Macaroni and Cheese Survival
Food trends are amusing and are usually propagated by the moneyed class because it dabbles in all kinds of ‘diets.’ Kale was on sale last week at a local grocery store. It was a trend for some years and was expensive.
Eating healthy is good for us just like mama said: ‘eat your greens.’ I didn’t like going to grandma’s place out of town because she had a supermarket: her fields. We thought she was poor because she didn’t give us bacon, sausages, bologna and potato chips. She only cooked a yard chicken when one of us were off to college.
The majority of people in this world don’t eat trends. They eat what is in the backyard, if they are lucky enough to have some land. In cities, food is what the pocket can afford, such as baked beans and food from a box like mac n cheese and indomie noodles.
Indomie noodles, like most things that come from China are cheap and one, two, three you have a meal. They have a lot of salt but few people in countries like Nigeria worry about that. They are so popular in some cities, they have dethroned nutritious indigenous food like abacha, which is made from cassava.
In Europe and north America, macaroni and cheese comes from a box and is equally salty, but it is sometimes the only alternative for many low income families. It’s a myth that only students eat boxed mac n cheese.
The salt can kill a fly but when you’re broke, you buy what you can afford and forget about the sodium.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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