Food Habits

At the age of about 6 I was forced to eat stuffing by my father. I don’t remember if I had tried it before and not liked it or if I just did not want to try it. Either way my father was going to make me eat and I could not leave the table until it was finished. I began to cry, but he was persistent and I eventually took a few bites of the stuffing. After a little while I began to feel nauseous and eventually vomited onto my dinner plate. Even though I had just vomited I still got in trouble and was sent to bed early. To this day I still do not like stuffing and the smell of it sometimes makes me nauseous. I also have never been forced to eat stuffing again.

Many stories of forced eating like this one are inflicted by an authority figure at an early age in one’s life. These stories also involved vegetables or some type of food that in generally healthy for you. It’s uncommon that authority figures are often forcing children to eat food that extremely unhealthy for them. From this forced consumption of mainly vegetables it made me think why does our culture hate vegetables from such a young age? Why are authority figure forcing children to eat something that is healthy for them? I think one reason may be the disconnect between our food system. In this class we have talked about how we are generally removed from the food system. We don’t know how our food is grown or where it is coming from. I think this causes people to be more hesitant about the food they are eating. Our culture has general lack of knowledge when it comes to vegetables and we are fearfully of trying new food sometimes. I am definitely guilty of this. I went to the DeHart dinner Thursday and the appetizers consisted of various pickled vegetables, which I didn’t eat any of. The main reason I didn’t eat them because I didn’t know what they were. There is something about general raw vegetables that I am hesitant about. I know this has to do with my lack of exposure to these vegetables. So, I feel like exposure to our food system might help people eat more vegetables.

Exposure to food is not the only fix, but I think it is helpful. Two summers ago I worked with the Boys and Girls Club at three community gardens. We grew various common vegetables in the gardens. Something that I wanted stress was eating the raw vegetables from the garden. Each week for snack I would try to provide a vegetable that was currently growing in the garden. I think this exposure from the children seeing the plant grow and then eating it would enhance healthy eating habits. Since this program was only once a week from during the summer it would not completely change their eating habits. But I do believe that constant exposure to growing methods would allow children to enjoy vegetables more often. I think that if our culture is closer to our food there would not be this fear of the unknown attitude and children wouldn’t have to be forced to eat vegetables.

Is exposure to growing methods a viable option for children or is there more that needs to be done?

Since many forced food consumption stories come from parents are they the only one's responsible for introducing their children to new food? What about school and our culture as a whole?