The dietary habits of HERO Forum members.

[Ragitsu]

In this topic, we'll discuss just how you obtain your nutrition. I understand that this type of discussion likely only appeals to those of you who are sufficiently bored or enthusiastically chatty about your chow. That's fine; i'll take what I can get ?.

 

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1. From the choices below, please guesstimate the percentage of sustenance you derive from each one during a typical week. I'm not explicitly including "at work" as an option, but feel free to mention if you do and, if you do, where your meal(s) fall under in terms of quality.

 

• Fast food joints (such as Burger King and Taco Bell). This includes snacks from vending machines, entrees from street vendors and quickly prepared fare from most grocery delis/cafes.
• Restaurants (such as Olive Garden and Red Robin). This includes establishments that solidly cater to a middle class income up to those where the upper crust of society choose to hobnob. Surprisingly high quality "hole in the wall" eateries also count.
• Home cooking. This is pretty self explanatory. I don't care whether you cook with prepared ingredients or whip up meals from scratch. Bonus points if you maintain a practical (in the sense that it generates edible plants) garden - large or small - and utilize those fruits/vegetables/herbs.

 

2. For those of you who do primarily eat at home: who does the cooking? What sort of regional cuisine do you typically consume? Is there usually a healthy quantity of leftovers occupying the fridge/freeze at any given time or are meals usually finished off by day's end?

 

3. Finally, i'm interested in your physiological and psychological quirks as they pertain to your diet. That is to say, are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Allergic to peanuts? Against eating a particular animal because of your religion? Deathly afraid of carrots? Forever a slave to Tabasco sauce?

 

Of course, should this be too personal a question, feel free to ignore it entirely.

[Watchman Mk. IV]

1. 5% fast food (if that), 5% restaurants (if that), 90% or more home cookin'.  No garden anymore, although I used to...nothing like the taste of freshly-harvested tomatoes in a salad.

 

2.  One or the other of us.  Standard American fare, Mexican, Italian, the occasional French.  Leftovers are the rule...we always seem to make far more than we'll eat at one sitting.  (And, of course, my specialties, banana bread and oatmeal-raisin cookies.)

 

3.  I'm a strict omnivore.  Tabasco sauce is a joke.  Cholula, baby.

[BoloOfEarth]

1.  During a typical week, I'm pretty much like Watchman.  It's rare for my wife and I to go to restaurants unless (1) we're out of town, or (2) special occasions (anniversary, birthday, etc.).  We may occasionally go out for fast food, but not often.

 

I suppose we technically have a garden, although it's mainly used (unintentionally) to feed the local wildlife.  Not much survives to make it to our table.  My wife sometimes puts together an herb garden, which is up on the deck and thus not raided by the animals. 

 

2.  My wife does most of the cooking.  (I'm a follower of Rodney Dangerfield's advice:  "Marry a good cook.  Sex will fade away, but you'll always have to eat.")  She alternates between Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and standard American, but she's not afraid to experiment with other regional cuisine if she finds a new recipe (which invariably she'll tweak in some way rather than following as-is).

 

If I cook, it's typically Italian-style dishes (spaghetti, ziti), or firing up the grill for steaks or grilled chicken.  We typically have leftovers, which I usually take as lunches for work.

 

3.  No food allergies or religious prohibitions here.  I'm not a big fan of fish (though I do like shellfish), so on seafood nights we may have shrimp (for me) and salmon (for her).  I like spicy foods but my wife and daughters can't tolerate it, so our meals are rarely very spicy. 

[zslane]

1. Out of my 14 meals each week, 2 are fast food, 1 is often but not always at a restaurant, and the rest are home-cooked.

 

2. I do all my own cooking, except on the rare occasion my gf makes something for us.

 

3. I'm an omnivore with a deep love for meats of all kinds, though when it comes to fish I really only care for crustaceans.

 

[Hermit]

A house mate of mine cooks some excellent dinners for us at least three times a week, she's amazing.

 

Fast Food is not uncommon , about twice a week?

 

I eat food that I think is fine, but I need to eat less of it. *Sigh*

[Ternaugh]

My place of employment provides meals in the Employee Dining Room, which I would count as eating out, and I may have either take-out or restaurant (sit down or fast food) a few more times in a typical week. Take-out like pizza or Asian food generally lasts for several meals over several days.

