Pluggers by Rick McKee for June 01, 2023

Not unlike reading the cereal box at breakfast.

who has the eyes and the time to read those ingredient lists, anyway!

I make my own bread because I have no idea what “Generally accepted as safe” dough conditioners, preservatives, flavor enhancers, antioxidants are. But I am sure the flour I buy has less additives………maybe……

Eh me read things on phone and paper. Not on TV.

They still make those things?

TV Dinner = Commercial Filler … ;-)

Average American is exposed to over 3,000 man-made chemicals in a lifetime and well over 100 are stored in our bodies. What do they do to us? No one knows. We are the Beta test.

I’ve done that.

Brave soul.

The ways of the hungry man.

I usually read all that stuff.

worse if you are bilingual and find all the translation errors

Swanson TV Dinners, now with extra grievance

It used to be (maybe still is) that when someone offered you an unfamiliar food, they’d say “Try it, you’ll like it!”

If you do in fact like a frozen dinner, why wouldn’t it be interesting to know what ingredients go together to make up what you like, even if their names don’t individually sound appealing?

This is not to say that such ingredients are necessarily good for you in every respect. But one class of food that’s definitely supposed to be good for you is antioxidants, which means that in some respects even oxygen isn’t supposed to be all that good for you. That doesn’t mean that it would be healthier for you to try to go without it.

You can see why a Plugger might just keep on eating and keep on reading.

“TV Dinner”.. are those still around??

My brother still eats Hungry Man, Salisbury Steak — UGH — not sure how he’s made it to 72.

I looked up the big words, even. Stuff is 90% preservatives and it still needs to be frozen. Why?

who wouldn’t bother doing that?

However, I have sometimes read the ingredients of things in the store and decided to buy something else. Usually because of artificial sweeteners or just disgust at things that don’t live up to their names, like fruit drinks that are really mostly apple and/or pear juice (I’ll just buy the cheaper apple juice, thanks) or bread that calls itself multigrain (9 grain, 12 grain, whatever) and is mostly plain white wheat with all the other grains (and seeds, etc.) way down the list — just give me the real whole wheat bread that’s actually WHOLE wheat (and not “made with whole wheat”), please, even at the same price.

We never used to buy prepared,frozen meals. Since start of Covid we have been buying a “turkey and filling bake” – Walmart brand for family Sunday night dinner.

This started as husband growing up always ate Sunday dinner out and we had been doing same or taking in Chinese food since we have been married (decades). The other advantage to it as my 94 yo mom (in a nursing home) and I do not have the same times available to talk. By cooking this for dinner on Sunday nights I could sit and talk with mom for an hour while it cooked (and I set the table, heated soup etc).

Three weeks ago we went to the Walmart Neighborhood Market (supermarket, pharmacy and related only) where we have been doing our food shopping over the past several years. One of the items on our list was to pick more of these dinners. There were none. We live in an unusual area – we have 4 Walmarts (including this one) within 4 miles of our house. (None are anywhere as large as even a regular Walmart – let alone a supercenter – are elsewhere.) We drove to the other ones and they also were out of it. Drove to the Walmart just over the border of the the next county (smallest “SuperWalmart” we have ever seen) and they did not have it.

So I called the phone number on the box and was told that this item has been temporarily discontinued – as an aside the employee said – “probably won’t be back other than for maybe Thanksgiving” as they are having trouble getting one of the food items in it. (Only thing we can think of is that they can’t get turkey as the other items are in other similar meals and they are available.) So now making our own using chicken instead.