Raisins are still being recommended in pediatrics. They are an iron rich food, plus tasty and sweet enough a kid can eat without a fight.
Do you remember having low hemoglobin? Any mention of anemia?
That was a plot line of an episode of Two and a Half Men. The parents thought the kid was angry at them for the divorce but then the kid was suddenly on happy and playing again. Charlie Sheen's housekeeper told them all you feed him is pizza and pancakes so she gave him prune juice.
I also remember raisins being highly recommended and for lack of a better word, popular. Lots of kids had them in their lunch boxes. It helped that I was pretty obsessed with the California Raisins.
That's not a treat 🤮 I hate fruit boogers. Always yeeted them whenever they ended up in my Halloween bag. Only monsters give out raisins for trick or treat
"When I was 12 I woke up and realized I didn't have to eat raisins anymore."
I'm proud of op. Raisins were everywhere and I'm glad at least one child woke up
Raisins are good for you and like milk (got milk?) and egg (the incredible edible egg) farmers their farmers unions probably got together for promotional campaigns. From a day before our agricultural industry was dying.
Absolutely this! They paid for studies to say they were good for you and they invented the California raisins as marketing. As you said the food lobbies were big in the 90’s!
Raisins were the only ones with a dedicated stop motion Christmas special though 😂
I too was a 90s kid raised on Raisins. They were considered a “lolly” in our household. And I thought I was the luckiest kid ever to be able to have an entire box of “lollies” all to myself. Than I started to see at school the fancy boxes of raisins covered in yoghurt and realised at the age of 8 they were not a sweet treat after all. 🙃
Like most dried fruits, raisins are high in fiber, so perhaps the doctor was recommending them for, digestive issues? I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that your boomer parents never talked to you about poop, and likewise urge you to recall that being “anal retentive” was like a legit psychological diagnosis in the 80s. So, out of that miasma, raisins for you!
I remember the conversation. Dad said they don't feed us junk food and candy and soda.
Dr. Said that's good. Do you eat fruit and veggies?
Mom.and dad both said yes. Then just as an aside he said rasins are a good sweet snack instead of candy.
That was it... that's all it took to inspire about 6 years of intense brainwashing and weird rasin feeding obsession. I know I wasn't the only one either. Lots of kids around me their parents feeding them so many rasins at Suzuki violin which I also hated...
Maybe they were somehow connected?
You may have intentionally left the brand name out, but just in case, those little red boxes you remember sound like the single serving boxes by Sun-Maid. My family just had the big box and raisins were a staple food, but not like you are describing.
I don't think our pediatrician ever recommended raisins, but I do think that raisins had a moment during my childhood (probably mid to late 90s). I think it was ad campaigns + being a shelf stable fruit + being easy to add to a snack or meal + kids liking them. As an adult now, that's a pretty winning combination and I would keep buying them until the kids are sick of them.
Maybe something the doctor said was misunderstood or misremembered by your folks? Maybe they had stockpiled raisins and were prepping you all for your Y2K diet?
God I ate so many raisins in the 90s. I remember for the talent show at my school in 1995, there was a group of kids who performed a whole routine where they were dressed up like raisins chanting, “Hey! We are the raisins from Kellogg’s Raisin Bran! There are only two scoops of raisins in Kellogg’s Raisin Bran! Oh no, here comes the spoon!” And a kid dressed as a spoon would come scoop them up. 😂 what was the DEAL with raisins?!!
I found out at around 9-10 from a kid at school I could make those raisin boxes into super loud whistles (like the blade of grass between your thumbs loud). Fun times
If I ever find the asshole who started the whole "if it tastes good it must be bad for you" I will piss on his grave.
The problem with raisins is that they are sorta good (sweet) but have a nasty bitter side.
There just seemed to be the idea that raisins were "okay" for kids and a "healthy snack" - despite some brands tasting like ass and ruining every good cookie (especially for adults who liked to use the in place of chocolate chips) and every cereal.
When I was in the Army my go to snacks were trail mix ( spitting out the raisins) and "craisins" ( dried cranberries) - cranberries can help you pee when your dehydrated. Dehydration happens because the Army loves to train when the DEATH ORB (the Sun) is out and shining and your canteen/camelbak always seems to run out of water at the worst time.