 

I don't cook like I used to, mainly because there's no one else here to eat it*. Many meals are either pre-prepared, or simple preparation.

 

I don't really have any dietary restrictions (beyond watching my fat and sugar intake). 

 

 

*My late house-mate was an extremely big eater. My normal amounts of cooking used to last us a couple of days, but the same amount now would require me to freeze most of it to eat later. I've mentioned a pasta recipe that ended up taking me a month to eat, pulling one frozen container out each week for several meals.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I'm single, and have some discretionary income right now. So I very much enjoy breakfast out two days a week. I have a usual routine involving a low key local cafe with great atmosphere, where I get scrambled eggs with a lovely, fluffy croissant, and get the red blood cell levels in my caffeine stream down to an acceptable level; and the 50s themed Sunshine Diner, a (slightly overpriced) Kitsilano institution where I usually get Eggs Benedict.

 

On long weekends, I sometimes try other places, or have dry cereal at home, which is a treat, because on work days I have oatmeal, which can get tedious after a while. I especially like the Kitsilano Diner on West Broadway  (8th), which does Carolina-style (North? South? Is there really a difference?) breakfasts and also ribs, on days when my last-shift-of-the-week ends before 10 and I'm feeling like sit-down dinner in a restaurant on my way home. Al-Basha's on W. Broadway is a donair/falafel place, but I usually get the platter if I'm going by in a hurry. Uncle Fatty's Pizza, also on W. Broadway, is nice for takeaway pizza. I like Pineapple Hut on Burrard and Double D's Pizza on W 4th next to the Comic Shop, but haven't been to either place for a while. I regret the passing of the Spoon Kitchen on 4th, and haven't found a takeout place I like so well since. 

 

At home, I like to cook, but am increasingly willing to be lazy and do a supermarket prepared meal. I have more important things to do, like goof off on the Internet! At work, I'm the boring guy who brings peanut butter and jam sandwiches. You have to economise somewhere, and that half hour for lunch erodes pretty fast if you try to do something ambitious, which is too bad, because there are some nice restaurants in the West Point Grey Village, and they're struggling a bit as the neighbourhood depopulates.

[Starlord]

15 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

1. From the choices below, please guesstimate the percentage of sustenance you derive from each one during a typical week. I'm not explicitly including "at work" as an option, but feel free to mention if you do and, if you do, where your meal(s) fall under in terms of quality.

 

2. For those of you who do primarily eat at home: who does the cooking? What sort of regional cuisine do you typically consume? Is there usually a healthy quantity of leftovers occupying the fridge/freeze at any given time or are meals usually finished off by day's end?

 

3. Finally, i'm interested in your physiological and psychological quirks as they pertain to your diet. That is to say, are you a vegetarian? Vegan? Allergic to peanuts? Against eating a particular animal because of your religion? Deathly afraid of carrots? Forever a slave to Tabasco sauce?

 

Of course, should this be too personal a question, feel free to ignore it entirely.

 

Why do I feel like these are some the questions Batman asked the other Justice League members right before the Tower of Babel storyline?  

[zslane]

2 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

I don't really have any dietary restrictions (beyond watching my fat and sugar intake). 

 

 

I recommend watching your sugar and carbohydrate intake. Make sure you get lots of fat, but don't mix it with carbs. The carbs will get used for fuel and the fat will just get accumulated. Deny the body of all those carbs (which it struggles to process in a healthy way anyway) and give it the high octane fat it really prefers (and is much healthier all around for it) and you'll find it almost trivially easy to stay slender and healthy.

 

In the past year I've roughly doubled my daily caloric intake, including at least doubling the amount of fat I consume, while cutting out nearly all sugar and cutting way back on carbs (for instance, absolutely no pasta). My protein intake has probably gone up a little, but not dramatically. I've lost more excess fat in less time than at any other time in my life. The secret has been 30 mins of morning exercises every day--even when I don't really feel like it--and the aforementioned dietary changes.

[Cancer]

1.  Things in your "fast food" come disturbingly often, I'd say 6 times a week or so.  None of that is from traditional fast food joints; rather, it's from campus coffee bars, which also sell prepped sandwiches and salads in addition to the usual coffee-bar pastries etc.  During the academic year (when I'm teaching) this happens probably a majority of lunches and maybe one or two breakfasts a week.  The other lunches are usually brownbag leftovers from home, and once or twice a month a meeting will have a meal included (that meal is from the same outfit that does all the food service, catering, etc. on campus, including the aforementioned coffee bars).  Dinners out at sit-down restaurants happen roughly once a month on average, while dinners out at extended family's homes is more like once a quarter.  Also once a quarter, roughly, everything breaks down and I pick up pizza from the grocery store (which has a salad bar, hot deli, and carry-out pizza oven in the establishment).

