How have your food habits changed over the years?

[huiray]

I find that I have been eating more cheese than I used to, which is notable to me.  My meat consumption has also steadily dropped - and, surprisingly, also my vegetable intake.  i used to eat pounds upon pounds of leafy vegetables even just a few years ago, but that has slackened a bit.  Still, I have many a meatless meal but it is the relative non-domination of leafy greens that I have noticed.  My fish consumption, on the other hand, has gone up steadily - and that even in my current location in the Mid West. 

 

How about you?

[Plantes Vertes]

Are these changes deliberate huiray? If so, what are your reasons?

[huiray]

No particular reason.  They seem to have just gradually occurred.

[gfweb]

Cheese?

 

You must be turning French.

[huiray]

Moi? Mais non!

[patrickamory]

I'm not sure my eating habits have changed significantly, at least since I started cooking regularly at home (a 2006 New Year's resolution). NYC living encourages eating out and ordering in, which in excess is not healthy, satisfying or thrifty. Since I started cooking most meals at home, I'm sure I'm eating less bread and less sugar, though probably the same amount of butter, olive oil and salt. In general I gravitate toward one-pot meals, which means my carb intake is primarily rice of some kind.

 

I used to have a McDonalds guilty pleasure. That has waned as I've progressed through my 40s, though I also have a theory that the food there has gone downhill drastically.

 

I also for many years started the day off with a bagel or bialy with cream cheese. Gone. Now just coffee in the morning. First food of the day is lunch. I've never really been hungry upon waking up. I realize that this is completely the opposite of many people.

[dcarch]

My food habits change often. Changes happen whenever I have a new cooking appliance.

 

I smoke a lot when I first got my smoker.

 

I eat lots of meat when I got my sous vide setup.

 

I start making smoothies when I got my Blendtec 

 

I am using my new rotisserie a lot now.

 

dcarch

[liuzhou]

My changes have tended to be geographical. First as a child in France, then the wilds of Scotland, several years in London, then short spells in various countries around Europe and Asia before settling in mainland China about 20 years ago. 

 

I am not one to go mad looking for European food in China - I know it's 99% shit. And I seldom eat Chinese in Europe - ditto.

 

Wherever I am I tend to like to eat what the locals eat. It is usually better and certainly more interesting. 

 

There have, I confess, been exceptions. Soviet-era Leningrad was a choice between cabbage, cabbage or cabbage. As a treat, you might get cabbage stuffed with cabbage. Not my happiest gastronomic adventure. I did everything I could to avoid eating local food.

 

There have also been financial changes. As an impoverished student, I ate what I could afford which wasn't much in terms of quality or desirability, but I survived. As I got a job and my career progressed, I expanded my horizons and ate things I never ate before. I guess that is normal. Today, I can afford to eat in restaurants as often as the mood takes me - OK not Michelin level very often, but reasonable restaurants.

I was never a fussy eater; more curious than anything else. I have been lucky enough to experience some very different cultures and have eaten things I would never imagined as a young man were even edible.

 

As to the future, who knows? I do think my sense of taste and smell is diminishing as I get older. Not critically so, but marginally, so I find myself upping the seasoning and spicing to compensate. But I still look out for that new experience and will trek across town to track down the newest bat-meat restaurant or whatever.

[fvandrog]

For me, the biggest changes are related to an increase in disposable income. I always liked to buy decent quality food, but at first simply couldn't afford the more expensive stuff, and when I had some money I generally played it safe. Why buy lobster or prawn, where preparation for an inexperienced cook might be hit or miss, if I could buy a good steak?

Now that I have a reasonable salary, I am more prone to try new things, even if they are expensive and might be tricky to prepare. It is not such a disaster to ruin or dislike something that cost 35$ if you realize that you earn that with less than 30 minutes of work.

I am also with dcarch, if I get a new gadget I tend to use it quite a bit, which definitely reflects on what gets to the table.