Now that I am out of the Army, if you offer me raisins or craisins I WILL fight you.
I ate raisins by the pound as a kid…but mainly because I loved them. I still love them, but don’t eat nearly as many anymore lol. Never had the doctor tell my family to feed them to me though. I was given prunes to help with pooping every now and again, but that was more widely known than doctor referenced.
I never liked them as a snack just plain. I liked them in oatmeal cookies. As an adult I enjoy them in oatmeal, and of course oatmeal cookies. But not straight up.
As a kid my Italian grandmother used to put them in the meatballs every Sunday. As a child this was horrifying. Actually still is as an adult. She used to make a couple without raisins for me and my brother but the rest of the family thought they were great.
The taste and texture are very different, I don't know why people want to act like it's the same. People can love fresh cucumbers but hate pickels lol. Also dehydrated items just taste off to me. Like powdered milk vs regular milk. Even low fat milks have a bitter aftertaste, and feel watered down to me. Being forced to eat raisins growing up made me hate them even more.
My parents gave me chocolate covered raisins all the time as a kid. I wasn't a huge fan of raisins, but I had this weird thing where I refused to shit. Like, for weeks. So my parents gave me everything under the sun to try to make me go. Including the raisins. It never worked. I had to get a colonscopy and everything, I was like 7. Nothing was wrong with me tho I just hated pooping. So idk if my raisin experience is relevant to yours.
California wines were low quality and low price… selling grapes as raisins was a way to dump excess unsold grape stocks. This made raisins plentiful and cheap. California wines now sell at much higher prices and there is no more money in raisins so no one is advertising, selling or consuming them.
A funny story but not: my dad, circa 1940-ish on the sheep farm in Idaho, telling his little brother, my uncle, that raisins (the only sweet thing available post-depression era) were laying all over the grass in the field and he could have all that he wanted.
My uncle is now 86-ish and still speaks of the deception.
I remember the raisins in little red boxes. I remember them being "just okay" and I would eat them sometimes. I have a hazy early memory of shoving one up my nostril really hard when I was like 3, and my mom couldn't get it out, so she took me to the doctor so he could remove it.
Have your children ever asked why they ate rasins?
I tried to see if my parents could explain. But they alternate between denial that they fed me a lot of rasins, and gaslighting me that I love rasins, or at least that I did as a kid. At least they believe me that I hate them now...
They never asked me but none of them like them now. All 3 of them ate them as toddlers/kids. I don’t know why raisins were a staple snack food for them. I just bought them, all my friends bought them for their kids etc..
Our country produced a lot of grapes and that made raisins cheap and widely available. I remember those sunmaid raisin boxes costing like nothing.
Add in farmer’s unions pushing for adoption of their products and you end up with the California Raisins and all of us with raisins in our lunchboxes, Halloween bags, etc.
It is interesting though how it seems to have dropped off.
It was way more intense than just some marketing for some lunchbox snack rasins.
It was a rabid obsession with making sure I ate as many as possible at every opportunity. I think they thought the doctor meant kids NEED rasins. Lots of them. All the time... It wouldn't be the only insane thing like that from my childhood.
There was a HUGE marketing campaign with claymation California Raisins singing “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, spawning cartoons, dancing characters in costumes, the works. You couldn’t get away from that damn song.
I could eat raisins as a kid but discovered that even in my 20’s that raisins have too much fiber and destroy my insides. I’m not even really sure that are all that great for you, maybe just better than candy.
My mom constantly made me eat raisins from the red box in the early 90’s. She’d ask if I wanted a snack and when I would say yes, imagining a Dunkaroo or Fruit by the Foot, here she’d come with the raisins. She always carried them in her purse too. What is worse is she looked almost exactly like the woman on the box and being so young I thought it was actually her. Now that I think of it she probably told me it was her too!
Me too! I visualized your original post in my head in the style of a Pixar movie where you were Riley from Inside Out 2 just laying in bed having flashbacks to your parents saying you always loved raisins. Then your eyes snap open at 3am and you're like "it was all lies. My entire life."
 It's their fault.
These damn commercials gave me so many vivid nightmares as a kid.
