10 Foods Gen-X Treats Like Delicacies That Younger Generations Think Belong In The Trash
Getty Images | Unsplash Truth be told, Generation X was the first generation to embrace convenience foods. If you could nuke it, pull-tab it, unwrap it, or pop it in the oven, we'd eat it.
None of that proper food preparation. Peel a potato? Oh, the horrors! It's easier to dump a bag of Ore-Ida tater tots onto a baking sheet for 20 minutes.
The middle school cafeteria is now serving up scalding hot potato bits in your very own kitchen! Boil pasta and make sauce from tomato paste? What is this, slave labor? Chef Boyardee to the rescue!
When our mothers started watching Dynasty and Knots Landing, it was all over. Women started working and asking for those pesky rights, demanding equal pay (still asking!), and wearing linebacker-style shoulder pads. The 1980's kitchen and the family dinner went down in flames. Now, it was quick and easy foods on a TV tray table with dad while mom closed the store.
No one batted an eye at the ingredients, but we should've. How can an individually wrapped yellow cream-filled sponge cake last until Artemis III lands on Mars?
Because it's chock full of additives and preservatives. Chevy Chase wasn't far off when he talked about The Crunch Enhancer, "a non-nutritive cereal varnish" he'd developed in the all-popular Christmas Vacation.
They say what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, or sicker. Here are a few of my favs.
Here are the foods Gen-X treats like delicacies that younger generations think belong in the trash:
1. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
Let's start at the top. If you weren't eating this staple box of pasta, you're not really Generation X. There was and still is no substitute for the packet of bright yellow cheese powder. Coupled with the fat of milk and butter, you have the mecca of all convenience meals. And yuck, Velveeta Shells and Cheese. We all tried it, but we were conditioned to eat chemical powder. Nice Try. Fun fact: I bought my annual box this week because sometimes I like to act like I'm 12.
2. Swanson's TV Dinners
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Probably the most complete convenience meal of them all. It came in a neatly segregated foil tray that got as hot as Hades. A main, two sides, and a dessert. Hopefully the brownie and not the lava-hot apple crumble. Because apple crumble is for old people. My favorite was fried chicken. One time, I insulted my grandmother, whose culinary specialty was homemade fried chicken. As my 10-year-old self raved about how good Swanson's was, she said, with her brazen Austrian attitude, "Oh, that's good, then I don't need to make mine for you anymore." Wow, grandma.
3. Twinkies (and every other snack cake)
Individually wrapped snack cakes were every kid's jam. God forbid your Snoopy lunchbox had an apple; you'd be crucified by the powers of the lunchroom. Hostess, Drake's, and Little Debbie had the market cornered on preservative-filled snack cakes, and we all loved them. My personal favorites were Devil Dogs, but a foil-wrapped Ding Dong was like a beacon of light in the school cafeteria, and no, that's not a metaphor. Fun fact: Twinkies have been known to last until the second coming of Jesus.
4. Chef Boyardee
With the twist of a can opener and a 2-quart Ecko pan, I too was now a chef. Beef Ravioli was the most bougie thing in a can. Meat stuffed in a light, fluffy pasta pillow carried me through many days of skipping class in my dorm room at Texas Tech University. It claims to have no additives or preservatives, but I'm not sure what enzyme-modified cheese is. I just know it tastes really good.
5. Hi-C Fruit Drink
Hi-C was like "rich people's" Kool-Aid. I roused my mom into buying it because, "Look! It's 10% fruit juice!" I started in sales at age 7. Never mind the high fructose corn syrup AND sucralose inside. The full day's supply of Vitamin C will counteract that insulin resistance you developed in your 40's. Did you know you can't call a juice "juice" if it isn't 100% juice? That's why so many of your favs are called "drink" or end in "ade" or "aid." And in most states, juice is tax-exempt, and drinks are taxable like soda. Just some random knowledge from a girl who worked for too many years in the grocery industry.
6. Shake N’ Bake
Saying "and I helped" was every kid's dream. To shake a few pork chops in a plastic bag with some overpriced, over-packaged breadcrumbs meant you were one step away from culinary school. How dumb were we? All I know is if you were having pork chops, you'd better sure be having apple sauce as a side.
7. Hot Pockets
When these babies went Gen-X viral, I was working at a grocery store, and this solved all of my lunchtime worries. Cheap and cheerful, that flaky crust was toasty warm as you removed the “crisping sleeve” from the nasty breakroom microwave. That first bite released the subpar taste of ham surrounded by a cheesy sauce that was the same temperature as molten lava. God forbid the crust had a hole in it, or you'd be subject to third-degree cheese burns. And for the love of mud, let it cool down before diving in, or you'd burn your esophagus.
8. Hamburger Helper
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AKA, laziness in a box. There wasn't much to this product other than a big dose of "I can't be bothered to learn how to cook". Open a package of pasta that you could buy separately for .50, add in ground beef and a packet of powdered spices and flavors, which most moms already had in the kitchen, given that the 70s were the era of the wall-hanging spice rack. You could've saved that $1.99 and made your own, but then again, wouldn't that be the equivalent of your mom telling you, "No, we can't go to McDonald's because I can make hamburgers at home."?
9. Oreos
This cookie was like Gen-X crack. You could bite it, twist it, scrape it, lick it, and it all tasted good. That lard-filled center was best when you scraped a bunch of it off multiple cookies and rolled it into a ball. I may or may not know this from experience. Then there was the issue of the dense chocolate cookie getting stuck in your molars. Never, ever brush your teeth immediately after eating Oreos. I may or may not also know this from experience.
10. Pop-Tarts
The breakfast of youth everywhere. Calling it a "toaster pastry" always felt like a stretch. It had sprinkles and molten hot jam inside. Unless, of course, you reached your 20s and felt like you could buy whatever flavor you wanted (Chocolate Vanilla Frosted) because you had a job and this was adulting. I literally ate Pop-Tarts and a Dr. Pepper for breakfast for years before realizing this might be why I was not the healthiest girl on the block.
And what heathen buys an unfrosted Pop-Tart? You might as well eat shredded wheat.
Honorable mentions:
11. Manwich
I never ate this garbage, but when I talked to Sherene Jensen about compiling this list, she immediately screamed "Sloppy Joe's!" at me, so I felt I should give it a shout-out. Nothing but a can of slop that made burgers impossible to hold and eat without looking like a crime scene.
12. Red Dye #2
This isn't a food or a food group, but if you were alive in the 70s, you might remember this overhyped chemical ban scare. In 1969, scientists at the Moscow Institute of Nutrition found increased tumors among rats that were fed red dye No. 2. Thus, leading Americans to panic, and Mars responded by taking all of the red M&M's out of the packages for close to ten years, even though they never used red #2 in their product. I think the truth was that for it to affect humans, you needed to bathe or swim in an amount equal to the elevator scene in The Shining.
Once again, I know I've missed some of your favorites as I did in my latest Gen-X Make Up Tutorial. I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to tell me your favorite, convenient, and tasteless foods that likely are leading us all to have a plethora of preservative-filled diseases in our AARP years.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go enjoy a Tab and a Virginia Slims.
Kristen Crisp is the founder of Not Even Wine With Dinner. A community/mission for those looking for peer support with sobriety, self-esteem, mental health, aging, and all the things that come with being human. She is also a frequent writer on Medium under the handle @notevenwinewithdinner.
