my Nachos are not junk food

[resetusername]

So yesterday I was talking to another mum, was saying what we were having for dinner and explained all the ingredients in my nachos and she replied "wow, you hit the junk food hard on a saturday night, I couldn't do that"

I thought my nachos were relatively healthy.

They contain:

Corn tortillas (just made of corn, salt and sunflower oil - no nasties and the corn counts as 1 of 5 a day) a great source of carbs
Fresh guacamole (avacadoes , lemon juice, coriander, garlic) 3 of your 5
Fresh salsa (tomatoes, onion and vinegar) 2 of 5 a day
Full fat sour creme and cheese, only a small amount but a great source of vitamin d, calcium and protein.

That's not junk right?

[FindoGask]

People talk so much shit on these threads. Tortillas have plenty of "nutritional value". Look up "nutrient" in the dictionary. Carbs are nutrients, and a good source of energy, being essentially long chains of glucose, the body's go-to fuel supply. Perhaps you mean that they don't have many vitamins - that may be true, but there are plenty of vitamins in the other components of the meal: namely the avocado, tomato, lime juice, and sour cream. The avocado and sour cream will also provide plenty of fatty acids - useful for cell signalling, plasma membranes, as well as being another important energy supply.

[fredfredgeorgejnr]

NeedsAsockamnesty same reason potatoes aren't...

"5-a-day" is really about encouraging you to eat non-high carb and processed foods, corn tortillas fall foul of both the carb and processed part.

They're not a bad food though, lots of much needed carbs - so unless you're sedentary, very important!

[LaurieMarlow]

It's like AIBU can't function with at least one of these threads on the go. I'm imagining all these passive aggressive food wars being fought across the country.

OP, don't worry about it because if MN has taught me anything it's that one man's junk food is another man's super healthy meal. As to who's right, well there are too many complex variables to make an informed decision without sending out an army of nutritionists to test it out.

For what it's worth, your nachos sound delicious, the only thing I'd say is that they're more like 1 of your five a day than 6 that you're claiming here. why am I even getting sucked into this debate, it's pointless, interpret the 5 a day rule however you damn please

[lljkk]

I sometimes mull over what it's like to eat a diet truly low in processed food. I think I'd feel suffocated.

No bread, no homogenised milk, no humus, no white rice, no pasta, no yogurt, no burgers, no biscuits, no white flour, No ruddy tortillas - for a start.

[Nomama]

Oh I don't know. We eat very low processed - we batch make and make from scratch a lot. I eat almost all of those things, correction, ALL of those things.

OK, I make about 1/3 of bread, all burgers, 50% of biscuits. But I buy some processed foods, like the pasta and rice on a very regular basis.

I'm doing it again, aren't I...being Mrs 5 Day Chicken. Sorry

[fredfredgeorgejnr]

Nomama but they're all processed - it's not very different if it's you making the yogurt, grinding the flour, grinding the meat.

To make biscuits - I imagine you buy flour and butter - you don't buy milk and unhusked wheat and process it?

There's different degrees of processing of course. Lots of processing improves the nutrition of food (yogurt, wheat) or even turns the poisonous into edible (kidney beans) others remove nutrition.

There really is little point nutritionally in going to the trouble of making your own hummus, pasta, yogurt etc. The result of processing is no different to a factory processing it. Others often depend on where you start. A burger made from nothing but minced sirloin, an egg and a bit of mustard will be different to one made of minced skirt with added fat and rusk. But you can buy the nice burger too.

This is the real problem with nutrition, no-one really agrees on the terms, and of course there's no absolute knowledge of what is healthy, and in any case it will depend on the individual and even the current bacteria inhabiting their gut.

Don't worry about what you eat too much, move LOTS!

[FindoGask]

Even if you make all your meals from scratch, including milling your own flour, I can't believe you don't eat much pre-processed food. Any food that has been altered from its natural state in any way, is processed food. Flour is processed. Olive oil is processed. Anything other than raw milk from the cow's teat, is processed.

[FindoGask]

ha, or what fred said!

[Nomama]

I know, fredfred, that's why I am not bothered about buying 'ready mades' every now and then!

I make burgers cos our local butcher does a really good deal on 'mixed mince' and we like the burgers it makes.