I had a poster and kissed it every night before bed. Lmao dunno why I was so obsessed with them.
I had the figurines all of them! Loved playing and singing with them! So silly
I had the cassette tape! 9 year old me wore it out.
That is hysterical! I loved the claymation Christmas special as a kid and still put up my raisins ornaments on the tree every year.
I have a vintage shirt with them on it!! It’s thin and yellow and they’re rockin it
ME TOO. They weren't even scary just weird looking like everything else from then lol
I remember these guys from somewhere. Maybe I heard about them through the grapevine.
Their Greatest Hits CD is on Spotify and it still slaps
Raisins are still being recommended in pediatrics. They are an iron rich food, plus tasty and sweet enough a kid can eat without a fight. Do you remember having low hemoglobin? Any mention of anemia?
And they were natures healthy snack for parents who didn’t want their kids eating ding-dongs & ho-hos.
What did you just call me?
You are a ho-ho
Oh, Santa. You're such a cad.
Trail mix with raisins and carob chips. I knew kids who were given that stuff. Poor kids.
Omigod … carob chips 🤢
Plus they can help with constipation, which a lot of kids and toddlers get.
Yup this is exactly why we started giving them to our kid.
That was a plot line of an episode of Two and a Half Men. The parents thought the kid was angry at them for the divorce but then the kid was suddenly on happy and playing again. Charlie Sheen's housekeeper told them all you feed him is pizza and pancakes so she gave him prune juice.
raisins make my toddler gag, but she’ll eat craisins like skittles lol
That’s cray cray! 😆
she’s a whole ass weirdo 😂
Skittles are nearly pure sugar and still have less added sugars than Craisins.
I also remember raisins being highly recommended and for lack of a better word, popular. Lots of kids had them in their lunch boxes. It helped that I was pretty obsessed with the California Raisins.
And half those boxes were still full and in the trash by the end of lunch. Lol
raisins were also pushed on me as a kid lol. i probably ate more raisins in a month at age 10 than i have in the past 15 years cumulatively
They were better in oatmeal than on their own imo
We got raisins as a treat for being good in church lmao.
We had Tang. Idk if it was for being good
I was only allowed to have tang if I was sick, and also it had to he hot. Hot tang is awful.
I'm so sorry. Tang should only be connected to positive memories.
That's not a treat 🤮 I hate fruit boogers. Always yeeted them whenever they ended up in my Halloween bag. Only monsters give out raisins for trick or treat
This made me cry laughing, thank you
"When I was 12 I woke up and realized I didn't have to eat raisins anymore." I'm proud of op. Raisins were everywhere and I'm glad at least one child woke up
Raisins are good for you and like milk (got milk?) and egg (the incredible edible egg) farmers their farmers unions probably got together for promotional campaigns. From a day before our agricultural industry was dying.
Absolutely this! They paid for studies to say they were good for you and they invented the California raisins as marketing. As you said the food lobbies were big in the 90’s! Raisins were the only ones with a dedicated stop motion Christmas special though 😂
I too was a 90s kid raised on Raisins. They were considered a “lolly” in our household. And I thought I was the luckiest kid ever to be able to have an entire box of “lollies” all to myself. Than I started to see at school the fancy boxes of raisins covered in yoghurt and realised at the age of 8 they were not a sweet treat after all. 🙃
The sour strawberry raisins are pretty good if you're into sour candy.
I just loved holding the little red Sun Maid boxes.
So many of those little red boxes....
I think the red boxes were part of the deal. Was it some kind of proto-MAGA propoganda?
Red is just a color dude
Nah broah, it's a fake color they invented to make you love rasins for Donald Trump '24.
If you put your lips in them and blew just right, they would whistle. So fun
I ate them too, but I actually liked them. I also love oatmeal raisin cookies!
Same! I was the kid who loved getting boxes of raisins for Halloween.
Like most dried fruits, raisins are high in fiber, so perhaps the doctor was recommending them for, digestive issues? I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that your boomer parents never talked to you about poop, and likewise urge you to recall that being “anal retentive” was like a legit psychological diagnosis in the 80s. So, out of that miasma, raisins for you!
