I hear you. The list of things I simply can't have in the house is a long one, but are basically the fat/sugar/salt category.
Cookies (any dessert actually), chips, cheese....
Hopefully someone will come up with a way to make us crave salad!

The mega- food industry is evil. Some things should carry a heavy "sin tax" - especially sweet drinks or so-called juices. These contribute the most to child obesity.
Also, beware of artificially sweetened stuff. Your body can't tell it isn't the real thing, apparently.

Cheesies and Bugles are two of the worst for me - the thing that gets me with them is that perfect melt-in-the-mouth saltiness. Even thinking about it makes me crave them.  Talk about a 'Hi my name is Rowan and I am a Food Addict' moment.

Just put lots of fat, salt and sugar in your salad. Then you won't be able to get enough! 

I guess you're referring to bacon, cheese, croutons & mayo!!!
Who needs lettuce?

LOL re the salad comments!   And Rowan, I'm a fellow cheezie addict - no such thing as eating just a few!!

I heard most of that interview this morning on my way to work - very interesting.  I was particularly struck by the author's comments about infants not liking salt ... that it is very gradually added to the processed foods they consume until their taste for it develops.  Conversely, there was also discussion about some folk who need to go on a low salt diet later in life - how it's a gradual change in taste to the point that returning to a salt-filled diet of prepared foods becomes distasteful to them over a period of time.  (But I bet they never lose their craving for cheezies!!) 

I have tried to avoid most prepared foods for most of my adult life.  When I had babies I made their food too (a blender is a wondrous thiing!).  This seemed to result in children who cheerfully ate 'real food', when their friends only wanted things like weiners and pre-prepared items.

As a general guidleline I cook with the most basic items I can find - and avoid prepared items that list ingredients that sound like chemicals.  Even so, I confess that I occasionally crave something that is obviously 'junk' like chips or cheesies.

The result of having multi-nationals deciding what we should eat in order to maximise their profit is (in my opinion) totally scary.  Every year I notice that something else that used to be a standard food is no longer available at my local grocery store.  The list is getting depressingly long - all the offal meats except liver, most traditional fish has been replaced by fish that used to be thrown back,  roasting chickens, chicken parts without added coating or spices, turnips, parsnips, local fruits etc.

Scary.

It is scary. Around here, prime farmland is being gobbled up by new subdivisions, and what land is left is Used only for horse farms and fields of gmo corn.
It's scary when it is more expensive to buy strawberries (in season) grown a stone's throw away than the ones from Chile sold cheap at the grocery store.
When I was a kid, pretty much everything on the table was local.

In the near future it will probably be illegal to grow a garden. There'll be too much diversity interfering with monoculture. Cross-pollination and all.
That row of peas could land you minimum term of 6 months in one of the Harper govt's factory prisons where you'll be forced into making plastic flowers for Dollarama.
So ends the rant. (There goes my Lenten plan to give up politics...)

Kay,

I've never had any trouble finding 'offal meats' - kidney, liver, heart, etc. I just find you have to patronize either an ethic focused shop (For example most Asian markets carry everything from pig uteri to spleens as well as things like tongue and chicken feet) or a proper butcher's shop / meat packers (any place that actually processes the animal).  I think the reason most main line grocery stores don't carry that kind of thing is that 1) most grocery chain stores don't process their own meat any more and 2) there's no real demand in a lot of communities so it just wouldn't sell. I know a lot of people who cringe or gag when I mention preparing things like baked heart or even fried liver and onions.

Small towns can be great places to live but.............................

no butcher any more

no bakery anymore

no ethnic stores

no good restaurants - only chain type places and those that buy frozen prepared food and thaw it out as ordered. 

Our standard (but smaller) supermarkets don't even carry a variety of cheeses anymore.  Once we could get cheeses from the UK, Denmark and Holland, even occasionally from France and Germany.    We used to be able to buy yogurt but now it is all sweetened with imitation fruit. Most of the juices are sweetened.  No lamb in any form except for leg from New Zealand.  No rabbit.  I wonder why as a nation we think it is smart to limit the range of things we eat and waste everything that is a specialty item?

There have always been people who cringe at the thought of offal.  I'm glad that good food is still available where you live Rowan. 

Essentially it's speciesism (think like racism but regarding what foods we will eat). People who are fine about eating chicken, beef, pork and  turkey tend to freak out at the concept of eating lamb, rabbit, bison, venison, duck, goose, moose, etc.  You also get people who have no issue eating spinach and lettuce but who flip out if you suggest adding dandelion leaves or lambs quarters greens to salad.  It's like in some peoples minds certain food items are inferior, or unclean somehow.  Think about the horse meat scandal.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong about eating horse meat but most people in Canada, Britain and the USA wouldn't consider it to qualify as a viable food item.  And the further from the mainstream you go the more violent the reaction. Some people who might consider eating say roast lamb would probably have heart failure if you suggested serving kangaroo meat or alligator meat.

neet, Rowan :3

another example of us living in worlds/realities that other people have already created for us

EDIT:  now if only the UCC could have the resources to be able to solve their revenue problems...

It's basic math... 

CHO + C12H22O11 + NaCl =  (bliss!)

Rich blessings.

Jae,

Actually that looks more or less like basic chemistry :)

I can see the sugar and salt there. But if you are looking for the chemical formulae for fats there are 4 main formats: C_nH_(2n+1)CO₂H, (Saturated) or C_nH_(2n-1)CO₂H (Unsaturated) or C_nH_(2n-3)CO₂H and C_nH_(2n-5)CO₂H (Polyunsaturated).

CHO-R is the general formula for an Aldehyde (ie formaldehyde).