Eat It Or Wear It

*This is not an advice column.

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January 24, 2021

Setting: My Bathroom, wherein I am taking a shower.

11-year-old Boy: [knocks]

Me: Yes?

Boy: There are 4 pancakes in the fridge with your name on them!

Me: Thank you, buddy!

Boy: 3 out of 4 are burned!

Me: OK!

Boy: But they’re STILL FOOD!

To say that I (and everyone else in the world, ever) have a complicated relationship with food is both obvious and an understatement. But what I find especially interesting is my relationship with food waste. When I was a kid, there was much emphasis in the books I read (not so much at my family’s dinner table) about how kids needed to finish their dinners because of all the starving children in the world. I remember being confused about how my not eating my peas (gag) would affect a starving child who was thousands of miles away. Actually, my not eating my peas (gag) wouldn’t even affect a hungry person in my home town, but I was not aware of such a concept back then. I know, Lucky Me.

We were required to eat everything on our plates (including the peas, GAG) but not because of starving kids. In fact, I’m not sure there was ever a “why” provided, nor requested. My brother and I strove to be members of the Clean Plate Club. We also didn’t get to have dessert if we didn’t finish our dinner. Sometimes we were helped out by our dad. My kids have definitely discovered the joys of Grandpa Who Will Eat Off Your Plate. Neither pizza crust nor an end of ice cream cone have ever gone in the garbage around him!

One of my favorite books as a child was Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. The scene that made me laugh out loud is when the little brother refuses to eat pork chops, and then won’t eat the cereal he requests instead. The Dad picks up the cereal and the brother, carries them to the bathroom, and pours the cereal over the boy’s head in the bathtub, shouting, “EAT IT OR WEAR IT!” Despite laughing at the visual, I remember being shocked, not at the wet and messy consequence, but at the idea that parents would give a second option. The mom in the book seemed to be dreadfully worried about this 4-year-old skipping a meal, and I just couldn’t get behind it.

As a parent myself, the emotion (oh don’t get me started on food + emotion, we’ll be here all day!) that has had me encouraging my children to “finish your dinner!” is more closely tied to gratitude: “Your [father/mother] worked hard to prepare this for you, it is good nutrition for your body, and you will eat it!” The battle that wages within me over clean plates is complex. I detest the idea of waste, but that bumps up against my ideals of letting my children stop eating when they’re no longer hungry. On the other hand, I have a now-14-year-old boy who will come down and raid the kitchen eight times before he goes to bed because he is always hungry, so can you blame me for wanting to front-load him with a healthy dinner? As the kids grow, and I have less and less say over what they do with their bodies and appetites, I like to see them getting one guaranteed well-rounded meal every day. Well, most days. Some days. LAY OFF ME I AM TRYING.

My husband tells stories about his grandmother, a feisty German woman who grew up in suburban St. Paul during The Great Depression. That lady never threw any food away, and it was always even odds whether the cream cheese in her Minnesota Sushi was past the expiration date or not. She lived until just short of her 100th birthday, so… read into that what you will. (I repeat, this is not an advice column.)

I’m curious as to what kind of lines your parents gave you about eating your meals. How do you think those messages affect how you eat today? Are you a leftover eater? My husband has only discovered the joy of leftovers in the past few years — in a family of four kids, I don’t think there was ever such a thing!

The only thing I’m sure of is that the starving children in Ethiopia did not have a way to access my uneaten peas (gag).

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie