Are you an ingredient household?

Last week, in the middle of filming for the “Origin” documentary, our kids informed us (and, I suppose anyone that eventually watches the documentary) that we are an ingredient household.

Since this accusation came with no context we had no idea how to react.

Was it a compliment?

An insult?

We had absolutely no idea what this meant.

A slide from our presentation at Weston A Price | October 2023

Well, according to the Independent it turns out that it is a tik tok trend that has content creators filming themselves reliving their snackless childhoods. In fact, over the past year it has gone viral and there are over 200 million views on the hashtag #ingredienthousehold.

An ingredient household is one where there is no ready-to-eat food and, instead, simply stocked with ingredients that are used to cook larger meals.

Obviously, this does not bode well for hungry teenagers raiding the pantries in search of bags of packaged snacks.

But, I was intrigued. And, to be honest, I began to feel some connection to this label. So, I dove deeper.

We are an ingredient household

After watching a few tik tok videos (that were honestly quite comical), I realized that we are, in fact, an ingredient household. One of the videos I watched hit home well - they creator was reciting their favorite “snacks” from when they were a kid growing up in an ingredient household and their list included the following:

• cheese

• olives

• pickles

• spoonful of peanut butter

If they only added sauerkraut, homemade yogurt, pork rinds and salami they would have described our house to a “T.”

That’s it.

Those are the snack options in our house… And, now we now have a label for it, Ingredient Household…

Be proud of those ingredients

Wow! What a wonderful thing to be. If you are an ingredient household, be proud. After reflecting on what an ingredient household really means for your family and snacking in your home I realized it allows you to:

• remove highly processed foods from the house

• remove all industrial nut and seed oils from the house (which are prevalent in almost all processed snack foods)

• make sure everyone in the house knows exactly what they are putting in their mouths!

• minimize snacking and that is a very very good thing!

• instill value on real food and what it takes to create it

• place more importance on family meals

Why be an ingredient household?

If you are an ingredient house that also means you must be doing a lot of scratch cooking. And, that means you have the ability to

• create a home that cooks together

• control the ingredients used in your food

• participate in a shorter, more deliberate food chain

• Create meaningful meals from both nourishing and emotional perspectives

So, are you an ingredient household? If so, fantastic - drop a note below and let us know!!

You should wear the label like a badge of honor!