April 05, 2014
Kid Snacks That Should Not Exist
I’m about to slightly ruin your childhood, sorry in advance. Jezebel posted an article about all of the crazy food that we used to eat as children, you know, before we knew any better, and it is a cringe-worthy trip down memory lane.
There is a long list and a link to an even longer list of all of the “Little Debbie Snack Foods” that make every healthy bone in my body shudder. Here are some of the ones that I personally remember from my childhood:
Breadsticks 'N' Cheese Dip: Dodai Stewart, the author of the Jezebel article was bang on when she talks about the 90s’ serious lack of conjunctions. Let me start by saying that I was never A) allowed to eat anything like this and B) would never eat the “cheese” portion of that, ever, strong emphasis with my quotation mark usage, since the “cheese” was more accurately orange cheese-like goop.
Nesquik: powdered flavoured sugar to make milk more attractive to kids. The added bonus is that you get quite the arm workout trying to make that sugary goodness actually adhere to milk. It took A LOT of stirring. Another thing I was never allowed to eat.
Bubble Tape: ok, this one I actually did eat, and man was it a treat. I would save up my allowance to get one of these bad boys and either eke out the limp roll of tape, making it last an entire month, or eat the entire thing at once, adding more tape to my mouth as soon as the flavor of the last one ran out (which took about 2 seconds).
Lunchables: Another food that we never had, and one that I considered at a young age to be “rich kid food” (I don’t even know). Since I was in charge of making my own lunch since about the age of 8, I was always jealous when a classmate of mine would whip out his perfectly divided little lunchable, each food with it’s own separate little cubby so that nothing would touch, jealous of their blissful ignorance of not knowing the hardships of peanut buttering your own bread.
Mmmm, refined sugar, artificially flavoured, non-healthy goodness.
Actually, going through this list, I realize that although I remember most of these products (the ones I don’t remember I’ll just blame on being a poor deprived Canadian) I didn’t really eat most of this junk. I was allowed to have pop tarts on Christmas, which was a big deal, but that ended once I became a vegetarian at age 12. Other than that I mainly lived on Cheerios and saltines with peanut butter as my kid snacks. Occasionally I could barter homework help for a pack of Dunkaroos, or save up my allowance for a Jos Louis, but other than that my childhood snacking was fairly healthy - good job parents of mine!
Nesquik: powdered flavoured sugar to make milk more attractive to kids. The added bonus is that you get quite the arm workout trying to make that sugary goodness actually adhere to milk. It took A LOT of stirring. Another thing I was never allowed to eat.
Bubble Tape: ok, this one I actually did eat, and man was it a treat. I would save up my allowance to get one of these bad boys and either eke out the limp roll of tape, making it last an entire month, or eat the entire thing at once, adding more tape to my mouth as soon as the flavor of the last one ran out (which took about 2 seconds).
Lunchables: Another food that we never had, and one that I considered at a young age to be “rich kid food” (I don’t even know). Since I was in charge of making my own lunch since about the age of 8, I was always jealous when a classmate of mine would whip out his perfectly divided little lunchable, each food with it’s own separate little cubby so that nothing would touch, jealous of their blissful ignorance of not knowing the hardships of peanut buttering your own bread.
Mmmm, refined sugar, artificially flavoured, non-healthy goodness.
Actually, going through this list, I realize that although I remember most of these products (the ones I don’t remember I’ll just blame on being a poor deprived Canadian) I didn’t really eat most of this junk. I was allowed to have pop tarts on Christmas, which was a big deal, but that ended once I became a vegetarian at age 12. Other than that I mainly lived on Cheerios and saltines with peanut butter as my kid snacks. Occasionally I could barter homework help for a pack of Dunkaroos, or save up my allowance for a Jos Louis, but other than that my childhood snacking was fairly healthy - good job parents of mine!