How many people grew up with...?

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2

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  • iysys
    iysys Posts: 524
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    i didn't but i did grow up with chinese take out, pizza and kfc every single night...which most likely explains the predicament i am in now! ;-)
  • knittnponder
    knittnponder Posts: 1,954 Member
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    I did. We had to eat it all and we didn't get to dish it up ourselves. It took me a long time to be okay with leaving some on my plate if I wasn't hungry and i had to make a conscious decision to do it.
  • jagh09
    jagh09 Posts: 555 Member
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    Gotta love the depression era upbringing. They grew up without enough, so they hated to see anything get wasted. We were promised ice cream if we cleaned our plates at my grandfather's house! Nothing like bribing a kid with junk food to eat their real food.
  • jagh09
    jagh09 Posts: 555 Member
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    Gotta love the depression era upbringing. They grew up without enough, so they hated to see anything get wasted. We were promised ice cream if we cleaned our plates at my grandfather's house! Nothing like bribing a kid with junk food to eat their real food.
  • liftingbro
    liftingbro Posts: 2,029 Member
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    I did, but then we were very active kids. We left in the morning after cartoons and some cereal and didn't go back inside until lunch and then we would leave and be back at dinner time and then out again until dark. Not only that but we were pretty poor and there were to many mouths to feed for a single mom at the time, so our plates were not always filled.

    So, we ate everything on our plates because we couldn't know for sure if the next plate would be.
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    My family had "The Clean Plate Club." :laugh:
  • joejccva71
    joejccva71 Posts: 2,985 Member
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    Take as much as you want, but eat what you take.
  • MrsCon40
    MrsCon40 Posts: 2,351 Member
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    Oh yeah I remember sitting at the table for an hour after everyone else was done because my mom said I had to finish everything before I could go. I notice now my husband will tell me while we are eating dinner and he can see me struggling to finish that if I am full stop eating, but it was drilled into my head to finish everything on my plate. Whether it's related to me being overweight or not I won't be doing that with my kids.

    I slept at the table a few nights (nothing would make me eat tuna casserole :sick: )

    I think it ingrained in me that I didn't have control over food - that it controlled me. I had to eat everything on my plate and it was served to me.

    I still have a REALLY HARD time leaving food on my plate.
  • nut3llahh
    nut3llahh Posts: 2
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    I think I was pretty fortunate I guess, my parents didnt force me to eat what I didnt want to. But I am far from a picky eater there was never a food I "disliked" I pretty much ate anything and everything.
  • RunHardBeStrong
    RunHardBeStrong Posts: 33,069 Member
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    Ugh! Yes! This is a hot topic at home, even tho I grew up with this, I do not practice it but my husband still does and whenever he says this to our kids I freak out! I do not want this imbedded into their heads!
  • SandraD89
    SandraD89 Posts: 809
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    That and if you dont like it dont eat. But in my family we made our own plates so we had to learn not to get so much.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
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    Yup, I had that grownig up too. It is a hard habit to break but I'm mostly ok with leaving food behind these days. It can be hard to stop eating when it's something particularly yummy though. Like last night, hubby made an awesome potato casserole on the grill (potatoes, onion, dijon, bacon bits) and I didn't want to stop eating it! I try to make sure my plate is mostly meat and veggies with just a little bit of carbs so even if I do eat it all, I'm not completely overindulging.
  • AlyAnt26
    AlyAnt26 Posts: 58
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    Mine was off and on with that --- very inconsistent! If I don't want to finish my dinner now, I slide it to my Hubby's plate! He's a calorie burning machine and will eat anything! :)
  • lsd007
    lsd007 Posts: 435
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    *Raises hand*

    My mom was always sure to throw "There are starving kids in Africa!" in there too.
  • LilRedRooster
    LilRedRooster Posts: 1,421 Member
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    My grandmother did that (thankfully, we didn't eat with her that often, because she was an atrocious cook), but no one else did. My grandfather's policy was actually "You don't have to finish it if you don't like it, but you do have to try it."

    I think for my grandparents' generation, they took that mentality of having to eat everything on the plate, because when they grew up during the Great Depression, a full plate was a rare thing, and wasting food was just unthinkable. That mentality passed down to generations that no longer had that worry for waste, and is now just a superfluous carryover from a time long gone.
  • Shalimarmandy
    Shalimarmandy Posts: 409 Member
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    I did, but then we were very active kids. We left in the morning after cartoons and some cereal and didn't go back inside until lunch and then we would leave and be back at dinner time and then out again until dark. Not only that but we were pretty poor and there were to many mouths to feed for a single mom at the time, so our plates were not always filled.

    So, we ate everything on our plates because we couldn't know for sure if the next plate would be.

    Same here.... the problem was the food we could afford wasn't always to healthiest because in general it is far cheaper to buy junk than healthy food. We even received "government cheese" for a a while and that was super high in fat and calories but it was yummy cheese... anyway it's a habit I still have a difficult time breaking!!
  • Whatareherthings711
    Whatareherthings711 Posts: 316
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    I did, and I hated it.
  • karleen
    karleen Posts: 260
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    i grew up in a house where my stepfather not only forced us to eat everything on our plates.. but purposefully made the portions HUGE. like, two large burgers, yes TWO.. like hand molded giant patties not just the already made patties you buy. he was a mean drunk and also cooked for a living but never hardly ate.. just force fed everyone else! i never make my son eat, he'll eat if hes hungry and if not then no big deal
  • baisleac
    baisleac Posts: 2,019 Member
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    Kind of...

    Once we could serve ourselves; if we didn't finish everything we put on our own plate we couldn't have any snacks between meals... and we had to try at least one bite of anything new.
  • melsinct
    melsinct Posts: 3,512 Member
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    I didn't grow up that way, though many people I know did. I don't think plate clearing has much to do with the obesity epidemic (am sure it does in some cases). I think that stems from too many Americans eating out too much. They eat monster sized restaurant portions and have no clue what a regular portion looks like anymore. Just look at how the sizes have grown over the years, e.g. today's small fries at McDonalds is what their standard size (the only one they sold) was in 1950s. Today's 55 gallon drums of soda from restaurants are 5 times larger than what they used to be. So many people have no idea what a real serving size is. I include myself pre-MFP in that category!

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