Another influence is having children, once I had prepared fresh, home-made paste for them once or twice it turned out a major endeavor to get them to eat store bought pasta again. Even when if it was so called 'fresh' pasta. And although they tend to go for the more simple flavors, they definitely appreciate quality and try to flat-out refuse when things aren't up to their standards. I'd better prepare those omelettes exactly as the Roux brothers prescribe, otherwise my youngest son sends it back to the kitchen.

[weinoo]

I drink more.

[SylviaLovegren]

Used to love quick breads -- (American) muffins, (American) biscuits, coffee cake, banana bread, etc.   Often whipped them up in the morning for breakfast.  And suddenly I don't.  If someone else makes them, I'll nibble a bit but they just don't taste particularly good anymore.  I thought it was odd, then I read a John Thorne article saying he'd had the same experience, so maybe it's an age related thing?

[andiesenji]

I don't think my eating habits have changed a great deal.  I don't eat quite as much meat/poultry as I did thirty years ago but I did not make a conscious effort to do so.

I never stopped using butter, eggs, cheese (though I have cut back on the aged cheeses since my doctor (nephrologist) laid down the law) and other dairy products because I have never had elevated cholesterol.

I still cook the same things I was cooking and baking forty years ago - just not as much or quite as often because I am old...

 

I rarely do the elaborate dinners I was doing twenty years ago because there is no one with whom to share them.  I didn't order a truffle this year.  I forgot all about it.

 

I still make my own butter, yogurt, cream cheese, etc., and consume same.

[huiray]

Most interesting, everyone.  Thanks so much for the responses, most appreciated. 

 

Liuzhou speaks of geographical variations over the years.  That has also been true for me albeit to a lesser extent.  When I was growing up in SE Asia my eating habits were, of course, influenced by what was around me - which was plenty!! - but in the SE Asian idiom by-and-large, with forays into European and, especially, British and British Colonial cuisines.  Still, what I ate was driven in large part by what my parents and older members of the family decided on, and while I dabbled with helping my mother there was very little (if anything) I actually cooked myself.  When I left for the UK my food choices were different, of course, and I explored and ate the cuisine of my new environment (and on trips to Continental Europe) although a lot of the cooking I began to do for myself was influenced a great deal by what I had grown up with and what I learned from my mother.  And so it went and progressed further with the years and with my move to North America.   On reflection I imagine my being in the US Mid West for the last decade+ would have had an incremental effect on what I eat and on my palate to at least some extent.  Elsewhere here I have commented on how my salt tolerance, for example, has steadily gone up (as compared with when I lived on the US East Coast) and no doubt local preferences (including those cheeses) would have crept in...  But in my increasing old age surely my palate/tastes also change - perhaps a little of what SylviaLovegren touches on also factors in.

 

I also used to drink far more wine and enjoyed many fine wines when I could.  As the years have gone by I find I drink much more hard liquor and much less wine.  I still attend occasional elaborate wine dinners at some restaurants and enjoy savoring new (to me) wines I am exposed to (and subsequently buy) at these dinners and elsewhere. 

 

I can't say I've been influenced by new gadgets or cooking devices/equipment I buy.  In the first place, I don't buy these things, really. :-)  I am largely content with using pretty basic pots and pans. 

 

I leave Modernist cuisine things (and even SV) to others and professional places where I would go to sample such things when I am in the mood to do so and feel sufficiently spendy to do so. :-D   Besides, I don't think I could reproduce at home what I got from a meal at - alas, no more, of course - Curtis Duffy's Avenues; or Grant Achatz's Alinea; or even Bryan Voltaggio's Table 21 at Volt, where he uses Molecular Gastronomic methods sparingly and with restraint.  Similarly at other places not specifically named here where I have eaten.

 

As for "...cabbage, cabbage or cabbage..." (via Liuzhou) -- HEH.  Surely that cabbage stuffed with cabbage must have been at least tasty?

 

ETA to fix typos etc.

Edited May 21, 2014 by huiray (log)

[liuzhou]

 

 

Surely that cabbage stuffed with cabbage must have been at least tasty?

