Julie Bogart

After reading the posts on this thread, I wanted to offer a couple of
experiences for consideration.

I grew up with a nutrition conscious mother and was raised vegetarian
for 10 years. I went ten years without eating any sugar, too. My mother
never required us to eat her way. She simply shared information she
found with me. I had asthma and so did my brother. We both stopped
having asthma problems when she changed our eating habits in the home.
I felt different eating correctly so I took her values to heart.

If I went to the ice cream shop with a friend, I got a banana. My
friends thought I was weird.

I believed that eating right would ensure good health and was morally
right.

My parents split up at the end of high school. My brother, sister and I
all "fell off the nutrition wagon" at that point. I continued to not
eat meat for four more years, but I did stop worrying about
preservatives and additives in everything and ate some sugar. My sibs
started smoking, eating junk food, drinking and my brother's asthma
returned full force.

A broken home had more to do with our eating habits than all those
years of nutritional teaching.

Fast forward.

As an adult, I have resisted that level of nutrition consciousness.
I've known too many nutritional anorexics, and too many nutty adults
who live life as though food were the central issue for living. And
amazingly, so often the nutrition conscious are the ones who talk about
all their health issues while others at McDonald's seem blissfully
unaware...

I can't afford the organic lifestyle. So I do the best I can with the
basics. And you know what? We're healthy. We eat supermarket foods and
I cook real stuff.

My kids eat more junk than I did growing up, but they don't have asthma
either. And they don't prefer junk to my cooking.

What I didn't want to reproduce in my family from growing up was the
idea that there is a standard or an ideal that ensures health and
wholeness. My family had idealized eating.

Instead, food is just a normal part of our lives and a tasty one when I
take the time to make food we love. We talk about nutrition the same
way we talk about the books we read or the purchases we want to make.
It's not enshrined as the key to happiness and health.

And as far as advertising goes... my kids watch cartoons solid for
three hours every Saturday. I can't think of the last time they asked
me to buy anything based on advertising. I know it probably happens in
some homes, but they just don't feel deprived...

My two cents,
Julie




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