‘Sick’ foods

The other day, I was shopping with my family at NTUC Fairprice when my youngest daughter picked up a can of Jacob’s cream crackers saying that she loved it. “Hey; that’s called Sota-pang”, (or “soda” biscuit in Cantonese) I said. When I was young, we only ate that when we were sick.

“Oh yes. My friend’s mum told me the same thing”, she replied. “I thought it is called wheat crackers?”

Jacob’s cream crackers was a very well known brand in the old days. I bet my older readers can recall the iconic flat rectangular can of this brand. What I would like to know is whether their mothers also made them eat this when they were ill. I also vaguely remember seeing this tin can being used to keep donations during funeral wakes - anyone can confirm that?

Actually, I never quite liked it. I preferred biscuits which had sugary-cream in between the biscuits, such as the lemon puffs; which I still buy from the supermarket. Nowadays, such biscuits come in plastic packaging. When we were young, we would buy them by katis. The shop keeper would transfer them from a big tin can and wrap them in newspaper folded into a conical shaped.

Another ‘sick’ food that I can recall is Glucolin (glucose). This is a very fast to prepare energy drink which my wife and I also used to feed our kids when they were young. In Cantonese we call it Pu-to-tong (葡萄糖)。 I don’t think the packaging of this product has changed over the decades. It still comes in a circular blue tin with the glucolin packed in a translucent waxy paper or plastic bag.

Yet another one is Quaker Oats. Like the Glucolin, I think there is little change in the packaging of this product. The only difference is that nowadays they have a pre-cooked version where you simply add hot water to it. Like the cream crackers, I did not quite like this because it wasn’t sweet. What I would do is add condensed milk to it. Come to think of it, I suspect that for kids of my generation, anything that wasn’t sweet didn’t appeal to us.

The final ‘sick’ food that comes to mind is macaroni which is called Tong-sum-fun in Cantonese. Again I did not like it. But I do recall that in my secondary school days in ACS Barker Road, there was a stall that sold excellent macaroni. I blogged about it before here.

Anyway, as an adult I never liked the above ‘sick’ foods. I wonder if there is some psychological reason behind this; you know; like associating them with the unpleasantness of falling sick.

PS: For an explanation of why this is called ‘cream crackers’, and what the original tin can looked like, read this Singaporean blogger’s post about the Jacob’s cream crackers here.