…a snackless home which had no ready-to-eat foods?

I just learned that I grew up in an “Ingredient Household”.  Our pantry was stocked with ingredients used to make meals, and there were no ready-to-eat meals or snacks. In other words, for me to find something to snack on after school, my choices were limited to semi-sweet chocolate chips, powdered Jell-O, hot chocolate mix, maybe an olive, and sometimes peanut butter. My friends’ pantries had fruit roll ups, granola bars, Cheez-Its, and chips.  My mother did not believe in snacking between meals, and she eschewed any food product that had more than five ingredients and was mass produced.

The term ‘ingredient household’ was first added to the Urban Dictionary in 2021. However, Google Trends reports that ‘ingredient household’ was searched as early as 2004. Since early 2023, TikTok has exploded with the concept.  If you go on TikTok and use the hashtag #ingredientshousehold you will find endless comments and videos. It most certainly has gone viral, and the discussion has spread to X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram.

The TikTok hashtag has had 90 million views, and comments and videos being added all the time.  Many of the videos show food that would never have been in my ingredient household.  Examples are sliced cheese (my mother would have described this as ‘ersatz’ cheese, and she’s not wrong).  We did have cheese, but it was REAL cheese. Nacho chips – we never had a nacho chip in the house.  My mother would have viewed that as ‘snack’ food which was only going to fill me up and ruin my next meal. The same goes for tortillas.  I look at some of the snacks created by ingredient householders and envy them.  If I told my mother I was hungry, she would have told me to have a spoonful of peanut butter, or a handful of almonds.

My snackless childhood now has a label – ingredient household! I always thought I was the only person with parents who were early healthy and organic eaters, and that everyone else enjoyed the delights of fast food and what my mother termed ‘junk’ food.  Here’s what the outcome was for me:  I spent my allowance every single week on candy and junk food, and as an adult, my favorite dinner is candy bars.

There are benefits to an ingredient household and they are:

  • There is no question in my mind that it is a healthier lifestyle.
  • There is probably more focus on cooking and eating together.
  • You know exactly what’s in your food.
  • It is a more frugal way to buy and use food than relying on processed, packaged, or take-out food.
  • It saves time when planning meals since pantry items determine the menus.
  • It is better for the environment – less packaging to throw out.

Now that I am an adult, I recognize the health benefits of having an ingredient household, especially for children.  My solution was to have some of everything in the pantry, and I tried very hard to display the same level of excitement over an apple or nuts as I did over the sour belt candy. I think my three daughters would tell you that they saw right through me.

This is one of my favorite ingredient household videos.

My sister is going to laugh when she reads this article.  She’s a healthier eater than I am, and I don’t think she ended up with as much PTSD as I did from living in an ingredient household, but she will remember what our pantry contained….or didn’t contain as the case may be.