Skip to main content

I hate being trendy part 3 - "Chicken" for the kids

     It's a classic family scene, perhaps going back to the first family - Greg and his wife Oola as they tried to get their kids to eat veggies.  I can hear it now: "Your mother Oola spent all day slaving in the hot sun gathering those berries and green twig things for you!   She almost got trampled by a giant ground sloth!  So no one leaves the rock till they finish their green twig things!"

     So it was that in mind that I decided to try Yummy Dino Buddies.  Originally made by a Canadian company but now owned by Purdue, these are being marketed as Vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian friendly, however not all of their products under the Yummy Dino Buddies name are meatless, so let the buyer beware.  


    It's up to the indivdual consumer to buy items that they feel comfortable with, however I believe that the only way to move these companies towards an environmentally friendlier product is by supporting their efforts to make plant based products.   With this in mind, the item that I tried was the meatless veggie nuggets.  The company also makes a meatless plant based (soy) product.

    They are supposedly healthy as the nuggets are made with all-natural ingredients and no preservatives and dish up 3 grams of protein and 600 milligrams of omega-3 fatty acids per serving.   Keep in mind that a serving in this case is only 4 nuggets!

    Lets be honest, what kid (or adult) is going to be satisfied with a serving of only 4 nuggets?

    So if you are an average kid (or adult) then your going to eat probably closer to 8 - 12 nuggets, which in turn in going to increase the amount of sodium and saturated fats.  I guess that is the drawback for eating a processed food.  

       
Their are several ways you can prepare them and for my "taste test" I made them two ways.  The first was in a conventional oven.  The second method was an air fryer. 

     I actually wish I had something...anything good to say about using a conventional oven.  Well one good thing is that the packing clearly states that the plant the food is processed in does not process any eggs.   Nothing about dairy or meat but its a step in the right direction.

    While the nuggets themselves are not bad - they are a combination of mostly carrots and cauliflower - they don't hold up very well either.  While some nuggets tended to be soft and mushy, a few were more firm.   If you are looking for something that is more like "chicken" then the soft, mushy ones are simply not going to do the trick.

    That being said, if you were to put the crispier firmer ones in front of someone that didn't know they were plant based, they would not know the difference.   The soggier ones however taste of cauliflower, and that is something that I don't find appealing (although for the record, I'm not a fan of cauliflower to begin with).

    The air fried version actually were "firmer and crispier." but honestly don't have much taste to them.  Frankly they kind of remind me of a cheaply produced fast food item which is mostly breading.   Don't get me wrong, their is some nutritional value to them...but overall I would pass on these.  

    Keep in mind that I'm a 55 year old man that never had kids of his own and the closest thing I have to grand kids live some 610 miles from me; but if you do have kids and want to move in the direction of a more plant based lifestyle, this could be an option.    I just don't think it's a great one.

    **As noted before, I receive no compensation from any company for any links or products mentioned.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.  You are also invited to join my Facebook page and leave comments directly to the blog.   Thank you.**


Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

Letting a small parcel of land go wild.

       In many ways, I want to make this home of ours into a gem.  We have an idea of what we want to paint, what we want to update and what we want to replace completely.     If the weather cooperates, this morning at the time of writing there is a heavy thunderstorm moving through, I hope to add some more rocks to my "Dry Creek" project and start/finish the often delayed fire pit build. Taken from a window during a storm     Well we did not plant a garden this year for a variety of reasons; we do have the room in front of the house for a wonderful and varied garden.   It's also the part of our property that gets the most sun and has a very fine slope away from the home so water can flow out towards our road.     We may never be self sufficient but we can be a little smarter and environmental conscious on what we do, and how we do things.   This is why I am thinking about letting so...
Post a Comment
Read more

Taking care of my mental health. A brief hiatus is in order

  Without going into to much detail, I decided to leave my job at the beginning of September.  There are many reasons for this but for some time I've been feeling that my current position has not been the best fit for either the company or myself.    I did not feel like the company was listening to my concerns nor do I feel like they really cared for their employee's; despite a killer benefit package that I'll never see again.  Their technology was at least 20 years behind everyone else and  I believe that they really didn't have the best interests of their customers at heart. It's not all their fault.  I'm to blame too as it seems that I've not been living up to their goals and needs for the last year, and this is one of the reasons it's taken me so long to write this blog post. In addition to trying to find a new job before the end of the month, I've been dealing with anxiety and a mild case of depressio n.  Writing a blog that deals with ...
1 comment
Read more

In praise of the simple pumpkin. It has a lot of potential other than pies.

As I write this the temperature is climbing.  We have a window or two open, knowing that soon enough we will be shutting up the house for the next three months or so we can protect ourselves and our cats against the onslaught of winter.   Our wood stove burned overnight to take the chill out of the air and I found myself buying new boots and gloves and driving home with the windows down. This is the nature of autumn in Western Pennsylvania and as I sip on my pumpkin flavored coffee, I cannot help but praise the fruit of the season, and yes it is a fruit, the simple pumpkin. A few things are still growing in our garden, the last of the herbs and tomatoes...a stray pepper or two that needs to be picked.  Yet I find myself interested in growing pumpkins next year after realizing their potential and that they are high in nutritional value.   It's easy to forget in our modern world just how easy we have it as compared to our great grandparents and their grandparents....
1 comment
Read more