I think you're missing the enormous factor of MENTAL LOAD. I 100% agree with your nutrition, flavor, and economic points - and I STILL reach for the blue box at the end of a long day (though I do throw in some extra shredded cheese). I don't have to find a recipe or think about what sounds tasty or fresh or what my children might or might not consent to eat today, even if yesterday they loved it. I just look at the box and do what it says while my children are yelling that they are hungry NOW and I'm trying to get dinner on the table after a long day with no help and also think about baths, laundry, homework, and whatever else needs to get done before we do it all tomorrow. The blue box neatly disposes of the thinking we have to do around dinner - even those of us who like cooking real food need that some days.
I agree with this. Even if you know the recipe for Mac and cheese by heart, it requires more planning. The Kraft can sit in the cabinet and guess what. A little extra butter and dried milk or just water and you don’t have to make sure you have all the ingredients in the house even.
Combined with Emily Bennett's comment below re familiarity and lack of experience/skills, a thousand times Yes in agreement on the mental load barrier.
So much to unpack here. I am a nurse practitioner who works in a hospital caring for acutely ill adults. Boxed Kraft is still absolutely a comfort food from my childhood. As much as I will pick some up now and again, those of us who love to cook need to remember there are those who don’t know how, and/or don’t have the resources to do so. They eat how they grew up eating or how they can afford to eat. I had a long conversation with a single woman in her 60s who has cancer and who’s doctor told her to lose weight. He is rightfully (surprisingly) teaching less processed, food substitution, etc but she admitted how she has no idea how to cook and is appalled when things don’t taste good and she then wastes food and money. How do we overcome that hurdle? We can prove economics and nutrition by numbers all we want but when it comes down to that 60ish single woman on a fixed income standing in a store, overwhelmed by what she should buy because she doesn’t have the proper equipment or basic spices——-she is going to go with what she knows. And I will, unfortunately, continue to have job security.
I don 't even like Mac and cheese and didn't eat it as a kid or now. But there is a convenience factor, too, besides the cost and the supposed "comfort". If you can picture a single mother coming home from work (maybe even two jobs, maybe using public transportation), stopping at the grocery and then returning home to prepare something from scratch...and then having the energy to care about the nutritional value or whether it includes fake ingredients. Even if it is just buying the extra cheese ( wouldn't this type of consumer likely purchase already shredded cheese?), the preparation at the end of a long day could seem overwhelming. And I'm a foodie who took 10 years of cooking classes and rarely eats processed food. You really have to factor in the time and energy to cook from scratch.
Hi Everyone. Love this discussion for many reasons, not the least of which is that it reminds of my days as a student at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health based in NY City. It was started and run by Anne Marie Colbin.She passed away in 2016. But she was an amazing woman.
There is so much that I can say about her passion and her teachings. While it is difficult to condense her lessons, perhaps the bottom line is this: she described key criteria for food selection in order to help people make informed choices Her list included the following: food should be real, whole, local, seasonal and organic whenever possible. And there's more to be found on-line. But I say all this because, to me Mark, Kerri, et al, convey much the same message.
So, I just want to say, yet again to Mark and team, thank you again for sharing your thoughts and your wisdom with the world. What would we do without you?
Wowie! Thank you, Bobbie Rich! Great story about Anne Marie Colbin. Speaking on behalf of our team let me express appreciation for our Bittman Project community for the ability to speak candidly and kindly so we can have all sorts of interesting conversations.
Keri, you hit the nail on the head for a whole supermarket's worth of food. Why is organic milk (which is probably healthier) so much more expensive than non-organic? Why are the jellies and jams made without processed sugar so much more expensive than the sugary ones? How can it be that the packaged breads that are nutritionally dense be so much more costly than wonder bread?
I don't believe that the appeal of the Kraft box is the comfort or the nostalgia. I think it's the dollar-a-box.
Homemade is definitely better, but I do understand the appeal of the box. Back in my college days, when store brand mac n cheese boxes were 10 for a dollar, we ate lots of it. The issue of cost is so important for so many. Think of how much a hungry teenager can eat, no doubt easily downing a full box. Healthy? No. Cheap? Yes.
I grew up on Kraft macaroni and cheese. Not the powdered stuff but the “fancy” package of goo you squeezed into the pasta. It was only barely considered actual food vs the Velveeta which is actually classified by the food bank as not having enough nutritional value to be considered food to feed children.
