Food for thought...

I've been off for awhile 'cause I've been sick again. Nasty virus just likes me too much.

So, for any of you who just skim my main page, there's been a somewhat unrelated dialogue going on in the comments section of my last post.

It seems I made a comment on a friend's blog about how food was handled or controlled or distributed (however you see it) in the home where I grew up, and how I tend to do it in my own home. I mentioned not taking anything from my Mom's fridge without asking. Seemed an odd concept to some. Now, please understand that I refer to it as my Mom's fridge because it is no longer my home and therefore it IS now solely my Mom's fridge.

So, the question, and all it's derivatives, is did you have full and free access to the food in your home while growing up, or did you have to ask permission before you took food? And, how do you handle the food in your home now, particularly those who have kids?

If you had free access I have posed these questions : How did you know when was a good time to eat? Did you pig out on junk? And did you do it right before supper? Were you trained to let your mom (assuming she was the shopper) know when you finished something?

If your kids are grown, and had free access, how did you teach them to eat good food at appropriate times? How did you teach them to let you know when they had finished stuff? Did you make menu plans? Did you shop according to menu plans? How tight was your budget (non-specific)? Did you keep junk in the house, or did you only have healthy foods?

I plan my menus, and shop according to my plan. There's little room for adjustment if someone eats the cream cheese I needed for the casserole that week, unless I have a good store of leftovers in the freezer. My kids are allowed to make choices, but within the limits I think they can handle. For instance, I keep one "sweet cereal" in the house along with several more healthy ones. The boys can make whatever choice they want, but they have to eat a bowl of healthy stuff before they can have the sweet stuff. After school they get a snack. I've decided that it should be fruit, but they get to decide what kind of fruit they want ( there's always a variety), and the cutting, if necessary, is mine to do. You don't want to see Matt swinging a knife around! At meals they can choose juice or milk or water, but once they've had one cup of juice, they have to have water because I don't want them having too much sugar.

I'm getting better about serving my family healthy food, but that doesn't mean there's no junk in the house. And my boys would be eating candy from the moment they got up if it were available to them. Or, they would eat no meat or veggies at meal time if that option were available to them. They would also be eating 10 minutes before supper. Today they came in 20 minutes before supper and asked for their snack (which they'd missed playing outside) and I told them they could have fruit salad with their supper in a little bit. Not received well. Delayed gratification is a learned skill, and one I think needs to be in place somewhat before I can just open the cupboards and trust their judgement. Since they have difficulty with time concepts, I think this will take awhile.

I want to teach them to cook, and how to choose healthy foods they like, but I think it is a process for us. At the moment I set the breakfast table and pour milk into two tumblers left on an accessible (to them) shelf in the fridge. That way they can start eating if I'm not quite done with my shower. It's nice to have that degree of independence, and I want them to have further skills, but I believe that will take time. Matt will be taking his lunch to school this year, and my plan is to have him help make it. I can provide a list of healthy options for him to choose from, and he can help put it together. My mom, to my recollection, found herself too frustrated to be consistent with teaching us household skills. I left home knowing more than my siblings (being the oldest), but not nearly as much as I should have known.

Erica, you answered one of my questions in your last comment. You just didn't have the junk around very much, so it was certainly easier to trust that you would at least make healthy choices.

What about the rest of you?