I batch cook because for about 10 years we lived very frugally, GYO, garden gate sales and bartering for much of our food. I love cooking, using little known cheap ingredients and saving money whilst eating very well.

(And I am a nutritionist and exercise psychologist, I do volunteer work with NHS dietiticans)

[Nomama]

Oh! I got judged whilst typing did I?

Fair enough!

[lljkk]

these discussions lose perspective about what is junk food.
total disconnect between what some MNers say they eat and how most the rest of the country eat.
Some kinds of processed food that cause problems in modern diet, like:

Soft white bread, biscuits, crisps, Coca Cola, Swiss Rolls, lager, chips in hydrog. fat, peanut butter dosed in sugar, kebabs swimming in mayo, I understand some umbrage when those are Big part of the daily diet (Big portion = 200 calories plus of each item).

Whereas, Flapping about humus as a Big Bad processed food is just silly.

[FindoGask]

I'm not judging you, Nomama - I have no opinion on your diet. I was just talking about processed food as a general concept.

[Siennasun]

Foods I have seen described on mn as junk (aside from nachos of course) include: baked beans, fish fingers, fruit juice + smoothies, potatoes, sweet corn, frozen vegetables.
Pretty much anything served as school hot dinners is also unfit for human consumption.

[Nomama]

ha or what fred said!

Felt a bit judgey when I read it. As did "I can't believe you don't eat much processed food".

But as I don't eat foods that are more than lightly processed, like flour, milk, butter and other essential staples, most of which don't have high levels of additives, or many food miles given where I live and shop, I know I eat far less than the average household. Not for any reason of snobbery or overt health reasons, I just really like cooking and baking, as does DH.

Ah! I forgot chocolate! And coffee! So I am guilty after all!

[FindoGask]

Nomama, I was laughing because I basically repeated fred's point, but nowhere near as well, not at you. I don't attach value judgements to the term 'processed food', that's kind of my whole point in threads like these. I'm interested in food and health too (I study cell biology), and I think that generally we've become too neurotically obsessed with nutrition whilst also (generally speaking!) not understanding much about it.

[Nomama]

Thank god for that! I hate the food police. Maybe even more, I hate misreading 'tone of voice' on threads!

[lottiegarbanzo]

Tortillas are round flat breads, containing only a tiny bit of oil and salt. OP said tortillas, NOT tortilla chips!

Tortilla chips are crisps made out of deep fried tortilla, then salted.

You may disagree about the definition, or your experience, of nachos but OP was not talking about eating any sort of crisps, rather, bread.

[Mintyy]

Interesting that you can be so confident about that lottie, as op has not returned to the thread since her op .

I strongly suspect she meant tortilla chips in the context of her meal.

But ... we'll never know eh?

[Aethelfleda]

wow, I want your nachos mintyy! They sound lush, and not at all junky...
But some people are funny about crisp type things as part of a meal.
so YANBU. most definitely not.

[Aethelfleda]

oops, sorry I thought it was your thread mintyy, misread the last poster as the threat author.

I'm sure you make FAB nachos too, though.....

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Who gives a shit? It's one meal out of thousands you'll eat in your life. Enjoy it!

[MaidOfStars]

I once made nachos out of toasted tortilla. It was shit.

This is why I'm sure the OP was talking about tortila chips.

[HoundoftheBaskervilles]

Argh - I go out & the thread goes BAM.

I wrote a massive post TWICE about food & how it's become political & partisan tool, I'm not sure if I can do it again.

HOWEVER (I will try to precis), food has become a talisman, a fucking purist tool for eternal life. If 'we' can be purist about food, if we eat no shite, we'll live forever, the ignorant & the poor? Fuck them. Because they ain't us. We are Eternal, we are pure, we do not sully our temples.

Taste? Fuck that shit. Amateurs.

[Dakiara]

We have it as a meal too. We get around three to four of our five a day from it when we have it. Guacamole and tomato salsa (both made with plenty of fresh coriander), or tomato salsa with mango salsa is also great (onion, fresh coriander, lots of chilli). The melted cheese on basic tortilla chips is a wee bit high in fat if I'm honest, but we also pair it with a half fat crème fraiche. Intrigued by the refried beans though - anyone got a good recipe? :-)