While working with my psychiatrist I was lamenting the sad truth that I never had any kind of responsible food education as a small child. This isn't a rare thing, but I felt (and feel) cheated in a way. I read a lot. I don't have children, but I'm aware of the shift in focus when it comes to nutrition and today's little people. It makes me envious and frustrated at times, because of my personal disastrous relationship to food and nutrition, I feel as if I was cheated out of a good start by my care-givers, namely, my mother and older siblings.
My mother tried her best, but when you're a single parent trying to keep five children fed, clothed, and in school there's not a lot of energy left over at the end of the day. Not to mention money. Add to that a fussy-eater (me) and soon enough that fussy-eater is going to be given the small variety of food that they will accept. So I ate badly, as lots of fussy-eater children end up doing. I think there are a number of key factors involved, and I want to break them down in a logical manner so I can objectively assess the situation.
Lack of Supervision
I think in a larger family unit, with two parents, or even with hands-on grand-parents, it would have been easier for my mum not to give in to the demands of a fussy-eater. The percentage of supervision while eating would be higher than in a single-parent home, and there could have been somebody saying "You're not leaving the table until you've had one more piece of broccoli". Usually when my mum gave me and my younger brother our dinner she was finishing the preparation for her and the older children's dinners, and myself and my brother were unsupervised as we ate. There are a number of consequences to this, including bolting down our food - children want to eat quickly so they can get back to the games they were playing or the television show they were watching. Another reason could be that we were in competition with each other. In either case, we did not have a present parent watching over us and giving us guidelines on how to behave at the table.
Financial Stress
Living on a tight budget is hard enough without your children turning their nose up at the food you put in front of them. What happens to the food they refuse to eat? If it can't be used as a left-over, or is perishable, then it gets thrown out. After the umpteenth time of the above scenario, how long do you think it will take for that parent to become dispirited enough to give the fussy-eater party pies and 2 minute noodles?
I remember when I was in primary school my mum would pick us up after school and we'd drive to the shops. She would have gone through all the catalogues and budgeted what she could afford to buy. We'd stop off at Coles and get a number of items. Then we'd drive to Tuckerbag and buy a few things there. Then we'd drive to Franklins and buy what we needed on special there. By the time the weeks shopping was done, we would have visited 3 or 4 different supermarkets. Why? Because my mum had to. She couldn't afford to buy our necessities at the one store if they were not on special that week. So she'd hunt for specials on toilet paper and pasta and frozen pies with an eye on her dwindling budget, and squeeze the last dollar till she could cover all our needs. And then she'd have to do it the next week, and the next, and the next.
I can't even begin to imagine the kind of stress that puts on a parent, the weight of having to provide for the children, with minimal funds. So it's no real wonder that me-the-fussy-eater ate the kind of high-salt, low-nutrition food I did. Because I wouldn't eat other stuff, and hot chips were cheap and easy to make.
I think the above might paint the picture that my mum bought jars of pasta sauce and frozen pizza and chicken tonight and that's all, but it's not the case. My mother hates food out of jars, and would always make her own pasta sauces with heaps of celery and carrots and onion. She would buy things like pork chops and vegetables and her and my older siblings would eat that. My mum grew up in post-WWII England and knew how to cook and budget and scrape the last penny of its value, and she knew the importance of vegetables in a growing kid's diet. But what do you do if that kid refuses to eat, and you're worn out with the business of subsisting that you don't have any energy left to combat the will of a sullen five year old?
Power Politics
I was the second youngest child in our family, and the youngest girl. I liked attention and I loved being fussed over. In recent years I've tried to think about the reasons why I was such a terribly fussy eater. My Partner has three young nephews, all brothers. The second youngest is a fussy eater also. The eldest is the pride of the family, and the youngest is the eternal baby, but the middle son is treated as an afterthought sometimes, and not with the same tone of voice that either the eldest or youngest are given. Often times the tone is more harsh and demanding. That sort of imbalance in his power-dynamics manifests in different ways, and I think his fussy-eating is a part of that.
I've been told that as a baby and a toddler I'd eat pretty much anything that was put in front of me. My older brother Andrew was living with us at this time, and I've been told that I would spend long hours with him watching the cricket and eating whatever he was eating. I don't recall the age I was when he moved out, but I can remember myself, my younger brother and my two next-oldest siblings moving across the other side of the city. I think it might have been at this time when I started refusing food. I remember being not very sure about my place in my mum's life after she got a long-term boyfriend. I also remember being resentful over small things that don't even matter, but were sources of hurt to a young girl.
