance! I would spit out soup if I tasted chicken broth. It really had nothing to do with a sincere concern over the meat industry, although I claimed as much, and claimed it was brutal to eat flesh. Insufferable! Then one day I was like "I'm going to consciously eat fish now, but only certain kinds" and it was the slippiest of slopes from there. I think the next thing I ate off the wagon after some sort of free-range wild caught fish was a BBQ chicken pizza from Pappa Johns, and then venison salami. Naturally!

[sologdin]

am giving up caloric intake in favor of ideotarianism, whereby one subsists on conceptual abstraction alone. it is perfectly ethical on both the production and consumption side, and has the secodary benefit of being easy to budget.

[Larry of the Lawn]

am giving up caloric intake in favor of ideotarianism, whereby one subsists on conceptual abstraction alone. it is perfectly ethical on both the production and consumption side, and has the secodary benefit of being easy to budget.

I'm actually switching over to eating only ideotarianists. No one seems to mind when they go missing, so, ya know, free protein for the win!

[Sci-2]

I've been giving a lot of fake meats a go. I think you need to be really careful with this stuff though if you have any sensitivities (allergies, gout, etc). Read the ingredients, talk to the doc, and so on.

That said I don't really miss real meat that much though I do eat it still. Then I try to go with grass fed, free range stuff.

Haven't gone as far as the bug diet, which some claim is the most environmental option...

ETA: Make sure you have a fully stalked spice cabinet. Eating the fake stuff raw is harder than eating it cooked, where the difference is far less apparent. (Sometimes I like the fake stuff better actually)

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

I've made huge changes, and dragged my family kicking and screaming with me.

The only thing that is now eaten at McD's is breakfast, and that is very rare.

Almost no fast food eaten at all, especially not burgers. (it has been noted that Chipotle's is not fast food :P )

And we eat very few things that are "processed"