Anyway. While Kraft mac and cheese is marketed as comfort food, it’s really about convenience. Even if a good scratch mac and cheese takes nominally the same amount of time, it’s still about the ease of not having to think about how to make it. I know I was fed this as a child because it was marketed to my single mom as something she could make without having to think about it, at 6:15 pm after picking me up from day care.
My 7 year old has yet to taste Kraft. I waited until she was 5 to serve her Annie’s and we only have it as an afternoon snack treat. It’s not dinner. I equate it to cupcakes. She likes savory rather than sweet. And I load it with peas or corn or cherry tomatoes.
But I feel bad about it whenever I do succumb to the box.
Good Morning to All. Pacific Time for me so just catching up with your conversation. Thank you so much for the discussion. I'll be checking in all day, starting with some responses to what's here so far.
ears ago when I was a freelancer making $7,000 a year, I learned to eat healthy by just buying vegetables in season, throwing them in a casserole dish with a little oil and roasting them, and then mixing them into pasta. Breakfasts were often oatmeal from the big Quaker jar or eggs, often as omelets with the leftover vegetables and some cheese. And I still do these things. All of it is fast, cheap and healthy. But Americans especially have been brainwashed into thinking "convenient" comes from a box or one-serving container!
Remember taking home economics in school? Who decided that wasn't necessary any more? We learned basic cooking skills, how to read a food label, budgeting and how to sew a button on a shirt. These are fundamental skills for any adult let alone a parent.
I agree that home economics should still be taught in schools. Along with how to budget, basic nutrition, and cooking, fixing some basic things around the house. I luckily had the privilege of being home a lot with my kids to teach them some of those things. But not everyone does!
My Mom was a Home Ec teacher in Jr. High in the early 70s, right before electives in CA education got chopped. (She pivoted to Language Arts and later Computer Science.) So I do count myself among the very fortunate to learn to cook at an early age. That said, we still occasionally had Hamburger Helper, Swanson's TV dinners, and boxed Mac n Cheese--mostly when my folks went out and before I started preparing meals to help my working Mom keep it together. For us pacakged food felt like treats.
I was just having this conversation with my friend who has a client who’s college major was home economics. Why can’t we take home economics anymore? Honestly I would take that class now, at 46, and I’m certain I would learn something.
Homemade Mac and Cheese and Box Mac and Cheese are different beasts. Like a homemade cake vs a mix. But in different times and budgets and tastes we gravitate to one or the other. I feel we live right now in a time where we can’t judge because like you said, someone relies on the thrift of the box. It’s food. And thank you for this discussion so we can share our perspectives.
Thank you for sharing, Anne. Totally agreed: no judgement. That's why the conundrum. There are so many reasons to encourage more home cooking and less processed food and just as many reasons why it's so challenging.
I was just about to say it’s nourishing for the soul....there’s something to be said about the nostalgic element of Kraft...every time I eat it it brings me back to when we had babysitters over summer and that’s what they’d make us....
Kraft or Velveeta? I’m choosing Kraft every time, I would take a bath in the powdered cheese .
Kraft’s Mac and cheese flavour is unique - it has nothing to do with a mac and cheese made with “real” cheese. And that is it’s success - easy to make, orange, tangy, with a unique flavour that is hard to replicate at home from scratch. It is what McDonalds is to a home made burger. A burger, made at home or bought at an semi decent fast food place, will never satisfy you if you are craving a McDonald’s burger. It’s its own flavour palette, a unique flavour and sometimes you need just that. And other days you want a three cheese mac and cheese, made with a roux, with a breadcrumb butter topping.
Here the discussion veers toward how we acquire and change our tastes--through tradition, memory, physiology...And then of course as we remember from Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me what an impact processed food formulations have on cultivating and commanding those tastes.
This is precisely why my 7-year-old has never tasted McDonald’s. No Oscar Meyer wieners or chicken nuggets either. And part of me knows this is privilege that says this. But part of me also rages against the inundation of bad food culture. My daughters kindergarten teacher regularly talked about McDonald’s and it made me very annoyed. And I only knew this because of the pandemic online kindergarten. Her first grade teacher had her own cotton candy machine. Whyyyyy?
