Based on my observation, this is how the rest of society is dealing with it.
“Nowadays kids don’t get beat, they get big treats
Fresh pair of sneaks, punishments like have a seat
Back then when friends and neighbors would bust that ass
and bring you back to your momma she got the switch in the stash…” - Ghostface Killah
I’ve figured out two different ways to work against that: I eat on smaller plates and takes smaller portions when I have control over it. When I don’t (like if it’s from a restaurant), I eat really slow, and when I get to about halfway, I stop and put the rest away for later(or take home if I’m ever actually out anymore.) That way I at least get the benefit of not feeling like I actually wasted the food. (which is really what the whole “People starving in Africa” thing is about.)
I never understood how, exactly, the starving kids in Africa (that’s where they were when I was growing up) were supposed to benefit from my eating more.
This is why, in threads about kids and eating, I make sure to mention that dietitians today discourage parents from teaching kids to “clean their plates”. Kids are born with the ability to stop eating when they are not hungry any more. Presumably I was too, but someone trained that out of me when I was little in favor of “cleaning my plate” and “not wasting food”. Now, trying to re-train myself is not proving easy. Maybe I can spare some people that 20-30 years from now.
I don’t blame my parents for teaching me to clean my plate. They were doing what they thought best at the time. We used margarine instead of butter, too, because we thought it was healthier. I don’t blame them for that, either. But now we know that margarine is much less healthy than butter and that training kids to eat when they are not hungry is a good way to make an overweight adult.
I’m trying to convince myself that eating food when I am not hungry is wasting food, no better than throwing it in the trash would be.
I’m also trying to eat slower. It takes something like 20 minutes from when you’re actually full to when you feel full. If you eat fast, you eat more after you are full than someone who eats slowly does. Then sometimes you end up feeling totally stuffed, which is not a pleasant feeling.
I wish I could do this. Unfortunately, these findings definitely apply to me. If there’s more food on the plate, I will eat more. I can’t cook large amounts with the intention of saving some for another night for this reason. If there’s more food cooked, I end up eating more.
Chain of pizza restaurants, mainly located in western Canada, but spreading into eastern Canada as well.
Look at it from the point of view of the restaurant. The restaurant would like it a lot if all parents who are having trouble getting their kids to eat took them to their restaurant instead, wouldn’t they? The restaurant would like it if more kids refused to eat at home and insisted on going to their restaurant instead, wouldn’t they?
The bike manufacturing, horse breeding, and real estate industries would probably like it if you did that.
The restaurant is in business to sell pizza, not parenting advice. They don’t care if your kid eats a balanced diet or grows up to be a good person. They sometimes pretend they do, but they don’t. This restaurant isn’t bothering with the pretense.
Great link. Thanks.
My answer was always “Well, I’m full. Why don’t you eat it?”
Huh. I never thought of it that way. I guess you’re right: I’m still wasting the food if I eat it, because it’s not like I won’t feel just as hungry next meal time. I’ll just wind up eating more food altogether, which will be calories on my body that I won’t burn.
Still, I find taking it home a little less wasteful than just leaving it there. It actually saves money on groceries. And it helps justify eating out on a tighter budget. Still, your revelation gives me another reason to justify not getting the buffet. I’m not getting a better deal if I count half the food I eat as being wasted.
Cooking less is probably better, too. I just didn’t think about it because I don’t do a lot of my own cooking.
As for saving stuff for another night: I find that freezing helps that. Make it where you have to work to make the food edible again. That’s what keeps me from eating the stuff in the fridge. Of course, that lack of cooking experience helps there.
Oh, and at a restaurant: I usually pull off eating slowly by having people with me, and doing as much talking and whatever as possible. Thus, by the time everyone else is ready, I only have half my food finished. In fact, that’s how I came up with the idea. It shocked me that, when I ate out with friends, I ate less, and didn’t come home feeling as hungry as I’d suspect. And I still had my doggie bag, so I didn’t feel I wasted anything.
Now that I’m stuck at home, I just quickly put away half of the carryout before I have a chance to touch it. I’ve gotten to the point where I can at least hold off until the next meal time, so I don’t always have to freeze it. If only I was doing so well on the other aspects, like emotional eating and dealing with feeling hungry.
Pssst - that’s why you cook it and then before you serve it at all you box up the leftovers and put them in the fridge or freezer. The only thing in that pan or on that dish should be how much you’re eating tonight. Harder with a guy around, definitely, but that’s what you gotta do. Also keeps you from accidentally leaving that pot out until you’re not sure if it’s safe to eat or not.
Regarding “clear your plate” - do most parents dish up food onto their kids’ plates? I guess we did that when the kids were REALLY young, but wewere more of the “Take all you want, but eat all you take” school of thought.