 

2.  I think I cook a majority of meals at home on weekends.  During the work week it's usually my wife, most of the rest of the time it's my son, very occasionally me.  Leftovers are routine, though things like scratchbuilt gringo soft tacos are prepared often and there's no leftovers from those.  Another frequent meal is pasta with sauce out of a jar, and salad.  In the summer (when good tomatoes are available) we will also make BLTs, e.g.; also, the gas grill on the patio sees use during the less-rainy season.  In winter my wife often make an egg pie somewhat more than once a month (a crustless quiche, with eggs, cheese, some vegetables, some precooked meats like sausage or bacon).   On those occasions when there is a hot breakfast, I make it (no one else does).  I don't think I would characterize us as having a particular regional cuisine.

 

3.  We have no health-related, religious, or social convention dietary quirks.  I think we have lamb more often than most people because we get lamb (and pork and occasionally beef) from my sister's family, who raise meat animals for their own consumption (and occasional sale) and gift us assorted stuff once or twice a year.  I am on a statin for perverse cholesterol levels, but we established earlier in my life that those (like my borderline hypertension) come from my losing ticket in the genetic lotto; while they are controlled by the medication, more or less nothing else makes for observable change, except inevitable slow effects of age (I'm 61 now).  I think we tend to eat rather earlier in the evening than most folks (I think it's rare that sitting down to dinner happens after 6:30, and dinner right at 5 happens more often than that).

[Ternaugh]

36 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

I recommend watching your sugar and carbohydrate intake. Make sure you get lots of fat, but don't mix it with carbs. The carbs will get used for fuel and the fat will just get accumulated. Deny the body of all those carbs (which it struggles to process in a healthy way anyway) and give it the high octane fat it really prefers (and is much healthier all around for it) and you'll find it almost trivially easy to stay slender and healthy.

 

In the past year I've roughly doubled my daily caloric intake, including at least doubling the amount of fat I consume, while cutting out nearly all sugar and cutting way back on carbs (for instance, absolutely no pasta). My protein intake has probably gone up a little, but not dramatically. I've lost more excess fat in less time than at any other time in my life. The secret has been 30 mins of morning exercises every day--even when I don't really feel like it--and the aforementioned dietary changes.

 

My biggest problem is that I'm not really exercising enough. I already watch my intake of pasta, rice, and breads, and too much fat in my diet creates problems with some of my medications.

[mattingly]

1. Fast food: 0%, Restaurants: 5%, Home cooking: 95%

2. I do the cooking

3. Vegan (about 2 years now)

 

[Old Man]

 

1. Fast food: 40%, Restaurants: 28%, Home: 33%.  Until recently.  I'm trying real hard to flip this around, since even fast food gets expensive when you eat it every damn day.

 

2. I'd have to say I do the cooking about half the time, which pisses me off because I'm the only one with a goddamn job, and it sucks to not get home until almost seven and the kids are starving and she's all like "What are we having for dinner?" and I guess it's hot dogs again, lady, followed by an evening of her incessant whining about how we don't eat healthy.

 

A bit more seriously, what we eat is pretty conventional given that there are picky kids in the house.  Chicken and stuffing, tacos, spaghetti, spam, the occasional steak or pizza.  I recently invested in an Instant Pot® when I learned that it can cook frozen chicken in 20 minutes, but I'm still figuring out what recipes are good.  Besides the fajita recipe, that came out awesome.

 

3. I'm getting ready to pull a zslane and go low-carb, just as soon as I can figure out what I'm going to eat instead.  Low-carb is effing hard, especially at breakfast.

[Watchman Mk. IV]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

Low-carb is effing hard, especially at breakfast.

 

You can take my croissants over my cold, dead body.  (Of course, it helps to have the metabolism of a steam locomotive...)

[Cancer]

5 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

3. I'm getting ready to pull a zslane and go low-carb, just as soon as I can figure out what I'm going to eat instead.  Low-carb is effing hard, especially at breakfast.

