the one where you are what you eat.

Yes­ter­day I watched Dis­patches on Chan­nel 4.  The pro­gram was about what is in your break­fast, but it also went into prod­uct label­ing and how mis­lead­ing they are.  To say that I was shocked by the pro­gram would be an under­state­ment.  As a stay at home mom we live a very 1950’s life, or so I like to think!  I cook all our meals from scratch (or almost from scratch), I clean *cough­bull­shit* and take care of Squidge. Wal works and brings home the bacon.  I would like to say he always  has a freshly laun­dered and iron shirt each morn­ing but that would be a total lie! I’m work­ing out again after 4 yrs and hope­fully set­ting a good exam­ple for Squidge.  I try to make healthy food choices and try to limit the amount of sugar we all con­sume.  I do give Squidge treats but I like to believe that the only sugar she is get­ting is from the choco­late but­ton I’m giv­ing her and not from her Chee­rios! Yes­ter­days pro­gram just brought home to me the need to be vig­i­lant.  I don’t want to set Squidge up to make bad choices. We eat a lot of fruit and veg and I want to keep it that way.  I think the part of the pro­gram that con­cerned me the most was the Heart UK label­ing and the Omega 3 label­ing.  I didn’t know that the omega 3 in mar­garine is from plants and not fish.  Did you know that it is only Omega 3 from fish that is ben­e­fi­cial to your brain?!?!  Are you swayed by the Omega 3 label on the pack­age when you pur­chase your mar­garine?  We’re a split fam­ily here, I use but­ter and Wal uses mar­garine as he feels it is bet­ter than but­ter.  I have always main­tained that but­ter is a more nat­ural and there­for health­ier option.  After find­ing out that the healthy claims on the pack­ag­ing may or may not be total and com­plete fab­ri­ca­tions, £25k and I can get one of those labels stuck on my fat ass,  I am even more cer­tain of my choice.  I will no longer be buy­ing mar­garine for Wal he’s just going to have to suck it up and use butter!

Now let me switch to cakes.  I was born and raised in the US.  I think I men­tioned before that I never baked a cake from scratch until I moved here.  I LOVED Betty Crocker and  didn’t know what to do when I moved here.  Bak­ing here is soo dif­fer­ent, every­thing needs to be weighed on a scale and I had never done that before.  In the US but­ter comes in sticks and recipes that use but­ter use sticks not grams.  I didn’t know how many grams in a stick and I had to turn to the inter­webz for help.  Imag­ine my sur­prise and joy when I went into a Wait­rose and found Betty Crocker on the shelves!  Oh i could go back to adding oil and an egg and call­ing it home­made!  I didn’t buy any BC mix as I didn’t need any, but let me tell you the first time I did I high­tailed it back to Wait­rose and clutched my box of cake mix lov­ingly in my arms.  I got home, made my cake and wait­ing impa­tiently for it to bake and cool.  I frosted it with some Betty Crocker frost­ing and took a big fork­ful– nom nom BLECH!!! Oh inter­webz I have been cor­rupted!!  Betty Crocker cake mixes are awful!!  Ooooh the hor­ror!  LOL, I have found that I much pre­fer my from scratch choco­late cake. How could this have hap­pened?!?!?  After 4+ years of liv­ing in a Betty Crock­er­less soci­ety and sur­viv­ing nicely, thank you very much,  I’ve noticed that I can now find Betty Crocker mixes in more and more shops, this makes me sad. I also heard that all you can eat buf­fet restau­rants are tak­ing hold here.  Ooooh of the one thing to be exported from the US to my adopted coun­try why all you can eat buf­fets?!?!  Noth­ing good can come of it.  They’re nasty vile dis­gust­ing plac­ing, troughs to over­feed the masses!

I think that being a SAHM I have more time and free­dom to cook from scratch but also think that with a  lit­tle fore­sight and plan­ning any­one can have a nice home cooked meal.  Spend a few hours and cook and freeze for the com­ing week.  We need to spend a lit­tle less time in from of the tv/computer/xbox and take care of our­selves, the Betty Crock­ers of the world are not going to do it for us. If we don’t the future will not be pretty.