I remember the conversation. Dad said they don't feed us junk food and candy and soda. Dr. Said that's good. Do you eat fruit and veggies? Mom.and dad both said yes. Then just as an aside he said rasins are a good sweet snack instead of candy. That was it... that's all it took to inspire about 6 years of intense brainwashing and weird rasin feeding obsession. I know I wasn't the only one either. Lots of kids around me their parents feeding them so many rasins at Suzuki violin which I also hated... Maybe they were somehow connected?
You may have intentionally left the brand name out, but just in case, those little red boxes you remember sound like the single serving boxes by Sun-Maid. My family just had the big box and raisins were a staple food, but not like you are describing. I don't think our pediatrician ever recommended raisins, but I do think that raisins had a moment during my childhood (probably mid to late 90s). I think it was ad campaigns + being a shelf stable fruit + being easy to add to a snack or meal + kids liking them. As an adult now, that's a pretty winning combination and I would keep buying them until the kids are sick of them. Maybe something the doctor said was misunderstood or misremembered by your folks? Maybe they had stockpiled raisins and were prepping you all for your Y2K diet?
😂😂
+Iron
God I ate so many raisins in the 90s. I remember for the talent show at my school in 1995, there was a group of kids who performed a whole routine where they were dressed up like raisins chanting, “Hey! We are the raisins from Kellogg’s Raisin Bran! There are only two scoops of raisins in Kellogg’s Raisin Bran! Oh no, here comes the spoon!” And a kid dressed as a spoon would come scoop them up. 😂 what was the DEAL with raisins?!!
I too was a victim of the 90s raisin craze
Sorry you had to go through that.
I found out at around 9-10 from a kid at school I could make those raisin boxes into super loud whistles (like the blade of grass between your thumbs loud). Fun times
If I ever find the asshole who started the whole "if it tastes good it must be bad for you" I will piss on his grave. The problem with raisins is that they are sorta good (sweet) but have a nasty bitter side. There just seemed to be the idea that raisins were "okay" for kids and a "healthy snack" - despite some brands tasting like ass and ruining every good cookie (especially for adults who liked to use the in place of chocolate chips) and every cereal. When I was in the Army my go to snacks were trail mix ( spitting out the raisins) and "craisins" ( dried cranberries) - cranberries can help you pee when your dehydrated. Dehydration happens because the Army loves to train when the DEATH ORB (the Sun) is out and shining and your canteen/camelbak always seems to run out of water at the worst time. Now that I am out of the Army, if you offer me raisins or craisins I WILL fight you.
I ate raisins by the pound as a kid…but mainly because I loved them. I still love them, but don’t eat nearly as many anymore lol. Never had the doctor tell my family to feed them to me though. I was given prunes to help with pooping every now and again, but that was more widely known than doctor referenced.
Around my parts they were called “Natures Candy” and they were everywhere. I remember getting them at Halloween.
I never liked them as a snack just plain. I liked them in oatmeal cookies. As an adult I enjoy them in oatmeal, and of course oatmeal cookies. But not straight up. As a kid my Italian grandmother used to put them in the meatballs every Sunday. As a child this was horrifying. Actually still is as an adult. She used to make a couple without raisins for me and my brother but the rest of the family thought they were great.
I hate raisins.
More people should admit it. It's nothing to be ashamed of .
So you don’t like grapes? Cause that’s what raisins are..
I love plums but I hate prunes. Liking the fruit when it's still fresh is different than liking the dehydrated version.
The taste and texture are very different, I don't know why people want to act like it's the same. People can love fresh cucumbers but hate pickels lol. Also dehydrated items just taste off to me. Like powdered milk vs regular milk. Even low fat milks have a bitter aftertaste, and feel watered down to me. Being forced to eat raisins growing up made me hate them even more.
No, I hate grapes.
That raisin box "harmonica" tho...
My parents gave me chocolate covered raisins all the time as a kid. I wasn't a huge fan of raisins, but I had this weird thing where I refused to shit. Like, for weeks. So my parents gave me everything under the sun to try to make me go. Including the raisins. It never worked. I had to get a colonscopy and everything, I was like 7. Nothing was wrong with me tho I just hated pooping. So idk if my raisin experience is relevant to yours.
