To be sick of the food Gestapo on here?

[MaddyHatter]

Honestly, the amount of declarations about what is healthy and unhealthy.. its ridiculous.

if you listened to everyone on here we'd all have to be vegans and living off sucking water through a celery stick.

Just shut up. If you honestly think food like Sausages, Mashed Potato, Tomato Soup, bread, cheese, milk and most fruit are unhealthy, the you're teaching your kids into eating disorders.

I want to know how to make quinoa into a snackable food?

Same as cous cous and stuff. It's like Pot Noodle for hipsters, innit.

.

I once saw someone say that peas are 'high-carb'...

I have no sense of humour and I'm going to prove it by answering a rhetorical question!

You can't make ordinary quinoa into a snackable food, because it takes 20 minutes to cook. That's not a snack. That's like calling easy-cook rice a snack.

If you want to snack on quinoa, you have to buy the microwavable sachets by Merchant Gourmet, and honestly? They seem too expensive to snack on. Get some Asda smartprice tortilla chips instead.

I am eating peanut M&Ms.

actually someone on the sausages thread said that peanut M&Ms were as good nutritionally as the sausages/mash/beans.

Which is exactly what drives me nuts about the attitudes to food on MN - people completely discount everything except nutrition when talking about food. A child sitting at a table with his family, all eating potatoes, beans and sausages is having a meal. A convivial experience involving different textures, tastes, chat, practicing manners etc. someone having a packet of peanut m&ms is probably having a lovely solitary snack while reading/watching tv etc. Nutrition is only one aspect of why we eat.

Food in the 21st century is what religion was in the 15th century - raging competition between opposing ideologies, a strong belief that one way is right and everything else is wrong, and a strong undercurrent of "if it is unpleasant and not what you really want then it must be good for you"

Please stop talking about keenwah. It reminds me of the time I met my sister in a health food cafe with DS when he was a baby.

My sister went up to the counter to get us a selection of salads. DS got a bit angsty because she was out of view so I jiggled him about a bit. Two very nice but over enthusiastic hippy people tried to stop him crying. He was spooked and shoved both his hands down my top shouting 'Wah. Mummy. Boobies'. He pulled my top down and my boobs fell out. Of course my sister was ever so helpful and pissed herself laughing. And then I had to tuck in my boobs and eat keenwah .

I've never even seen mung beans.

There's no hope for my child!

You all need to read this story. Need. It's a darkly comic short story on health food promotion, and it is wickedly cutting and to-the-point. It applies very well today, but it was actually written before the first world war. www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/FilStu.shtml

biwi you've read books about nutrition you can't give nutritional advice even nutritionists can't.

I've read lots of books about surgeries although I'm a mess student I wouldn't give anyone advice on performing surgery

Aren't beansprouts the sprouts of mung beans? I always thought so. So if you've had Chinese takeaway with bean sprouts, or bought them yourself for a stir fry, then you've had mung beans.

Tara - I LOVE Saki! (Hector Hugh Munro) I have a whole book of his collected short stories, man, he was a sicko though! One of his longer ones was about how the Germans won the war and took over Britain... eek!

Bibbity where did you get your chips cooked in beef dripping from? I don't like chips really (not a in a smug way I'm a junk food addict,just not chips) but when we go on holiday there is a chippy in Hayle and their chips are amazing .... I found out this year they are cooked in dripping, that's why! Sooooo good

I have to say I do have quinoa in the cupboard, I use it in salads for work , it's ok but sometimes I don't get the timings right and it gets a bit stodgy, I just bung a bit of salad cream over it then all is fine.

I've cooked quinoa twice at home. It was alright but nothing to write home about.

BUT

M&S do a lovely quinoa superfoods salad, with nuts and green stuff and a lovely dressing. Bloody lovely.

I'm fucking hilarious

Obsession unhealthy, true. Everything in moderation - sensible. BUT there are an awful lot of people who really are feeding their DC crap and although it might not be nice to say it , those kids will suffer for it when they are older.

(I have several problems that are directly connected with a diet of processed food in childhood. Poor teeth to weight issues and bone problems)

Education is important among other things. I didn't know about fruit or milk sugars harming teeth and my DD's tooth enamel has been weakened though late night drinks. Five years later I knew more and was more careful with my DS

I have learnt some good stuff on here and surely we owe it to lids to do what we can to improve life for them.

I like quinoa but I can't eat it! It gives me violent stomach pains. Apparently it can do that to anyone if it's not washed very thoroughly. But it still does it to me.

M&S do a lovely quinoa superfoods salad, with nuts and green stuff and a lovely dressing

Yes!, I've tried to recreate it but I'm not getting there.

Obsession unhealthy, true. Everything in moderation - sensible. BUT there are an awful lot of people who really are feeding their DC crap and although it might not be nice to say it , those kids will suffer for it when they are older. I agree - health problems from a poor diet in childhood, setting up the habits for a poor diet for life, do not necessarily appear immediately. These threads always go the same way - some people like to boast about how shit their diet is and how they have managed to dodge the bullet, while others get all outraged about the impact an awful diet has on the NHS. I hope the silent majority really is eating a healthy diet of everything in moderation but the obesity rates in the UK suggest they aren't.

I really like quinoa, it's one of my comfort foods. DM is a bit of a hippy so we had it as children even before it became trendy.

Big bowl of quinoa, chopped fried aubergine chunks, loads of grated cheddar on top was my favourite dinner when I came home starving from dance/gymnastics.

People can be so boring about food. Why not leave people alone and trust that without people sticking their beaks into other food habits, they'll get along just fine. If I listened to MN gumpf Id believe there are hordes of fat adults and children waddling everywhere. Anyone who is promoting that as a truth/norm is a born liar. The vast majority of people I come across, walk past in the real world are normal size. Schools are not awash with obese children. & if some people are overweight then so what?

Food gestapo = preachy, tedious & joyless, they never look happy considering they extol the virtues of food monitoring to excess (so why aren't they glowing & full of bounce then?), and they're the worst to have around the dinner table with their waspish selves inevitably steering convo around to food all the time.

I eat a med style diet and watch my carbs, works well for me but Im damned if Im not going to treat myself at times be it chocolate or cake. Sod it. Nobody is getting out of here alive, we could eat the best diet in the world but the world in all its daily pollution in so many ways is still going to interfere with our life quality and aid our demise.

The vast majority of people I come across, walk past in the real world are normal size. Schools are not awash with obese children.

Actually, what we'd consider normal size, because it's becoming our norm, is on the higher end of the normal range.

It's known that the population in general is getting fatter. Children too.

Tara, thanks for the link to the Saki story - I love it!

I genuinely love avocado and quinoa (Fearne Cotton has a great recipe - fried quinoa balls with lemon and parmesan and some other stuff I can't remember. Excellent). Am still a fatty though.

I had one of the super-healthy mothers. The problem with adhering to fashionable advice is that sometimes you find out later that it wasn't great - like the low-fat bandwagon. My mother was one of the carob and aduki bean crew, but she read that sucrose was bad and assumed fructose was better, so she bought and used that instead. Turns out that it wasn't such a good idea.

I love the phrase used by Maudlin upthread of the virtue-mongers - "a feedback loop of lascivious disapproval". Best description ever.

I love the short story thanks.

After a little sneering about Angel Delight on another MN thread today I have admitted that my DCs love Angel Delight. I'm waiting to be arrested right now...