Food and Family

As a slight divergence from the themes of my previous blog entries, I’m going to write about something that I almost always finish, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I would venture to say that it is pretty relevant:

I can't stand leaving food unfinished. 

To be honest I don't know what goes through my head when I pick up the last few bites from my plate and force feed my self while my stomach is on the verge of exploding, but it never seems to fail. Then I spend the rest of the evening feeling mightily uncomfortable and wishing that someone had an antacid.

Let’s face it. There is something about scraping perfectly good food into the trash that just makes me feel like some horrible, ungrateful, wasteful person. And so the alternative is? Eat it. All of it. Despite the tension around my belt. I don't know if this is primarily an American mentality, but I know several friends who can sympathize with me, and I have some social theories as to why this is exactly. Perhaps one cause is the old saying that I'm sure quite a few of us heard at the dinner table as children: "eat your food, because there are children starving in (Insert China, Africa, or whatever country your parents deemed to be more unfortunate here). This saying doesn’t make sense now, and it never really made sense to me then, either. If children were so starved that they would gladly eat the spinach that I would have rather tossed out, then why didn't we send it over to them? Was my stomach some sort of secret teleportation device that transported food over to hungry kids?

Of course, I’m being slightly facetious. Surely the saying was meant to help us appreciate the food that we had, because there are other people who have nothing at all. It’s a stretch to say that such a simple saying could be the primary cause for childhood obesity, but I do think that it could have attributed a bit to our guilty consciences when we leave food unfinished. Another factor is simply the fact that America’s culture is so familiar with having excess, and the reality is that people are used to taking more than what they need. This is a habit I personally have been trying to break. Instead of piling my plate with food so I don’t have to go back for seconds, I’ve been trying to eat in shifts. I start with the vegetables, go back for the grains and proteins, and return once more if I’m still a bit hungry. This helps me control all that goes into my stomach, while sparing myself from feeling guilty at the same time.

Nonetheless, on Thanksgiving Day, even with all my past experiences of accidentally having one too many biscuits, or unwisely squeezing in that last slice of pumpkin pie, I will probably overdo it. But hey, the food has been made, and what better way to be thankful to the hands that prepared it then by trying out every single dish on the table? It’s an American holiday, after all, and like it or not, the sharing of meals has long been an important factor in regards to holidays and family gatherings. Not that I’m complaining.