My kids had one of those marshmallow/rice-crispy dessert thingies this morning at church.
I got to thinking about those. Basically what those are is melted marshmallows mixed with Rice Crispies. Would my great-great-grandmother have been able to make those? Nope. They are made from a highly processed cereal and a highly processed “candy.” Each of those things are made out of highly processed other ingredients (the marshmallows are largely corn syrup from corn). When my great-great-grandmother was alive, Rice Crispies hadn’t even been invented.
This is how people cook these days. For most modern home cooks, raw ingredients are the things that come in boxes at the grocery store. They take highly processed foods and then process them some more. For my great-great-grandmother, raw ingredients were things that came out of a field or garden - with the exception of sugar and flour. My great-great-great-great-grandmother probably wouldn’t have even had those.
While I actually quite like those Rice Crispy treats, for the most part foods that are made with raw ingredients that come out of the ground or from some animal instead of a factory are far better not only in the health department, but taste, texture, and smell. Now I’m unusual in this regard because the vast majority of people have become so accustomed to processed foods that they actually prefer them. Velveeta is a prime example. I still don’t understand how anybody can confuse that stuff with cheese…
Amen about Velveeta!
I think you’re right that people become accustomed to what they eat and sometimes find it difficult to accept foods they are not used to. This is especially true with children, but also in many adults. I didn’t really like plain kefir when I first tried it. But once I broke my sugar addiction, I found that I liked the sour-tart flavor. Sugar so overwhelms the taste senses that when you’re addicted, it dominates your taste influence. Modern foods are so loaded with sugar that most people are addicted to them and find it difficult to break away. But added sugar and polyunsaturated fat are probably the two worst things in the modern diet - leading to metabolic syndrome diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.