No salt or pepper, Hec?

The 5 ingredients thing is a rule of thumb for store labels. It wouldn't apply to a salad where you can easily identify the ingredients, or anything homemade where you would most likely be able to identify the ingredients.

Just say, "Watch out for processed food" and maybe describe what processed food actually is and have that be your guideline.

That's what he's trying to do. The great grandparent guideline is one way to help you do that.

ETA: He actually provides an alternative for the "great-grandmother rule", which is "don't eat anything incapable of rotting".

A Gun and A Girl: A Girl and Her Gun (The Film)

Director Cathryne Czubek is making a full-length feature documentary about girls and guns, specifically the significantly growing number of teen girls who love guns (and are damn good at using them). Embedded above is the short version of the doc from Current, which is still in progress -- and OMG they have the prettiest guns! Rainbow grain rifles, shot wearing turquoise nail polish. I especially like the parts where they talk about how boys at school don't take them seriously -- and then they do. These young women clearly have no issues with equality or empowerment.

So tofu and edamame, he may not have eaten, and may not have recognized as real food, but I'm down with them!

My grandfather grew soybeans (and my uncle still does) and it wasn't until the past year or so that my mother actually ate edamame. I'm dubious as to whether it would be a 'food' item at my uncle's (though one xmas, he did send us a tin of various seasoned, dried soybeans.)

No salt or pepper, Hec?

Shit! Pepper.

Don't really need salt with feta cheese and ham in it.

Maybe next time green onions - 'cuz then I'd have a green vegetable in it.

When it comes to green vegetables about the only thing I eat with regularity is salad.

I do like broccoli, green beans, cabbage (depending on how it was cooked), asparagus and artichokes but they don't get made very often. That requires A Whole Extra Cooking Pan/Pot. And since I'm often cooking three separate meals (since JZ, Emmett and I have fairly little overlap in our preferences) that's one too many.

So instead: salad. Which is fine because we have lots of tasty greens out here.

which is "don't eat anything incapable of rotting".

hah! I like that one!

Ooh, fellow Pioneer Woman fans! One of these days when I'm feeling careless of my cholesterol, I want to try this: [link]

I think the great-grandmother thing gets taken literally and snarked on is because even though you know what he means, it's impossible not to think of your individual great-grandmothers and how they cooked. At least, it is for me. Say, "Don't eat anything that wouldn't have been recognizable as food by some cook, somewhere, 100 years ago," and I nod in agreement (while still eating my share of over-processed food because I'm too busy to live up to my own principles). But say "your great-grandmother," and I can't help but thinking, "What, cook with lots of lard and boil all the vegetables into tasteless, disgustingly mushy submission? And recoil in horror from 'foreign' foods?" Because my mind is in that specific place.

Actually, he probably does mean my great-grandmother, who lived about 150 years ago in Lyon, the culinary capital of France. But that's not really helpful for most people.

I think he'd be better off picking a time period, since there are more and more adults whose great grandparents ate Jello with KoolWhip on it.

don't eat anything incapable of rotting

Like it. I keep trying to define process food - and the best I can come up with is food with extra ingredients ( excluding preservatives), or things I would not use in my kitchen. However, It doesn't mean I don't have processed food - but I do try and keep it to a small amount and as little extra as possible.

I also have a rule, don't eat anything that isn't tasty. There are lots of store bought cookies/ cakes etc- that really aren't very good. and I like most veggies and fruit.

I keep trying to figure out why we don't get that many green veggies in our diet. We like them, but it is the part of the meal I am most likely to skip.