E17Avenue

Anyone else here a food snob? How long did it take you to become one? Do you feel you wouldn't have cared so much if you'd stayed at home? For me, the absolute tripe they put into processed foods over here was the straw on the back. I can eat a can of Heinz Beanz like the best of them, but the ingredients here take the concept just too far. In the last three or four years we have:

Switched to farm fresh eggs - they taste like the ones back home, rather than stale nothing.
Switched to creamline milk - 2% - as it seems to allow the taste to come through if it's not homogenised. We have had to buy homogenised milk from the same place and it's not as good.
Switched to local butter - the same farm as the milk - the taste is superior to anything in the shops, where the butter seems to be more watery. I actually think we get just as much butter per $.
Started buying organic, fresh or raw ingredients.

The list could go on and on...

Oh and we love watching Good Eats. Got the entire series on the network drive and we refer to it on a regular basis. Alton Brown has taught us so much about HOW to cook, and how NOT to cook (like why my white sauce would occasionally clump up). Thanks to him I can make my own brown gravy without Bisto and my Welsh rarebit is outstanding if I do say so myself.

Sally Redux

I don't think that's 'snobby', just good sense

The rubbish food has powerful lobbies behind it, unfortunately.

Speedwell

I used to belong to an organic farm co-op where I had a box delivered every week. I couldn't close to eat everything in the box, since I was low-carbing and it was always full of potatoes. The best thing, though, was being able to request the daikon radish tops; they're the best green I've ever had and I wish I could get more this year; they came free because otherwise they would be given away to pig farmers. We get excellent sweet onions and fabulous grapefruit; this is Texas. Lots of people don't know there are a great many full-on, producing food farms within the city limits of Houston.

The sheer variety is ridiculous, I can go to the Asian supermarket for cheap high-quality fish, fresh innards with a high turnover, fresh soy products, and many things for which I can't read the packaging.. the Mexican butcher for short ribs and cheap, fresh jalapenos... the Indian grocery for delicacies such as tindora, karela, fresh curry leaves, and low glycemic rice (of all things).

When we move back home I won't miss any of it. Nor will I miss the sour, tasteless, styrofoam apples, the overaged leeks, or the inferior cheese. I'll still be able to get mooli and curry leaves, jalapenos and good fruit. I learned to cook with UK ingredients while on business trips. I prefer it.

I never used Bisto for a brown gravy in my life until I met my husband. Since I'm a Yank and all.

tonrob

Hell yes!

For instance I never eat those nasty crap crappy American ramen noodles.

Only proper British Pot Noodles for me, hand imported (by me) in suitcases with business class luggage tags. No expense spared when it comes to what goes into my body, I'm telling you.

Southy_SWFC

Since i moved here I've pretty much become a vegetarian. The only times I eat meat are when it's organic or when I'm drunk.
We do the same as the opening post with eggs and as many veg as we can. These days we only have almond milk

The things Speedwell mentions sound great, sadly there isn't that variety in Augusta Maine

Karrie72

Make the hour trip down to Portland, choices aplenty!

I have also become a total food snob. I've noticed my inferior food quality radar system is always on high alert out of necessary. I shop the local farmers markets for produce and meat, eggs then head to Trader Joes for the other bits and bobs. My husband thinks I'm
Neurotic.

AmerLisa

Southy_SWFC

I'm lucky that my wife agrees with me on the food snobbery but when I tell people at work they think I'm being a tool

Karrie72

My in laws up that way feel the same way too...some ideas are best kept to yourself.

Weeze

I didn't use to think I was a food snob. A few school events where parents have provided the food have proved otherwise. Hi, my name is Weeze and I am very much a food snob. I only eat food provided by parents I know and even then, I'm picky.

kins

The ony food I really moaned about in the UK was the veg that supermarkets sell - almost all tasteless and stale. I actually think the veg in grocery stores here is generally better.

Other than that, I have become a food snob in an almost identical way to the OP.

Jan Alaska

It took me a while to work out where the extra 30lbs came from, turned out unpronounceable additives, preservatives and HFCS were the culprit. Since stopping eating 'crap' food and going back to basics including herd-share non pasteurised, hormone and antibiotic free milk life has been so much better.
If that makes me a food snob so be it.

Oh and you should try keeping chickens, the eggs are devine !

BEVS

That's so true.

Tarkak9

I hate the 'foodies' who are pretendtobe epicureans just because they watch the food channel or something of that nature.
I'm really starting to notice that my metabolism is slower and as a result certainly am more picky to what I am eating, albeit in smaller portions too. I don't eat much dairy, nor many eggs, and have leaned towards alot more fruit and veg, soups, white meat and more fish. Certainly my general mood differs.

someone sent mr this interesting photography project which someone did - a week's worth of groceries from around the world. Granted it may be slanted but I think it does show the atypical household ... begs the question is this what they consume in a week??

Bob

Can't afford to be.

Do make a effort to get the best we can afford though and also know when/where is best to get the best value for fruit/meat/veg and usually consists of a couple different grocery stores at different times and in the summer, a couple of different market/farm stands.

It's a hassle though.