 

You can microwave bacon and breakfast sausages.  And Spam, for that matter.  Cheeses work.  I have forgotten if yoghurt does. (Yes, we tried the low-carb thing for a while.  It didn't make much difference.)

[Ragitsu]

 I can attest that consuming carbohydrates (pizza, to be specific) shortly before sleeping helps to induce especially vivid dreams. On the other hand, this might only work for me because of the peculiarities of my brain. Regardless...putting calories into your body immediately prior to rest is a bad habit to get into.

[massey]

I've started a keto diet the last month and a half.  I was always tall and skinny, but as I approach the big 4-oh I've gained a lot of weight.  I hit 240 lbs and decided that was enough for me.  Since going on the diet (ultra low carbs, no sugar, moderate protein and high fat) I've lost over 20 lbs.  I'm going to stay on it until I'm under 200.

 

Since going on this diet, I've really changed how I eat.  It used to be that I'd cook maybe twice a week, we'd go out to eat at a sit-down restaurant maybe twice a week, and the rest was fast food.  My eating habits were strictly in the "meat and potatoes" region. We ate a lot of Mexican food, and Chinese take out, and burgers and fries.  There was a deep dish pizza place nearby as well, but sadly it closed down a couple months ago.  I've basically eaten like a college student for the past 20+ years.

 

On the diet, I cook at least 50% of my meals.  The other 50% I will grab a salad or something from a nearby place.  Lots of meals are now a piece of meat with lots of veggies cooked in olive oil and butter.  I'm actually a pretty darn good cook (and I make kickass steaks, Pittsburgh style -- charred on the outside and rare on the inside).  I'm definitely the cook in the house.  My girlfriend is kitchenly-challenged.  She's actually not that bad at it, but I'm significantly better.

 

No weird prohibitions.  Except I can't let my food touch, not anything that could transfer juices or stick to each other anyway.  That's just vomit-inducing.  Many meals in my home are eaten with sides on individual plates.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, massey said:

No weird prohibitions.  Except I can't let my food touch, not anything that could transfer juices or stick to each other anyway.  That's just vomit-inducing.  Many meals in my home are eaten with sides on individual plates.

 

I don't have this problem.  I do tend to eat my food in order though--entree, then veggies, then starch.  I don't skip around much.

[Starlord]

I do the same thing.  I finish all of one thing then move onto another.

[Ragitsu]

2 hours ago, massey said:

Except I can't let my food touch, not anything that could transfer juices or stick to each other anyway.  That's just vomit-inducing.  Many meals in my home are eaten with sides on individual plates.

 

33 minutes ago, Starlord said:

I do the same thing.  I finish all of one thing then move onto another.

 

I like to jump from serving to serving, but I usually keep them separate as i'm loading up my dish. However, I do gather bite-sized portions together if their tastes compliment one another (such as pork and wild rice or turkey and mashed potato). Usually, I have no problem with using a single plate, but I may go with the distinct plates/bowls route in certain circumstances. On the whole, however, I prefer to eat my meals with a medium-to-large size retro glass bowl; it's easier to gather up the tiny bits of salad or rice in a walled container as opposed to on a flat surface.

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Oh, and, for whatever reason, i'm deathly averse to eating multiple meats at the same time.

[Starlord]

8 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

On the whole, however, I prefer to eat my meals with a medium-to-large size retro glass bowl; 

 

My wife will only drink from glass containers.  She generally carries a glass water bottle around with her.  She will not drink from a plastic, paper or styrofoam bottle/cup and won't stop at fast food unless she has her glass water bottle because all they have are to-go cups.

[Badger]

12 hours ago, massey said:

 

No weird prohibitions.  Except I can't let my food touch, not anything that could transfer juices or stick to each other anyway.  That's just vomit-inducing.  Many meals in my home are eaten with sides on individual plates.

 

I was like that when I was little.  Eventually, I learned about gravy  (and I love eating mashed potatoes with gravy, unless the meat I am eating is fish, which weirdly I don't like gravy then).  

 

 

 

[Cancer]

The cafeterias on military bases, and in USDoD schools overseas, cured me of that nonsense in an eat-it-as-is-or-starve way.

[Starlord]

The military hammered into me the inability to eat my food slowly.

[Cancer]

“It had better be food,” he mumbled, “'cause I'm gonna eat it.”