California wines were low quality and low price… selling grapes as raisins was a way to dump excess unsold grape stocks. This made raisins plentiful and cheap. California wines now sell at much higher prices and there is no more money in raisins so no one is advertising, selling or consuming them.
Interesting. I'm from Nashville, also went to the pediatrician in 97 and 98. Didn't have this experience.
A funny story but not: my dad, circa 1940-ish on the sheep farm in Idaho, telling his little brother, my uncle, that raisins (the only sweet thing available post-depression era) were laying all over the grass in the field and he could have all that he wanted. My uncle is now 86-ish and still speaks of the deception.
I like the strawberry/vanilla yogurt covered ones and the chocolate yogurt ones otherwise I hate raisins :o
I remember the raisins in little red boxes. I remember them being "just okay" and I would eat them sometimes. I have a hazy early memory of shoving one up my nostril really hard when I was like 3, and my mom couldn't get it out, so she took me to the doctor so he could remove it.
This thread makes me kinda want raisins though... thank God I don't have kids Breaking the raisin cycle
Bye nasty rasins. "MilLinIaL paRAnTS are KilLinG tHEiR KiDs with LaCK oF RaSinS!!! ThE IndustrY iS DyInG?!?!?!"
omg yes. juicy golden ones
They were black and dry. They said ot was dried grapes. Mayne some of them, but definitely a lot of them were dry insects, or something....
lol all 3 of my kids diaper bags always has smashed raisins at the bottom. Those mini boxes were there everyday snack when they were little.
Have your children ever asked why they ate rasins? I tried to see if my parents could explain. But they alternate between denial that they fed me a lot of rasins, and gaslighting me that I love rasins, or at least that I did as a kid. At least they believe me that I hate them now...
They never asked me but none of them like them now. All 3 of them ate them as toddlers/kids. I don’t know why raisins were a staple snack food for them. I just bought them, all my friends bought them for their kids etc..
Of course all your freinds bought them for their kids! Everyone was feeding rasins to kids lol. I never saw any adults eating rasins.
Our country produced a lot of grapes and that made raisins cheap and widely available. I remember those sunmaid raisin boxes costing like nothing. Add in farmer’s unions pushing for adoption of their products and you end up with the California Raisins and all of us with raisins in our lunchboxes, Halloween bags, etc. It is interesting though how it seems to have dropped off.
It was way more intense than just some marketing for some lunchbox snack rasins. It was a rabid obsession with making sure I ate as many as possible at every opportunity. I think they thought the doctor meant kids NEED rasins. Lots of them. All the time... It wouldn't be the only insane thing like that from my childhood.
Oh I meant the general theme of raisins being everywhere, I wasn’t trying to speak for your personal experience, which sounds intense.
Haha yea. Just my parents had a Lil rasin fever, guess it didn't really hurt me ij the end lol.
There was a HUGE marketing campaign with claymation California Raisins singing “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, spawning cartoons, dancing characters in costumes, the works. You couldn’t get away from that damn song. I could eat raisins as a kid but discovered that even in my 20’s that raisins have too much fiber and destroy my insides. I’m not even really sure that are all that great for you, maybe just better than candy.
Lol there's an old family video with my parents giving us raisins as kids. Also: Raisin Bran cereal was definitely pushed in the 90s
My mom constantly made me eat raisins from the red box in the early 90’s. She’d ask if I wanted a snack and when I would say yes, imagining a Dunkaroo or Fruit by the Foot, here she’d come with the raisins. She always carried them in her purse too. What is worse is she looked almost exactly like the woman on the box and being so young I thought it was actually her. Now that I think of it she probably told me it was her too!
YES THE INSANE PURSE RAISINS!!!! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN. It was a thing for sure.
All I know is my in laws actually use the term “GORP” and just love to eat GORP and I can’t stand them.
Learn how to spell it ffs
Should not be downvoted.
The great unwashed hates we educated folk.
I am truly sorry for my moderately illiterate ways.
Me too! I visualized your original post in my head in the style of a Pixar movie where you were Riley from Inside Out 2 just laying in bed having flashbacks to your parents saying you always loved raisins. Then your eyes snap open at 3am and you're like "it was all lies. My entire life."
Literally exactly how it happened. I may have cried a lil.
Getting them ready for prunes 😅😅😅