Mom who makes homemade Goldfish crackers says she has ‘high food standards’

When you have young kids who need a snack, digging through the pantry for the granola bars or goldfish crackers is usually the move. But for Gretchen Adler, a California mom and tradwife with “high food standards,” that wouldn’t be good enough. She’s getting thoroughly roasted after she posted a video about making her own goldfish crackers from scratch because the store-bought kind aren’t healthy enough to feed to her kids.

“My kids have never had the opportunity to eat popular kid-marketed foods because my food standards are really high and I prioritize health over convenience. Nevertheless, they can still enjoy these fun foods quite easily with a little bit of creativity and desire,” Adler wrote in the caption of the video, where she explained that the other children in her kids’ class often eat goldfish crackers at snack time. She didn’t want her two daughters to feel left out, which inspired her to create her own recipe. The ingredients include low-gluten einkorn flour, which costs around $40 a bag.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that Adler bakes the goldfish in a spotless, marble kitchen — in a dress and pearls. Everything about this screams “unachievable.”

Unsurprisingly, the comment section lit up with debate.

“One day your kids are going to move out and eat whatever their friends are eating,” one commenter wrote.

Another wrote, “as a psychologist i just wanna say this will definitely cause problems later on if your kids feel like certain foods are ‘off limits’. It might be fine now while they’re young and you can control everything in their lives, but once they have any ounce of freedom there’s a likelihood that they will reach a harmful cycle of indulging in ‘bad foods’ and then feeling guilty, which will lead them to turn to processed foods even more.”

One person in the comments shared their heartbreaking personal experience with a mom like this: “Hi, 44 year old child of someone who was this hyper food focused… My unhealthy relationship with food is 100% traced back to a mom like this. You think you are teaching them ‘healthy habits’ but the millions of studies out there say that this is so dangerous, especially for girls. I have two girls, I make them healthy meals, I sub a few things here or there to add veggies and reduce fat. Teaching them moderation is healthy, letting them know that the world won’t end if they have a goldfish (or if they are allergic somehow, something similar). Teaching them to fear foods is not going to get the result you want.

My mother (whom I rarely speak to because of reasons like this) thought she was teaching me to be healthy, I was in training for the entire time I was with her, and as a teen she got me down to 4% body fat with her ‘healthy lifestyle’.

At the end of the day, spending hours making goldfish from scratch is unrealistic and completely unnecessary—but if you really want to, pro-tip: You can use regular flour instead of the $40-a-bag kind.