ingredient households & what our snacks say about us | Internet Analysis

TIME STAMPS:
0:00 - were you a snack or ingredient household?
3:39 - shout out to thredUP!
5:38 - is "ingredient household" an American concept?
7:36 - comparing US snack habits to European snacks
9:42 - my audience survey results
10:46 - what about snack households?
12:35 - food deserts and Dollar Stores
14:37 - shaming people for having "bad" food
16:16 - "you should cook from scratch"
19:02 - the politics of home-cooked meals
20:45 - how our upbringing impacts our future habits
21:58 - my personal experience, what kind of household am I?

RESOURCES & REFERENCES:

Tiffany Ferguson (she/her), 27 years old. #internetanalysis #ingredienthousehold #groceryshopping


FTC: This video is sponsored by thredUP. Links with * are affiliate, meaning I am compensated monetarily if you join or make a purchase.

[tiffanyferg]

hello, hope you all enjoy today's episode! I must ask, if you're eating while watching... what are you snacking on??

[heathertleige]

Growing up I’ve realised how important the concept of being “time poor” is. Getting fast food on a Thursday night meant my mum had time to take us to a local park & ensure we got exercise and time together. Ready made meals meant my siblings and I could make frozen lasagne/pasta and still have time to do our homework and chores when our parents weren’t home because they worked long hours.

[sofiacummings]

Still can't get over the fact that my mom called me at college last semester and triumphantly announced that we were no longer an ingredient household as she had just bought a bag of popcorn for the pantry

[harfir]

As a European, learning about food deserts in the US made a lot of pieces fall into place. Like for me one of the cheapest and easiest ways to fill my tummy is beans, carrots and apples. I had no idea that would be luxurious or even impossible to get, for some ppl.

[mabbidy]

I grew up in an ingredient household as a kid, which led to me eating snacks like a crazy person whenever I went to sleepovers, and me being an adult with my own home that has a really hard time with impulse control. Whenever we did have snacks, we knew my dad would eat all of it that day so we were basically encouraged to eat it all that day before my dad did. It was terrible

[maeshin]

what i'm thankful for in the philippines is what we call "karenderya". it's a small market or roadside cafe or food stall restaurant. it has affordable home-cooked meals that helps a lot of students and office workers who don't have the luxury to prepare food from scratch. also it's a community because you see almost the same people everyday so you actually befriend the customers even the owners haha

[bridgetb]

My mom was always going between being on and off a diet, so we would have periods of being both types. It created this mentality of “get it while you can” that I still have lots of trouble with. I have to constantly reassure myself that I can get more if I need to, and that nobody is going to take it away.

[trinity]

Another important point: I have depression and often struggle to make food. Sometimes microwaving something is all I can do, and even that comes with dishes to wash. At my lowest, I have snacks or nothing

[korsvisscher]

As a European (Dutch), I think that the notion of having some amount of ingredients in house to make food is very much the norm. One thing I am stuck on (so far half way thorugh the video) is the term snack. I feel like a distinction between snack and treat might be helpful: do you eat it to fill up between meals (a tussendoortje or inbetweeny as we call it) or to hit a craving. Because bread/tortillas/fruit would be the former, while chocolate, candy or small pretzels would be the latter. And part of the distinction between Europe (or at least the Netherlands) and the US might be in which category different snacks fall. Because I don't think many people will eat chips to fill up here, you eat it as a treat. Except for like highschoolers, but there is something a little transgrassive in that.

Im not sure Im making sense, and am from a very priviledged background, so maybe this is only true for the wealthy-healthy crossection of the mostly ingedient household

[emilyb]

I really really appreciate you mentioning disabled folks in this! I have periods of time where I’m so dizzy I can’t cook and I have to remind myself that there is no inherent morality in food. Convenience foods are so important for myself and many other disabled folks!

[stacie]

My boyfriend is Korean and to him bread = snack and rice = meal. We had a lengthy convo about this the other weekend because we got subway at around 4pm with plans to eat dinner around 8pm. I ordered a 6in and he got 2 6in specialty sandwiches and scarffed them down. I was shocked because I thought we were going to eat light and he looked at me and said "sandwiches are just snacks" 😳

[hannabor]

As a Polish person, I think a lot of households keep snacks such as cookies or sweets in general if any guests come over. The culture of hospitality is still huge here so from what I've seen sweet snacks are mostly kept for your guests. Salty snacks however are a sort of party snacks. Salted cucumbers are a thing here too and I personally love it.

