Just saw a TV commercial for Hamburger Helper.
The family is together, sitting at the dinner table and the dad is stuffed so he leans back and pats his belly, full to the brim.
He looks at his young daughter, they smile at each other and she imitates him, patting her belly as well. Camera pans out to show everyone is happy and laughing as they all pat their full bellies after dinner.
Their tagline: “Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Macaroni – now even cheesier and tastier.”
So that’s the message of Big Food! Inspiring families to eat meals together, but eat until bellies are stuffed or better yet, over-stuffed!
Sigh
And THAT, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with our dysfunctional eating habits. We don’t stop eating BEFORE we get to the point of busting our bellies! Our brains are broken, not connecting with our bellies to tell us to stop eating.
The bigger problem is, overly-processed foods like Hamburger Helper are never going to satiate us, so we have to keep eating, and eating, and eating, until it’s too late and our bellies are beyond stuffed.
So, good ole Betty Crocker is taking advantage of our dysfunction by feeding us more of their processed crap, that tastes really, really good, but doesn’t do anything to really NOURISH us.
Stuffing your belly, until it hurts, with white pasta drowned in dried cheeses is not healthy, even if mom makes it at home, and all family members eat it together at the dinner table!
Just in case you were wondering, here is the list of ingredients for Hamburger Cheeseburger Macaroni. It’s funny, in comparison to their older ingredients (found online), they weren’t lying when they said it was now “cheesier” – they’ve added a lot of dried cheeses:
Enriched Macaroni, Corn Starch, Salt, Enriched flour, Sugar, Dried Ricotta cheese, Dried Tomato, MSG, Natural flavor, Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Modified Corn Starch, Paprika, Spice, Colors (Yellow Lake 5&6 and Yellow 5&6), Monoglycerides, Dried Cheddar Cheese, Dried Cheddar cheese, Dried Whey, Dried Buttermilk, Dried Blue cheese, Enzyme modified blue cheese, Silicon Dioxide, Sodium Phosphate, Enzyme modified cheddar cheese
Great post. Can’t even get into the sodium and the other nasty ingredients in boxed “dinners.” Saw a commercial on one of the TVs at the gym yesterday morning…I wasn’t listening to the TV (iPod) but I didn’t need to. It was asking, “If whole grain isn’t the first ingredient in your cereal, what is?” And then displays boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios and a couple of other cereals by …is it General Mills? Anyway, it cuts to a close-up of the ingredients list on one box and sure, “whole grains” is the first ingredient listed and highlighted…but it conveniently omitted (but clearly visible in the shot) that SUGAR is the second ingredient (and that’s followed by all the obligatory added-back-in vitamins and of course, some other cleverly worded forms of…sugar. Cereal…another food with which it is impossible to satiate oneself no matter how many whole grains it contains.