After pondering these statements for awhile I realized that without a doubt the first one is just crazy.. why should you be cooking a separate meal for your family? You’re the mom! You’re the boss… you are the one that cooks so you should be the one to dictate what your family eats not the other way around.. it does sound crazy but I was raised in a home where we all ate the same thing, and it wasn’t t.v. dinners from the frozen aisle or from a bag from the drive thru window at McDonalds… in fact I know what we ate was fairly well balanced and cheap… there were 6 of us in the household and feeding 4 growing kids is defiantly a feat as any mother can attest… our dinners were always made from scratch by my mother, planned out each week before her grocery trip. I remember to this day she had a small 3x5 notebook where she sat down and planned each meal we would eat as a family for the week and made a corresponding shopping list. When she went to the store her list was more than her guide, it was her bible. I think the only time something ended up in the cart that wasn’t on the list was when it was something she would use and was on ridiculous sale. She didn’t have the money or time to cook something different for each kid, and she cared enough about being healthy that she refused to just fill her cart with tv dinners (which would have cut her food prep time down by at least 30 minutes).
I do recall I didn’t not like every dinner she cooked, and I hated the whole you must eat your veggie rule… come ON what 10 year old likes to eat brussel sprouts? It didn’t matter that I didn’t like brussel sprouts.. on brussel sprout night I had to place a small serving on my plate AND I had to eat it. Many friends of mine have commented that it is mean or harsh to require kids to eat things they don’t like, and they will never grow up to like the food and they will just resent you for making you do it. I am a pretty stubborn person ask anyone…and though I remember many nights sitting at the dinner table long after everyone else had been excuses trying to choke down my broccoli spears (another veggie I despised) but now that I am grown I do not harvest any ill will toward my mother for making me eat my veggies and I actually enjoy eating broccoli… ok well maybe that is a stretch from the truth.. broccoli to this day is still not my favorite BUT I know I can eat it and I won’t die, and since I’m on the path to ensuring that not only do I look good by exercising but that I extend the time I spend on this earth by ensuring I fill my body with good healthy things I choke down my broccoli at least twice a week. The amusing part to it all.. both my kids LOVE broccoli… and when I put it on the table even my 16 month old sees it and starts reaching for it and even gets a little pissy if I take too long to serve it to him. My kids defiantly do NOT like everything I serve to them but they eat it most of the time, mostly because I have enforced that type of eating habit since they were small, I have always cooked dinners that mirrored the type of cooking my mother made and my kids have a choice… eat the food I serve or go hungry… I don’t make them sit at the table all night playing battle of the wills because my kids are like me, and it would be pretty darn hard to win so I found a compromise.. when they are done eating they can get up, BUT if they want desert or a bedtime snack they best come back to the table where their cold dinner will await. If they decide they would rather be hungry then eat dinner that is their choice… my aunt thinks I’m a bit harsh for doing this BUT let me tell you something, kids are smarter then we give them credit for sometimes… if they are truly hungry they will come back to that table and eat their food, they just won’t always give you the satisfaction of eating it in front of you… this way we all win, I don’t’ have to fight with my kids about finishing their food, I don’t have to cook them unhealthy food, they never go to bed hungry, and since I give them the option to sneak back to the table and eat their food without being under my watchful eye they think they are the ones in control of what they eat… but if they looked up they would see their mean old momma as the puppet master ;)
So while I agree with the statement “I don’t have the time or money to cook myself something different then my family” it is essentially nonsense…you shouldn’t be the only one in your house eating healthy, nor should you have to dish out more money so you can be healthy while the rest of your family is filling up with junk…. Not that you can’t have anything “bad” in the house.. I think part of the reason we as kids were so willing to eat the good food my mother made for us each day for dinner is because after dinner and before bed if we did eat a good dinner we were allowed one frozen treat. A Popsicle or ice cream bar, heck sometimes we even had those small ice cream cups that came with the short wooden stick… maybe it was bribery, maybe it was simply about balance, however I do know that my mother fed us on a shoe string budget, and if it weren’t for meal planning and feeding us all the same thing we would have gone hungry halfway through the month..
Second statement “eating healthy is too expensive” of course after reading the above… it is possible to eat healthy and stay on a budget I know my mother did it while we were growing up. Our refrigerator or cabinets were never bare, however when it came to after school snacks we were limited. We didn’t have pizza rolls or potato chips. We had whole wheat bread and lunch meat to make sandwiches. We had a fruit bowl that had apples and oranges. We had options that lasted longer and were less expensive. I was so envious of my friends cupboards many times growing up. They had dunk a roos (who remembers those!) handi snacks, microwave popcorn, fruit snacks, and potato chips. I was so jealous at the time of all the “yummy” foods their mothers fed them but I was young and didn’t understand the concept of $$ and the fact their families all had 2 kids, 2 less mouths to feed can really add up to extra $$.
Now that I’m an adult and have my own children I am caught between both worlds. We make enough money where I don’t have to worry about how much money I spend on groceries, and while most of what I buy is healthy I do splurge on a few more things, I buy my daughter nesquick power so she can have chocolate milk. I buy the big box of mini chips at Costco when I go… and I buy the cupcakes in the bakery aisle. My daughter has her fare share of junk to choose from when snacking but I feel like I balance it out by making sure she doesn’t have any unhealthy snacks too close to dinner so she does fill up on the good food I make, and by telling her she can’t have “puptake” until after she eats all of her dinner and 9 times out of 10 her cleaning her plate isn’t’ a battle…. And as a proud mama I might add that in addition to chips and “puptakes” her favorite snack requests include cucumbers, apples, carrots, cheese sticks, and yogurt ;)
Realizing that times are very different now than they were when I was growing up, it seems prices on all consumer items continue to grow with each year (except for girl scout cookies that remain at 4 dollars a box for as many years as I can remember) and understanding that while I do have a food budget it is probably a bit higher than others, AND faced with the fact that come fall we might find ourselves in a very different financial situation; this month I decided to put my money where my mouth is… instead of trekking up to Costco and spending a big chunk of my grocery money there and then supplementing my shopping the rest of the month at the local grocery store I am going to do all my shopping at the local grocery store. I will go with my handy dandy list that spells out my food menu for the week (which I do anyways since I’m trying to lose weight) and I will ensure to get only the things needed. I am starting at an advantage since my freezer is still fairly well stocked with meat, but I will try to price meat items that are applicable to my weekly food menu… after this month I will determine just how affordable eating healthy is, and I will see how much $$ I can cut off my current grocery bill….. and of course I will follow up with what I bought and why next week. So to the statement “I can’t afford to eat healthy” to be continued ;)
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