[magdalenajugo]

as a Polish woman growing up in the 90s - there were only ingredients in my house. A cucumber sprinkled with salt was a snack for me OR apple slices or a tomato and onion sandwich (yum). Lay's paprika flavoured chips were a rare treat.
edit: writing this as I am snacking on a pickle lol

[jinkiisms]

I think it's so interesting how much our infrastructure and zoning affect our diets. It makes sense that Americans and Canadians are more interested in foods that have a longer shelf life, because going to the store more than like, once a week, is really time consuming. Most people have to do upwards of 30 minutes of travel to and from a store (after spending an hour a day or more commuting 🙄), and that's if they have a car. Zoning in America in most places, especially newly developed areas, prevents commercial use from being mixed with residential use (which is almost always single family homes with minimum lot sizes that encourage sprawl). So there aren't corner groceries and specialty food shops mixed into neighbourhoods. Not only does zoning legally segregate people, it forces people to rely on having a car, because we also don't have adequate public transit services that are convenient. So it takes longer to do ANYTHING in the west. We just don't have as much time. Which means we're less likely to cook elaborate or balanced meals. In European countries that have more walkable/bikeable infrastructure and less rigid zoning rules that keep corner stores and neighbourhood groceries away from residential areas, it's much easier to make multiple market trips a week.

[chariiteee]

As an adult who developed disordered eating due to the food habits grown from childhood, your ending thoughts on this topic were healing, and a breath of fresh air :)

[themousoleum]

thank you for being so kind and empathetic about poor households with snacks 🥺 I grew up in poverty (and am _still_ in poverty despite working a "good job" as an adult) and my mom was just so exhausted all the time from taking care of the house, my brother and I, and working off and on that we had a lot of processed snacks to stave off hunger throughout the day. She almost always cooked us a good meal for dinner, but we had to make due with what we had, and I would never fault her for that.

However it has lead to an aversion to snacks as an adult. I just don't buy them because it feels bad when I have HelloFresh so, presumably, fresh food that comes to my apartment every week. It's like, why would you eat this "unhealthy" snack when you have "healthy" food right there?

[UltraViolet]

I lived in an ingredient-only household, and my mum thought it would be good to make me and my sister prepare our own school lunches from the age of 7/8. Spoiler alert. It was not good. I had no idea how to prepare anything (she never taught me, just expected me to figure it out, meanwhile my older sister did at least know how to make a few things), so my usual lunch from when I was 7 was a sandwich with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese, maybe an apple for morning tea and that's all for the day. When my sister told my mum that that's what I was having every day, I got yelled at for making unhealthy food.
Then when I was 8-9, I would usually take nothing except an apple because I had no idea what else to make and I didn't want to get in trouble for making a bad unhealthy sandwhich. I got yelled at for that as well. "THE TEACHERS WILL THINK IM A BAD PARENT FOR GIVING YOU NO FOOD" well uhmmmm 🙃

Still to this day I'm a bit jealous of kids that got reliable snacks for their lunches, and got lunch boxes packed for them.

[DiMagnolia]

I’m Mexican American so I see that difference a lot between those cultures, especially now that I’ve permanently settled in Mexico. Though “junk” food is easily accessible and widely consumed in Mexico, meals at home are cooked. In fact, it’s very common for people (usually moms) to go to the market multiple times a week to buy fresh produce. We also have small shops everywhere selling fresh produce, fresh baked bread, fresh made tortillas, etc. If you don’t have time or energy to cook, there’s typically a small restaurant nearby selling tacos and such for usually less than a US dollar each. Meanwhile when I lived in the US, I would go grocery shopping every two weeks or so and have to make that last until my next trip because getting to a supermarket is so inaccessible to me as a disabled person. I relied a lot on frozen foods and pantry items to get me through that because most produce doesn’t last that long. Each system has its pros and cons: I often miss the convenience of just having a hot pocket when I don’t have the capacity to cook, but fresh produce is so much cheaper and high quality here. So I try to meal prep when I have energy or intentionally make too much when I do cook so I can freeze the leftovers for when I’m unable to cook or go out to eat. Thank you for discussing the issue of disability, it is such a big party of the conversation that gets ignored.

[mskleftwich]

I am a bad cook and I struggle with depression and a history of anorexia/bulimia. I finally have given up and just eat Purple Carrot (prepackaged meals mailed to my house). I am lucky that I can afford it. I feel a lot of shame around not cooking my own meals but this finally works for me and I am consistently eating actual meals and not skipping meals all together. Before I would just skip meals and that just starts a mental health downward spiral.

[londonh]

My parents blessed me with learning how to cook since I was in middle school. When I entered college I ended up teaching other students how to cook when some of them (due to lack of teaching/households who refused to teach boys anything “feminine”) said they would burn water. We graduated to broiling steaks in the oven and making ice cream bars. That was the best part of freshman year.