Yesterday's NYTimes, yes, in the style section, had an article that was both insane and real, about mothers, nannies, and the stress over food. Some of the stories made me wonder, at first, whether they were made up. I couldn't believe that some moms would be so picky about food for their kids, about carving such a staunch line in the sand against pizza and pasta and all other foods of great evil. Then I thought about friends I've known who have outlawed goldfish, say, or only fed their children green pepper for snacks after school, and have pounced on prepared foods in all forms with lionness ferocity. I thought of my own refrigerator. I imagined what their lives, and mine, would look like once committed to words and print, because it can be quite horrifying to see our lives described. Some of the moms came off quite silly and controlling, but that's what this genre is all about, exagerating people's home lives to make a point.
The article's point was to say that class and culture differences between women come to the fore over food, something that profoundly affects our society, and it plays out in mothers' lives, and in nannies lives. Stories about moms who want healthy eating and nannies who subvert them fill the front, but the article ends with two babysitters who push children to eat healthy foods (and less ice cream) than the parents allow, so there's some attempt at balance.
My babysitter and I have been immersed in a series of early morning conversations over food. Not about the food she serves Amelia for lunch when she's here, which is three days a week ending at 12.30, but the bigger issues over being a vegetarian (which she is and I'm not), and why, and whether it matters. Or how we socialize with food, and the labor of cooking and cleaning that's involved in all that, and wouldn't it be nice if we could just go for a walk instead.
One morning, the morning I was cooking up a storm of food to bring to my mom's house, we talked about the relation of internal desires about food--what our values are, how we go about practicing them in our lives--and our desire to fit in and conform to other people's standards--like, if you're surrounded by vegans, or meat-eaters, or whatever, how there's all this pressure to do the same thing, and finally, how all this sorts itself out in our economic lives. It's much cheaper to order bulk breakfast cereal, she learned, from the new grocery site at amazon.com. Yet don't we also feel loyalty to, and wish to support the small groceries and food co-ops that dot our city, even though sometimes the food costs much more?
It all gets very complicated when you unpack the issues.
Nutrition is so tied with our class identities too, and food is so permeated for many of us with issues of control. This morning I was thinking about how for people who are well educated, who are more affluent, the pressure to stay thin, to be in good shape, and to eat the right foods is immense. We have whole networks of stores devoted to pleasing us, stores filled with organic foods, with specialty foods from different parts of the world and different american ethnic traditions, with antibiotic-free meats and free-range chicken, and mac and cheese made by small companies in Vermont.
It's also very expensive. Which is a big bind, and a big difference that sets us apart, especially since it's not easy for most of us to talk honestly about class, economics, and family finance. The debate about eating well is inexorably always about what we can afford to eat. If one is educated and/or affluent, we are supposed to eat expensive foods and keep thin. Yet outside our urban areas, and everywhere that people are poor, we eat very inexpensive foods that make us fat. That's the huge furor right now with all the trans fats in prepared foods, and with high fructose corn syrup, those incredibly cheap forms of making foods tasty and sweet that are so bad for our health.
What a scary and hard-to-navigate world we live in.
The article's point was to say that class and culture differences between women come to the fore over food, something that profoundly affects our society, and it plays out in mothers' lives, and in nannies lives. Stories about moms who want healthy eating and nannies who subvert them fill the front, but the article ends with two babysitters who push children to eat healthy foods (and less ice cream) than the parents allow, so there's some attempt at balance.
My babysitter and I have been immersed in a series of early morning conversations over food. Not about the food she serves Amelia for lunch when she's here, which is three days a week ending at 12.30, but the bigger issues over being a vegetarian (which she is and I'm not), and why, and whether it matters. Or how we socialize with food, and the labor of cooking and cleaning that's involved in all that, and wouldn't it be nice if we could just go for a walk instead.
One morning, the morning I was cooking up a storm of food to bring to my mom's house, we talked about the relation of internal desires about food--what our values are, how we go about practicing them in our lives--and our desire to fit in and conform to other people's standards--like, if you're surrounded by vegans, or meat-eaters, or whatever, how there's all this pressure to do the same thing, and finally, how all this sorts itself out in our economic lives. It's much cheaper to order bulk breakfast cereal, she learned, from the new grocery site at amazon.com. Yet don't we also feel loyalty to, and wish to support the small groceries and food co-ops that dot our city, even though sometimes the food costs much more?
It all gets very complicated when you unpack the issues.
Nutrition is so tied with our class identities too, and food is so permeated for many of us with issues of control. This morning I was thinking about how for people who are well educated, who are more affluent, the pressure to stay thin, to be in good shape, and to eat the right foods is immense. We have whole networks of stores devoted to pleasing us, stores filled with organic foods, with specialty foods from different parts of the world and different american ethnic traditions, with antibiotic-free meats and free-range chicken, and mac and cheese made by small companies in Vermont.
It's also very expensive. Which is a big bind, and a big difference that sets us apart, especially since it's not easy for most of us to talk honestly about class, economics, and family finance. The debate about eating well is inexorably always about what we can afford to eat. If one is educated and/or affluent, we are supposed to eat expensive foods and keep thin. Yet outside our urban areas, and everywhere that people are poor, we eat very inexpensive foods that make us fat. That's the huge furor right now with all the trans fats in prepared foods, and with high fructose corn syrup, those incredibly cheap forms of making foods tasty and sweet that are so bad for our health.
What a scary and hard-to-navigate world we live in.