Ultra-processed foods are energy-dense and ready-to-eat food items including things like processed breakfast meats, packaged snacks, and ice cream as well as artificially sweetened drinks.
how about freezing leftovers? if you have an even remotely new freezer it should work just dandy without much quality degradation.
relatedly is frozen ingredients, especially stuff like peas that you can just stir into your meal and let that reheat them. Very easy way to add some nutrients to your diet.
The problem is that OCD is irrational. Once something has been opened, I literally can’t eat it again without my brain going into an obsession about getting food poisoning or something.
My brain will be like, “I dunno, what if the power went out while you weren’t home. Or while you were asleep? Who knows if the food is still good?”
I literally can’t keep anything around that requires temperature control, so I mostly get what I’m going to eat that day. It’s really frustrating and exhausting.
I won’t pretend to understand what you go through but I’m strongly sympathetic.
Question: from your perspective, would taking a course or two about food safety, so that a person thoroughly understands the science behind food spoiling and becoming toxic, would that help in any way with some of the thoughts/fears about eating leftovers? I fully expect you to say no, and I would definitely believe you. But I’m still curious about your perspective.
I took several in college, which made the issue much worse tbh. Now I know for sure that if x food product can spoil in a time frame that I’ll not be around to verify that my refrigerator was working the whole time, then I just can’t do it.
how about freezing leftovers? if you have an even remotely new freezer it should work just dandy without much quality degradation.
relatedly is frozen ingredients, especially stuff like peas that you can just stir into your meal and let that reheat them. Very easy way to add some nutrients to your diet.
The problem is that OCD is irrational. Once something has been opened, I literally can’t eat it again without my brain going into an obsession about getting food poisoning or something.
My brain will be like, “I dunno, what if the power went out while you weren’t home. Or while you were asleep? Who knows if the food is still good?”
I literally can’t keep anything around that requires temperature control, so I mostly get what I’m going to eat that day. It’s really frustrating and exhausting.
I won’t pretend to understand what you go through but I’m strongly sympathetic.
Question: from your perspective, would taking a course or two about food safety, so that a person thoroughly understands the science behind food spoiling and becoming toxic, would that help in any way with some of the thoughts/fears about eating leftovers? I fully expect you to say no, and I would definitely believe you. But I’m still curious about your perspective.
I took several in college, which made the issue much worse tbh. Now I know for sure that if x food product can spoil in a time frame that I’ll not be around to verify that my refrigerator was working the whole time, then I just can’t do it.