I think you're missing the enormous factor of MENTAL LOAD. I 100% agree with your nutrition, flavor, and economic points - and I STILL reach for the blue box at the end of a long day (though I do throw in some extra shredded cheese). I don't have to find a recipe or think about what sounds tasty or fresh or what my children might or might not consent to eat today, even if yesterday they loved it. I just look at the box and do what it says while my children are yelling that they are hungry NOW and I'm trying to get dinner on the table after a long day with no help and also think about baths, laundry, homework, and whatever else needs to get done before we do it all tomorrow. The blue box neatly disposes of the thinking we have to do around dinner - even those of us who like cooking real food need that some days.
I agree with this. Even if you know the recipe for Mac and cheese by heart, it requires more planning. The Kraft can sit in the cabinet and guess what. A little extra butter and dried milk or just water and you don’t have to make sure you have all the ingredients in the house even.
Combined with Emily Bennett's comment below re familiarity and lack of experience/skills, a thousand times Yes in agreement on the mental load barrier.
So much to unpack here. I am a nurse practitioner who works in a hospital caring for acutely ill adults. Boxed Kraft is still absolutely a comfort food from my childhood. As much as I will pick some up now and again, those of us who love to cook need to remember there are those who don’t know how, and/or don’t have the resources to do so. They eat how they grew up eating or how they can afford to eat. I had a long conversation with a single woman in her 60s who has cancer and who’s doctor told her to lose weight. He is rightfully (surprisingly) teaching less processed, food substitution, etc but she admitted how she has no idea how to cook and is appalled when things don’t taste good and she then wastes food and money. How do we overcome that hurdle? We can prove economics and nutrition by numbers all we want but when it comes down to that 60ish single woman on a fixed income standing in a store, overwhelmed by what she should buy because she doesn’t have the proper equipment or basic spices——-she is going to go with what she knows. And I will, unfortunately, continue to have job security.
I don 't even like Mac and cheese and didn't eat it as a kid or now. But there is a convenience factor, too, besides the cost and the supposed "comfort". If you can picture a single mother coming home from work (maybe even two jobs, maybe using public transportation), stopping at the grocery and then returning home to prepare something from scratch...and then having the energy to care about the nutritional value or whether it includes fake ingredients. Even if it is just buying the extra cheese ( wouldn't this type of consumer likely purchase already shredded cheese?), the preparation at the end of a long day could seem overwhelming. And I'm a foodie who took 10 years of cooking classes and rarely eats processed food. You really have to factor in the time and energy to cook from scratch.
my name is Bobbie Rich
Hi Everyone. Love this discussion for many reasons, not the least of which is that it reminds of my days as a student at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health based in NY City. It was started and run by Anne Marie Colbin.She passed away in 2016. But she was an amazing woman.
There is so much that I can say about her passion and her teachings. While it is difficult to condense her lessons, perhaps the bottom line is this: she described key criteria for food selection in order to help people make informed choices Her list included the following: food should be real, whole, local, seasonal and organic whenever possible. And there's more to be found on-line. But I say all this because, to me Mark, Kerri, et al, convey much the same message.
So, I just want to say, yet again to Mark and team, thank you again for sharing your thoughts and your wisdom with the world. What would we do without you?
Wowie! Thank you, Bobbie Rich! Great story about Anne Marie Colbin. Speaking on behalf of our team let me express appreciation for our Bittman Project community for the ability to speak candidly and kindly so we can have all sorts of interesting conversations.
Keri, you hit the nail on the head for a whole supermarket's worth of food. Why is organic milk (which is probably healthier) so much more expensive than non-organic? Why are the jellies and jams made without processed sugar so much more expensive than the sugary ones? How can it be that the packaged breads that are nutritionally dense be so much more costly than wonder bread?
I don't believe that the appeal of the Kraft box is the comfort or the nostalgia. I think it's the dollar-a-box.
Homemade is definitely better, but I do understand the appeal of the box. Back in my college days, when store brand mac n cheese boxes were 10 for a dollar, we ate lots of it. The issue of cost is so important for so many. Think of how much a hungry teenager can eat, no doubt easily downing a full box. Healthy? No. Cheap? Yes.
I grew up on Kraft macaroni and cheese. Not the powdered stuff but the “fancy” package of goo you squeezed into the pasta. It was only barely considered actual food vs the Velveeta which is actually classified by the food bank as not having enough nutritional value to be considered food to feed children.
