I wonder if I am sometimes just a picky spoiled wench, but the longer I diet, the more I find myself eschewing the low fat / low sugar versions of food. Low fat cheese, low fat sour cream, low fat mayonnaise (honestly, I eat mayonnaise so little I really shouldnt list it), butter substitutes, egg beaters..the list goes on and on.
I refuse to eat these things. For me, I have come to the realization, that I would rather simply cut the portion in half, or do without the item completely, than use something that is close, but not quite the same. Sour cream is a biggie for me. 1 tablespoon of regular sour cream has 30 calories and 2.5 g of fat. 1 tablespoon of low fat sour cream has 15 calories and 1g of fat. To me, if I want sour cream, I want sour cream, and I can find room for the extra 15 calories. The low fat stuff just doesnt taste the same, and the yogurt option is absolutely out. I like yogurt. It is a regular part of my diet, but it is NOT sour cream, and to my mind is not a viable substitute.
I think I have just reached a point in my eating habits where if I can't fit the real thing into my budget, I would prefer to do without, and have something else that does fit in rather than settling. It seems to be working for me. So am I just a picky wench, who has gotten set in her ways the older she gets, or is this a good thing? I really can't decide.

I will add that I do eat low fat/low cal salad dressings. Bottled dressing is still just bottled dressing, and the flavor of the low fat stuff is different than the regular, but I like it just fine. There are some "low" versions I do eat, but not of "real" food.

I think it's a great thing. You seem better prepared to continue to eat healthy, since you know how to eat "regular" things in small portions. I'd rather sacrifice a bit on taste, and eat more-- which concerns me. So. yay for you!

woohoo! perfect, imho.

I don't eat a single food that's been altered to make it low-cal, low-carb, low-fat, whatever. I always think, what on earth has been chemically done to it to achieve that? ewwww. I'm with you, I'd rather have tiny portions of real, honest food than a bucket of processed.

Oh, definitely! In fact, I could down right get on a pretty big soap box about it.

I am convinced that the whole "low fat" craze made at least half of us fat!! Low fat potato chips? Sugar free ice cream? No thank you! Any time they take something out of a natural food, it is no longer a natural food!! And it is generally replaced with something else. If it's low fat, it's high sugar. If it's sugar free, it's either high fat or has artificial sweeteners or both.

I am a purist. Real sugar is only 15 calories per teaspoon. I can handle that. I'll go a step further and search out these foods in their most pure form when I can. Peanut butter? I'll make it myself. I will no longer eat the jarred stuff. Also, I prefer almond butter now.

I've learned I don't need mayo. Sometimes I don't even need salad dressing! I don't need butter on my corn on the cob. Soy milk is not only delicious but I prefer it in my cereal, and when I use soy milk there's no need for sugar on my cereal.

Yep. This way of eating is something I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life so only eating foods I like. Now in some cases I not only like the low or non-fat version, I prefer them (skim milk, non-fat yogurt, and lowfat icecream long before I started the diet). But can't stand aspartame-sweetened yogurts even though seems like most of the "fun" flavors use it so I pretty much stick to plain and vanilla that's been sweetened with sugar.

Another rant! LOL! I'd love a chocolate custard flavored yogurt, but I'll stick with strawberry, blueberry or vanilla Greek over artificial sweeteners.

I am right with you folks about eating the real thing instead of a low-fat or fat-free substitute! The "unabridged" version of a food often has so much richness and flavor that I can use less of it and enjoy a lot more taste. The worst low-cal offender, to me, is cheese--there's just no substitute for a good Gruyere or the sharpness of real fresh-grated Parmesan. I'd rather go cheeseless than eat a knockoff version of a cheese.

The one exception, for me, is Skinny Cow ice creams in the individual serving containers. Those are gooooood.

For me I tend to want a certain amount of whatever it is, particularly in cooking when I just need to have X cups or grams of this or that ingredient to make the proportions come out right. So I choose lite versions of foods that I am OK with (or even prefer) over the "real" versions - a good example is skim milk (I never have whole milk anymore) and other low-fat dairy.