Pretty early on we gave up on food battles. At first we simply said “Eat what we cook or go hungry.” But we pretty quickly changed to letting anyone who wanted to make and eat a sandwich or some fruit. (But no one was allowed to criticize what was cooked. If they didn’t like what was cooked, their option was to take over the cooking and prepare meals for everyone.) And kids who did not eat dinner were certainly not allowed any dessert of between-meal snacking other than fruit, carrots, yogurt, etc.
Boston Pizza is an interesting place. Kids must think it’s quite grown up–all the ones I’ve been in have had, on the restaurant side, art prints on the walls, and televisions showing sports. There are no beer ads. Music is playing, and it’s not kid-oriented; its usually contemporary or classic rock. Funky neon signs tell you where the washrooms are. Still, there are crayons and coloring sheets for the kids who want them. A Boston Pizza restaurant is typically quite clean, well-lit, and staffed by enthusiastic, friendly young people. Families love them.
But every Boston Pizza I’ve been in has had a sports bar/lounge attached, and separate from the restaurant (and I mean entirely separate–while the restaurant and bar may share a common wall, you typically enter the bar through a different door, completely bypassing the restaurant and the hostess station). Children are not allowed in BP’s sports bars; since, here in Alberta, video lottery terminals on which adults are gambling are usually present. Sports are always showing on the TVs, the music is louder than in the restaurant, neon beer ads abound, the bar can make pretty much anything you want, and the full menu is available. There are often pool tables, jukeboxes, and video games like Golden Tee and Big Buck Hunter too. So if you want to go to Boston Pizza, but don’t want to put up with the family atmosphere, you don’t have to.
Boston Pizza is a business, and it made a business decision: attract family dining, and attract those who don’t want family dining, and advertise accordingly. They did have a series of TV ads a couple of years ago showing the party atmosphere in their sports bars–definitely not the kind of place you’d take a child!
What you are missing in that the parental double cross, they took the kid to get pizza, sure, but it was spinach and liver pizza!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I know that this is really fun to propose - that the real problem is that we’re all being too soft on children - but let’s look at some actual numbers:
The NIS-3 study demonstrated that the number of physically abused children grew 42% between 1986 and 1993.
The number of children who die due to abuse and neglect has risen steadily between 1995 and 2007 (almost five a day), so I think we’re doing just fine in terms of keeping up with a respectably high rate of beatings.
http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statistics
I wonder if kids today say, “why don’t you adopt one of those starving African kids, then?” Call it the Madonna/Brangelina effect.
I wonder how much of this is due to an actual rise in the incidence of abuse and how much is due to better reporting and awareness.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest there is a happy medium between letting your five year old run your household and beating him to death.
I can’t speak for most parents, but I do dish up food onto my kids’ plates (including the 20 year old) but I also fix my husband’s plate and often plates for guests as well. That’s just how I do it…I cook and serve in the kitchen then place the prepared plates on the table.
I know about how much my kids eat (or need to eat) so I have become pretty good at what amount to put out, and there is always plenty for seconds if need be. I never insisted they clean their plates if they were full, but I did insist on minimizing the waste…so there was no convincing Mom you are full when you just aren’t in the mood for whatever was cooked. What I found useful when the kids were small was when they said they were full with more than half their plates uneaten, I would offer dessert. If they were enthusiastic about ice cream (or whatever dessert we had) then I knew they weren’t really full and would make them eat some more. But if they turned down the dessert as well, it was a pretty safe bet they really were full and would be excused from the table.
These days no one has to clean their plate, but they usually do on their own and the youngest is only encouraged to finish her plate when the food left behind is her vegetable or for other nutritional reasons, not based solely on the amount of food.
I recently read Cook This, Not That, and it really drove home the point to me that restaurants don’t care if you (or your kids) are eating a healthy diet, either. They want to sell food. If offering healthy food is an effective way to do that, they’ll do it. If making food less healthy is an effective way to do that, they will make the food less healthy. If giving you way more food than you should eat at one sitting is an effective way to make money selling food, they’ll do that. You can’t rely on restaurants to give you the food that is best for you any more than you can rely on restaurant commercials for parenting advice.
I did quote the post I was responding to, so there shouldn’t be any lack of clarity on that matter.
The specific quote started with “Nowadays kids don’t get beat, they get big treats…” if you are still unsure about the point. Which is, of course, that plenty of kids do get beat nowadays - beat real good, in fact.
Then again, I’m not trying to build a treatise about “these kids today” based on a television commercial that I thought was stupid.
I’ve always found that heroin works pretty well. If you’re *really *lucky, you’ll fuck up the dose, and then you can bet your ass they’ll never talk back again.
The wheelchair industry would appreciate (from a financial standpoint) kids being permanently crippled. But I bet you’d take issue with a wheelchair manufacturer putting out a commercial encouraging parents to shatter their kids legs when they miss curfew.
Would it be waaaay over the top for me to suggest that a commercial like this plays a part in normalization of bad child-rearing methods?