Anyway. While Kraft mac and cheese is marketed as comfort food, it’s really about convenience. Even if a good scratch mac and cheese takes nominally the same amount of time, it’s still about the ease of not having to think about how to make it. I know I was fed this as a child because it was marketed to my single mom as something she could make without having to think about it, at 6:15 pm after picking me up from day care.
My 7 year old has yet to taste Kraft. I waited until she was 5 to serve her Annie’s and we only have it as an afternoon snack treat. It’s not dinner. I equate it to cupcakes. She likes savory rather than sweet. And I load it with peas or corn or cherry tomatoes.
But I feel bad about it whenever I do succumb to the box.
Good Morning to All. Pacific Time for me so just catching up with your conversation. Thank you so much for the discussion. I'll be checking in all day, starting with some responses to what's here so far.
ears ago when I was a freelancer making $7,000 a year, I learned to eat healthy by just buying vegetables in season, throwing them in a casserole dish with a little oil and roasting them, and then mixing them into pasta. Breakfasts were often oatmeal from the big Quaker jar or eggs, often as omelets with the leftover vegetables and some cheese. And I still do these things. All of it is fast, cheap and healthy. But Americans especially have been brainwashed into thinking "convenient" comes from a box or one-serving container!
Remember taking home economics in school? Who decided that wasn't necessary any more? We learned basic cooking skills, how to read a food label, budgeting and how to sew a button on a shirt. These are fundamental skills for any adult let alone a parent.
I agree that home economics should still be taught in schools. Along with how to budget, basic nutrition, and cooking, fixing some basic things around the house. I luckily had the privilege of being home a lot with my kids to teach them some of those things. But not everyone does!
My Mom was a Home Ec teacher in Jr. High in the early 70s, right before electives in CA education got chopped. (She pivoted to Language Arts and later Computer Science.) So I do count myself among the very fortunate to learn to cook at an early age. That said, we still occasionally had Hamburger Helper, Swanson's TV dinners, and boxed Mac n Cheese--mostly when my folks went out and before I started preparing meals to help my working Mom keep it together. For us pacakged food felt like treats.
Treats! Exactly!
I was just having this conversation with my friend who has a client who’s college major was home economics. Why can’t we take home economics anymore? Honestly I would take that class now, at 46, and I’m certain I would learn something.
Homemade Mac and Cheese and Box Mac and Cheese are different beasts. Like a homemade cake vs a mix. But in different times and budgets and tastes we gravitate to one or the other. I feel we live right now in a time where we can’t judge because like you said, someone relies on the thrift of the box. It’s food. And thank you for this discussion so we can share our perspectives.
Thank you for sharing, Anne. Totally agreed: no judgement. That's why the conundrum. There are so many reasons to encourage more home cooking and less processed food and just as many reasons why it's so challenging.
I hate classic food design reboots. Always ruinous.
Goes without saying that homemade Mac is better
I was just about to say it’s nourishing for the soul....there’s something to be said about the nostalgic element of Kraft...every time I eat it it brings me back to when we had babysitters over summer and that’s what they’d make us....
Kraft or Velveeta? I’m choosing Kraft every time, I would take a bath in the powdered cheese .
HAHAHHAA
Kraft’s Mac and cheese flavour is unique - it has nothing to do with a mac and cheese made with “real” cheese. And that is it’s success - easy to make, orange, tangy, with a unique flavour that is hard to replicate at home from scratch. It is what McDonalds is to a home made burger. A burger, made at home or bought at an semi decent fast food place, will never satisfy you if you are craving a McDonald’s burger. It’s its own flavour palette, a unique flavour and sometimes you need just that. And other days you want a three cheese mac and cheese, made with a roux, with a breadcrumb butter topping.
Here the discussion veers toward how we acquire and change our tastes--through tradition, memory, physiology...And then of course as we remember from Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me what an impact processed food formulations have on cultivating and commanding those tastes.
This is precisely why my 7-year-old has never tasted McDonald’s. No Oscar Meyer wieners or chicken nuggets either. And part of me knows this is privilege that says this. But part of me also rages against the inundation of bad food culture. My daughters kindergarten teacher regularly talked about McDonald’s and it made me very annoyed. And I only knew this because of the pandemic online kindergarten. Her first grade teacher had her own cotton candy machine. Whyyyyy?
Wow. That's interesting about Velveeta. And encouraging to hear.
Sorry. I deleted the original comment because I hadn’t finished typing and I got interrupted! Lol