Stupid "food" products? Highly unhealthy ones? Need your help, please.

[xfundy]

58. It's kinda sad, kinda funny.

Having thought a great deal about packaged food, and seeing recipes in modern cookbooks calling for them–cake mix, soup mix, etc., I looked through some older recipe books and found lots of examples. Of course many of the cookbooks were used as advertising premiums by packaged-food manufacturers, but back then, most of the grown ingredients were necessarily organic. Today, of course, we have to pay more to get less–less chemicals, pesticides, etc., but enforcement became so lax during the Bush Error that we really don't have any idea what's really in any food we buy today.

On seasoning packets, etc: never saw one where salt wasn't the first ingredient.

I cook, from scratch, for my dad (89) seven days a week, and so have paid special attention to fats and sodium. Have been paying attention and am amazed at the vast amounts of salt in everything, especially canned food. He asks for some kinds of canned soup, canned tomatoes, etc, but I can't give him that much sodium and sure as hell don't want to eat it myself. Even things like beef broth have salt listed in the first two ingredients, unless you pay a LOT more.

He also refuses to eat my homemade spaghetti sauce, preferring the canned/jarred junk, which is loaded with salt and sugar and costs many times what I make costs.