 

Only if you find three-week-old, rancid socks tasty. It was boiled to death, then boiled a bit more to be sure. The whole city stank of over boiled cabbage.

[lindag]

I drink more.

Me too.

[suzilightning]

I drink more.

wish this was true...I've developed an allergy.

 

Funnily less cheese and  fewer sweets and greens(the Johnnybird doesn't like many of the things I do... did?)

More pasta and land proteins...chicken and bison. 

[Katie Meadow]

Way less meat, more fish. Most meals now are vegetarian or include only small amounts of animal protein. My diet has changed from wheat-centric to rice-entric. Less butter, more olive oil. Almost no cheese. Way more soup. I have a taste now for salads that have fruit in them, and mix up fruits with veggies, such as tomatoes and watermelon or tomatoes and peaches, oranges and fennel, kohlrabi and apple, etc. I no longer can stand broccoli, but I eat a lot more cabbage--cole slaw and also in stir-fry. Less wine, more brown liquor. Some of these changes are for health reasons, but many are just a matter of what tastes good now. No more scones or sweet bread things. Lots more straight dark chocolate. And not for health reasons. The bigger change in my eating habits is that I eat a bigger breakfast than I used to and my husband and I get around to lunch so late that we often don't eat dinner--we just have linner, and then maybe a late cocktail hour with popcorn. Weird? Maybe, but it works.

[Ttogull]

I became interested in the gut microbiome and its influence on health. Like many, I was overfeeding the 10% that is me and starving the 90% that is them. They like fermentable fibers.

I now try to eat lots of different plant foods, not only green stuff but lots of root vegetables, bananas, and berries. Apples and baobab for pectin. I supplement fiber with about 15 different types per day. Many of them are chosen because research indicates they are favored by certain types of gut bacteria. That's food for them, and I aim for 150 g per day of fermentable fiber from many sources.

For me, I eat really high quality meat. I am trying to find and learn to cook offal. I eat butter, lard, and all of the fat on my meat. I eat olive oil, coconut oil, and orangutang friendly palm oil, but no others. Cheese from grass fed cows.

I do not worry about proportions. My body has become self-regulating. I might eat really high fat meat at one meal, and then crave veggies for the next few.

I do not eat brown rice or other such stuff. I have become hypersensitive to rancid oils, and I cannot find any nonrancid brown rice. I like barley and white rice. I am also finding a lot of supermarket dried pasta is rancid. This hypersensitivity is new.

I started as a borderline obese person given 6 months by my doc to fix my lipids or go on statins. As I indicated in another thread, I lost 40 lbs without using any willpower, and my lipid numbers shot to superstar status. Many, many other health fixes, despite thinking I was healthy before starting.

The exciting thing is that the research is all there, and the things that happened to me have good, scientific reasons. It's been an amazing ride.

[naguere]

The changes in my food habits have changed to eat healthier food.

 

I now eat little meat, but do buy a free range chicken each week and wring out of it every last drop of delicious stock, leaving the two breast cuts in the freezer for later.

 

pulses, loads, but in particular red lentils, which seem to me to taste meaty.

 

The cost of food has effected me and I find that frozen vegetables are very acceptable, a good bag of 'mixed' is easier for me to handle than a large Breton Cauliflower.

 

I love tomatoes (is there an e in that?), but I have found that tinned will do just as well, recently Tesco's were selling one tin of tomatoes for £1, so I went on the internet (good old Amazon !) and found tins of tomatoes at a good price, they are Lupa from Italy, whole plum tomatoes in a rich sauce and on opening the tin, they are fragrant,  all 2550gr of them. The are suppliers to The Queen of England, so they must be good.

 

[Foodfacts Dotus]

My taste have matured a lot since I was a kid. My mom had a jar of 'Little Debbies" around all the time. Plus we constantly ate fast food and sodas, things like that. I guess it makes since now looking back, that I used to all ways eat a salad when we went out to eat. I guess I was done with the bad food at home.

