Reflection on "Unhappy Meals"
Feb. 13th, 2007 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljgeoffMichael Pollen's "Unhappy Meals
I have four kids at home and like a majority of Moms in the US, I suffer from serious food guilt. We wake up in the morning before dawn, still tired, and sleepily crunch on bowls of Lucky Charms or Frosted Mini-Wheats. This morning, my six-year-old had a melt-down and I let him have Fruit Roll-ups for breakfast. Then everyone’s off to school. Lunch for the kids will be whatever the school cafeteria is serving, because we get free school lunch and I need that free meal provided so that my budget will stretch to cover the other meals. After school, the boys might throw a frozen pizza in the oven or a burrito in the microwave. If it’s been a good week, we might have some fresh fruit or carrots to snack on. Two or three days a week I’m not working after school, so I’ll get home by 5 pm and whip up some Hamburger Helper or Ragu spaghetti.
In the grocery store, I try to balance what I can afford to what I know the boys like to eat and what I think would be good for them to eat. Cookies, chips, fruit-snacks, pizza rolls – I assuage my mother-guilt of not being at home by bringing the boys “treats”. I can’t seem to stop myself. When I was a child, my mother didn’t work and we ate supper together as a family every evening. For my own family, I’m happy if we meet together for meals once or twice a week – a “sit-down dinner”, we call it.
Into all of this food-shame and confusion of what is best to feed my boys, Michael Pollen comes with his plain words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
It is beautiful in its simplicity, isn’t it? Looking at our food day, the first thing to go would be the processed breakfast cereal. It’s pretty scary to read the side of most cereal boxes. But it’s so easy to stumble onto first thing in the morning, and if you buy it near its expiration date, it’s blessedly cheap. My boys go through at least a box of cereal and a gallon of milk a day. What would we eat instead? Well, I do get up early once a week and make pancakes – the real thing, with flour and eggs and milk. Except the flour is refined, and the pancake syrup is maple-flavored high fructose corn syrup. Maybe eggs and toast, instead? Eggs are cheap and now scientists are saying that they aren’t as evil as they once preached.
In the long run, reading Pollen’s article might make me more apt to read the side of the boxes more often and look for simpler, more whole foods. But when I cave into pressures of time and money, those simple words will engender even more feelings of guilt and helplessness for letting my kids eat the easy, cheap stuff.
I have four kids at home and like a majority of Moms in the US, I suffer from serious food guilt. We wake up in the morning before dawn, still tired, and sleepily crunch on bowls of Lucky Charms or Frosted Mini-Wheats. This morning, my six-year-old had a melt-down and I let him have Fruit Roll-ups for breakfast. Then everyone’s off to school. Lunch for the kids will be whatever the school cafeteria is serving, because we get free school lunch and I need that free meal provided so that my budget will stretch to cover the other meals. After school, the boys might throw a frozen pizza in the oven or a burrito in the microwave. If it’s been a good week, we might have some fresh fruit or carrots to snack on. Two or three days a week I’m not working after school, so I’ll get home by 5 pm and whip up some Hamburger Helper or Ragu spaghetti.
In the grocery store, I try to balance what I can afford to what I know the boys like to eat and what I think would be good for them to eat. Cookies, chips, fruit-snacks, pizza rolls – I assuage my mother-guilt of not being at home by bringing the boys “treats”. I can’t seem to stop myself. When I was a child, my mother didn’t work and we ate supper together as a family every evening. For my own family, I’m happy if we meet together for meals once or twice a week – a “sit-down dinner”, we call it.
Into all of this food-shame and confusion of what is best to feed my boys, Michael Pollen comes with his plain words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
It is beautiful in its simplicity, isn’t it? Looking at our food day, the first thing to go would be the processed breakfast cereal. It’s pretty scary to read the side of most cereal boxes. But it’s so easy to stumble onto first thing in the morning, and if you buy it near its expiration date, it’s blessedly cheap. My boys go through at least a box of cereal and a gallon of milk a day. What would we eat instead? Well, I do get up early once a week and make pancakes – the real thing, with flour and eggs and milk. Except the flour is refined, and the pancake syrup is maple-flavored high fructose corn syrup. Maybe eggs and toast, instead? Eggs are cheap and now scientists are saying that they aren’t as evil as they once preached.
In the long run, reading Pollen’s article might make me more apt to read the side of the boxes more often and look for simpler, more whole foods. But when I cave into pressures of time and money, those simple words will engender even more feelings of guilt and helplessness for letting my kids eat the easy, cheap stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 05:36 am (UTC)I think kids thrive in an environment with joy in it, and if buying food that you can afford and that tastes good reduces your stress, that improves the environment your kids grow up in, and that's important.
Besides, as processed as breakfast cereal is, it is mostly plants.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-20 09:32 pm (UTC)My experience is that parentally-imposed food restrictions make it harder, not easier, for me to make healthy food choices as an adult. Every time I decide to eat a carrot because it's good for me, I struggle against the memory of being forced to swallow vegetables that made me want to vomit -- even though *this* carrot, *now*, tastes fine. Every time I decide not to have another glass of wine because it'd be bad for me, I struggle against the memory of childish powerlessness and deprivation; the proof that I can have it if I want to is much more of a temptation to me than the taste of the wine or the feeling of drunkenness.
I think young healthy growing bodies can tolerate dietary indiscretions better than young spirits can tolerate the experience of food-deprivation.