How much of my fussy-eating was a power-play to gain attention from my mum? I don't know, but I can suspect it had a role to play. I was thinking the other week about all of this, and how, as children, we are not that good at connecting to our emotional motivations. I started to wonder how many times I would say to my mum "I'm Hungry" when I wasn't actually hungry, but in need of attention. When little toddlers say they're hungry, they often get attention alongside their meal. A meal for babies who are breast-fed means secure arms wrapped around you while you feed. Is it any real wonder why food holds such a deep emotional draw for people, when the act of feeding is tied in with acts of affection and care-giving?
Do-It-Yourself
Of course, when I was older, around 10 years old, whining "I'm Hungry" at my mother did not generate the same response as when I was 2. Around this age I was shown how to make 2 minute noodles for myself, and french toast, and canned soup on the stove, and jaffles filled with cheese or baked beans. When you're 10 and put in charge of your own after-school snacks things can get nutritional-poor pretty quickly. I was also in charge of my own breakfast, and soon enough one weetabix turned into two, with milk and large spoons of sugar over the top. My older brother Dom was around 15 at this time and he would eat a lot. He'd get a large bowl and crush up 6 weetabix, add milk and fruit. I started to copy him. Why? I don't know. Because he was my hero, perhaps, or because I was greedy. I honestly couldn't say. This doubling-up also happened with 2 minute noodles. At first I'd make them with one packet, and then with two. If I made Jaffles, I'd make as many as the capacity allowed, which was four toasted sandwiches, with plastic singles cheese inside, or if I was making spaghetti or baked bean jaffles, I'd use up the whole can and stuff it into the bread. Think about that. A whole can of baked beans and eight slices of bread. For a twelve year old. It was pretty easy for me to increase the amount of food I ate when I was in charge of doing it myself. Sure, at this age I was growing, but I was learning self-taught behaviour patterns that lead to binging behaviours. When I couldn't binge I would get upset inside. For an example, if we could afford a treat, we would sometimes get McDonald's as a family. I was allowed 6 nuggets and small chips. I couldn't demand more because I couldn't pay for more, but I do recall thinking about the freedom of adulthood, and promising myself that when I was older and in charge I would get as many nuggets as I wanted and maybe even large fries. Unfortunately this promise has been kept, and even though I despise the food sold at McDonald's, in times of stress and depression I can (and have) ordered two burgers and two large fries and eaten them all in one sitting.
The Eighties
I was born in 1980, so I lived through a couple of decades where nutritional knowledge was pretty much under the radar. The great excesses of the 80's were marketed and purchased by most families living through that time. Popular snacks for children included muli-coloured popcorn, cans of soft drink, party pies, chips of all kinds, baked sara-lee snacks, snow-cones, street's Vienetta (Oh, you were a posh family if you had a vienetta). This is the age of microwave snacks, pot noodle, cup-a-soup and frozen dinners, Pizza pockets, pop-tarts, microwave popcorn and a fizzing river of Coke that never ended. In all reality it was a shit time for food, and a shit time to try and convince children that the adverts on the telly we're all lies aimed to saturate their desire-centres for instant gratification in the form of salty, processed convenience foods. The adverts encultured the gluttony-fest and convinced you that you should want to eat more than you could:
Because One Slice Is Never Enough
As my psychiatrist put it, there was a definite lack of community-knowledge-base about food in the eighties and nineties. Today we understand that drinking soft drink every day of your life will lead to type-2 diabetes. Today we understand that cookies are a "sometimes food". Today we understand what roles protein and carbs should play, and plan meals accordingly. The knowledge we have of food today is such that it is possible to re-educate ourselves as adults in order to live a healthier life. But it's hard. Those habits and tastes developed in a cultural storm that provided messages of worth and ideas of 'deserving'. It's a challenge to re-train the inner self away from the compulsions of the child, and towards those of an educated adult. I admit feeling defeated, and scared, and angry at the circumstances that surrounded the formation of my food-habits, but I understand something about myself that makes me very proud - I can learn. I can put that learning into action. I can determine how I live from this point on. And for that, I'm pretty thankful.
No comments:
Post a Comment