But, there are some things that I would prefer to have "real" - e.g. sugar. I can't stand the taste of artificial sweeteners. So I'll just sacrifice something else knowing that I will be having more calories from sugar if I'm getting something like a vanilla latte with real syrup.

For me it just depends on what the food is - some things I feel fine choosing lite, others I don't. But either way I will probably end up having the same amount, so I just look at the "lite" choices as a calorie deficit bonus, and the "real" choices as a relative calorie indulgence.

I'm the same way- if I want ranch I'm going to have my ranch! I have tried them and after I finished the bottle I was done. I don't drown things in ranch so I think it's okay to have my serving size once in a while.

I also eat low carb so I don't mind having something that's full fat now and then.

I'm living and working in Germany now and the supermarkets here are SO different. You can't even buy skim milk - the lowest percentage is 1.5! All the cheese/dairy products are full fat.... there is no fake sugar products. The whole diet food industry here is totally absent. The normal slice of cheese here is gouda and contains 150 calories!

So, for me to stay low-calories, the 'diet' foods to make it easier aren't even an option. I just eat tons of veggies to fill me up. I also use a nice mustard as a condiment.

I was cheering you on right up until the soy milk. What is more natural or less processed about soy milk than cow's milk?

Which is not to say you shouldn't drink it if you like it - I have no problem with it, though I'm not crazy about the stuff myself - I just don't quite get what it's doing in this post, with all of this wonderful talk about real, natural, no-processed-substitution-for-the-real-thing foods. What am I missing?

On the topic, I have always held this feeling strongly as well. I love cheese to death - good, real cheese. I can't stand non-fat cheese and would rather eat no cheese at all (or very rarely at all) than eat something called "cheese" that is a bland, rubbery approximation of something I love.

I don't even really care for non-fat yogurt that much - most of it is watery, gelatinous, and too sugary. If it weren't for non-fat Greek yogurt, the only non-fat yogurt that is remotely palatable to me, I wouldn't eat yogurt at all.

Salad dressings - never been a big fan anyhow, and certainly never saw the appeal of commercial fat-free dressing. I dress my salads with salt, freshly-ground pepper, and red wine vinegar - sometimes a little olive oil too. But I did the same when I was getting fat, too.

depends on the product. I don't mind lower fat sour cream, I prefer diet pop to regular, low fat puddings and such are great, ice milk can't be so bad if dairy queen built an empire on it.

no way will I waste my time with low fat cheese though.

It depends on the product for me too. I grew up eating and drinking non-fat dairy products, so full-fat or even low-fat tastes awful to me (except for cheese. if it is cheese, I like it XD). I also prefer the taste of margarine/butter-substitutes over butter because again, that's what I grew up with. I also just happen to prefer almond milk for drinking over just about any other milk available, plus it doesn't make me all congested like cow's milk does.

If anything has an artificial sweetener in it, though, I won't eat it, because it tastes too chemical-y to me. But when I eat non-fat Greek yoghurt, non-fat sour cream, etc., I'm not settling. Eating the full-fat versions would be settling for something I don't really like.

Soymilk= soybeans that have been soaked, ground, boiled, and strained. The soymilk is the resulting milky liquid. That's it. There's really not much mysterious or questionable about its origins or how it's made/processed. Really easy to make at home, too.

I SO agree!!! Low calorie is a scam. Of course, I bought into that scam myself when I lost weight about 10 years ago eating low calorie foods. But Low calories just means that they add either a lot of water or a filler to the regualr calorie food so that you have the same size serving size, but half the calories.

The funniest "low" calorie offender is Smart Ones. They have the same calorie count as an 8oz Stouffers Lasagna for the same amount of food but only a fourth of the taste. Yet people buy it up. Cest La vie. I am nearing 50lbs lost. I should be there in about a week. And I did it with butter, maple syrup, real cheese, real sugar, real fat. I am almost 98% real food.