 

Now that I'm older I next to never eat fast food. My home cook staples are chicken or pork with panko. Or sausage with steamed peppers and onions. Or my favorite thing to make, chicken pot pie. Never really go for the salads anymore though, and we definitly don't get soda, instead I drink seltzer water.

 

I feel when I get a little more money in the bank I'll get into the high end cheeses (hopefully some of you guys can steer me in the right directions), and I'll get some new toys to play with in the kitchen.

[pastrygirl]

Compared to 10 years ago (just to pick a time span)...

 

Far less alcohol - finally realized how bad it makes me feel.

More meat - got more practice cooking it and less squeamish about it.

Fewer restaurant meals, especially fine dining - BTDT, would rather spend the money on something else.

Lower tolerance for sweets - familiarity breeds contempt. 

Less starchy food - not going totally low-carb, but after nutrition sessions w/ my fitness trainer it seems that there might be better choices. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Far more alcohol -- finally realized how good it makes me feel.  I blame eGullet.

Less sweets.  (Even though I am most fond of ice cream.)

More meat.  Rib steak pan frying at the moment.

Starch is good.  Baked a baguette tonight to go with steak.

[gfweb]

Alcohol...stable

Sweets...who cares? not for me

Savory- even more

Starch- the more the better

veg- cooked please

[annachan]

My eating habits have been by where I shop, my work schedule and my kitchen set up.

 

In SF, I worked in schools. I got home relatively early (4ish). Even though I do most of the shopping on weekends, I was able to still do some shopping at my local produce place and butcher shop after work. So planning for the week was not so important. My kitchen was nicely equipped, always stocked with pantry stables. However, I was more limited in what I cooked. Mainly due to lots of restaurants and take out places available. I rarely bothered cooking Asian food.

 

When we moved to Canberra, I cooked a lot more. I cooked more time consuming dishes. I cooked more complicated dishes. I made salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables. Thing that I never bothered before. Why? Decent restaurants were hard to find. Fine dinner was a joke. I didn't like going out because I was tired of being disappointed. And there weren't much to do so I had plenty of time to cook. We ate a lot more beef as we're able to get some really great quality stuff from this wonderful couple at the farmers market. More roasts. Used a lot of puff pastries for making pies and such. Ate a lot of cheese (not the good stuff) because of all the morning/afternoon tea at work.

 

Now in Melbourne, my cooking has gotten simpler. I work more and I'm getting home later. Much smaller kitchen with many of my machines in the storage cage downstairs. Lots of restaurant/take out options once again. I cook more Asian food because I can get the ingredients easily. More tofu and noodles for some reason. More fish than before, but still only once or twice a month. More French butter, charcuterie, fine cheeses, artisan baked goods, and dumplings. As we live close to downtown and can get there quicker on the tram than driving, I can drink freely when we're out - so, a lot more alcohol! Oh, lots of coffee. Big chain fast food does not have a place in our lives here. I was tempted to get an egg mcmuffin one morning, only to walk out empty handed after being shocked at the price (over $7 for an egg mcmuffin meal). Still a lot less fine dining than in SF. You just can't get that fine dining experience here, even though you're paying an arm and a leg. And Mexican food sucks.

[Tri2Cook]

completely dropped coffee 2+ years ago
completely dropped tea (other than a rare occasional herbal tea during the winter) 1+ years ago
(dropping coffee and tea has completely eliminated some rather significant stomach trouble I was having which I'm pretty sure was related to overindulgence... I'm having better luck just dropping them than I had with trying to cut back)
completely dropped diet pop/soda 6+ years ago
dropped non-diet pop/soda except for a rare occasional glass of ginger beer or root beer 4+ years ago
significantly changed my day-to-day eating habits when I started road cycling 9+ years ago... because pulling extra weight up hills isn't fun
I'm blaming eGullet for my increase in booze purchasing despite the fact that I still rarely actually consume it