upbringing influence the way you eat?

My family is full of fat-*kitten*. They can't just eat until they're full - they feel the need to binge. Every time.

Of course growing up with them I followed their same habits. That's why I got so damn fat.

not sure about food but beverages for sure. we never had a lot of money so my mum never wasted money on drinks, since we had mountain spring water coming from the taps. i guess thats why i never really developed the taste for it. i cant even imagine drinking coke, sprite, ice tea, etc.. when im thirsty, its just gross to me.

Definitely. I've spent the past few years undoing all the bad habits my mom passed down to me.
We didn't have a lot of money growing up, but when I was little we had enough and ate pretty decent. We had veggies/fruits with dinner from the garden in the summer and then canned during the winter. My dad did the grocery shopping and he cooked dinner most nights. When my mom cooked, it was usually boxed stuff like macaroni and cheese or she'd make me grilled cheese. My dad is average size, whereas my mom is/was very overweight.

Then when I was around 10 (I think) my mom went back to work from being a sahm, and suddenly had a lot more income and decided she was going to do the shopping. Around this time the housing market also went bad, leaving my dad, a contractor, out of work. My mom is a big impulse buyer and binge eater, so when she went grocery shopping, she usually only bought junk food, boxed meals, frozen meals, etc. And since my dad didn't have money to buy "real food," he no longer cooked. So every night was now "fend for yourself night" for dinner. Which led to me eating a whole box of Kraft mac and cheese by myself every night. Not normal.

Basically, I'm now learning to cook real, balanced meals out of actual food instead of eating boxed meals and junk food all day. It's hard, but ultimately I feel 1000x better now that I've stopped eating absolute **** every day lol.

I grew up in West Virginia in the seventies. My grandparents and my dad both ate traditional Appalachian fare. My mom was a drug/addict anorexic who liked store bought, microwaveable foods. So we bounced back and forth between - Sunday dinners with rolls, fresh corn, green beans we'd stringed, fresh fruit pies, meats from a butcher or something like venison or squirrel, just fantastic food. Then, home to "diet" chocolate pudding, "meat" with lipton onion soup, something from the crockpot, soda, candy bars, chips just gross. When I was ten they decided I was fat so she didn't feed me for two days till I passed out.
When I went away to California, I had never seen salsa before or sushi-even spaghetti seemed exotic to me. I learned I could extend a student budget on Asian food lunches stretched out over a few meals. Chinese, Thai, Indian oh my. Then Mexican oh goodness, life became such a culinary adventure. But on a trip with my daughter to Ireland, when they had just started their organic revolution, prompted by the EU, I discovered again the roots of my grandmother's Appalachian food with Salmon!, and I was home.
Heaven to me is wild caught salmon with spring vegetables just barely steamed and seasoned. A little cobbler or cookies for dessert, Oats for breakfast, seafood, all day, steaks whenever, and potatoes. mmm, must make potatoes to go with salmon for dinner. yes, it's a plan...thanks

I lived with 2 financially well-off parents, and 3 siblings. At supper, my parents would make a HUGE amount of food for all of us. I grew up used to having a surplus in food always at my finger tips. Having take-out or desserts also created an environment of selfishness and survival of the fittest. If there was cake - you had to eat it quick, or it would be gone. Growing up, it made me distrust the idea of "leaving some for later" if I was not actually hungry at that time, as it would disappear.

It came to light as I was reading Intuitive Eating. I tested this theory one night with my boyfriend. We bought pizza - and of course, I wanted to eat the entire thing thinking subconsciously "I will not get another piece if I do not eat it all right now". I had my boyfriend promise he would not eat any of my left-overs. I left myself 2 pieces in the fridge. I did not feel the need to eat the pieces, I saved them until the next day for lunch. It was a relief.

I noticed this is a similar pattern of all of my siblings growing up - it is like we all would fight to get the most...and when you didnt, you missed out. I contribute this greatly to binging on anything delicious and dessert-type foods.

My mom was one of 10 children and she's talked about this a lot too!! They were all spaced out and she was #9, so there were "only" 5-6 kids in the home during most of her childhood and teens...but she says that her brothers especially would POUNCE if someone ate slowly or didn't finish their food, and everyone learned to eat quickly. She said that even as a teen she would eat her morning cereal with three cereal boxes around her making a little cubicle so her brothers didn't know she had cereal left. LOL

I was an only child and I think this is one reason my parents took me out to restaurants with them all of the time. My parents were middle class but with just three in the family I suppose it wasn't very expensive. We would get Pizza Hut almost every Friday night, sandwiches from a deli on Saturday morning and then go to a nicer Italian restaurant on Saturday night with friends/family, and Sunday after church meant a variety of places, anything from Red Lobster to Grandy's. I remember learning at an early age to drink water in restaurants, get a kid meal or something cheap, don't order appetizers or dessert.

By comparison...I remember going to KFC in the late 80's with a friend, her parents, live-in grandmother, and 2 siblings...and the price even back then was over $50 for all of us to eat. That was a mindblowing sum to me at the time.

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I grew up in stoke-on-trent in the uk to average income parents. They grew veggies for awhile and my grandparents grew a lot more. All meals were home cooked but did quite often include offal which I wouldn't touch with a barge pole now. My mum and my grandmother were great cooks and bakers but not everyday, so it was for a treat.

The only take away food available was fish and chips which was a rare treat. The first fast food didn't come to the city was a maccas when i was in my late teens. I hated the adverts and they took over a really good pub as their first venue. I would have been in my 20s and vegetarian when the first KFC arrived.

Now I live in Australia and I still grow veggies, cook all our meals from scratch and never have fast food except the occasional fish and chips. I guess I cook more Asian and Mediterranean food now but otherwise it's exactly as I was raised.

I have pretty much stayed the same weight and size, give or take a few pounds, for all of my adult life.

You know what is interesting about this? Most of us have grown up with bad habits and working to correct that. I wonder how we will affect our kids? And how they will view their upbringing.

My mom really thought the way we ate was healthy. I mean, in the 30's, they told people that smoking cigarettes was healthy. Lol.

Just interesting how our general knowledge grows on this topic.

this is exactly why it makes me giggle to see some people thinking they know it all and they have it all figured out, their way is the only way! because really, in 30-50 years people may laugh about the way we used to eat because they could have found out different things. :laugh:

I grew up in York, in the North of England.

My mum didn't work when we were young, so we never had lots of extra money, so never had take-away and very rarely ate at a restaurant. All our meals were home cooked and we had a lot of stuff like casseroles, fish, veggies, shepherd's pie, jacket potatoes etc. My mum isn't very adventurous so we never had anything spicy for example. We always had wholemeal bread, skim milk (although whole milk as young kids), never went to fast food places etc. We had those bite size chocolate bars as treats.

As an adult, I am very similar I think, except I do like spicy things, and we have the occasional take-away. I have 3 kids, and they have been to McDonald's once (not the 4 month old lol) when my MIL took them. We mainly cook from scratch and have wholemeal bread, brown rice etc. I don't buy fizzy drinks and all my kids drink is milk or water, and we drink coffee/tea or water.

All of this! Must a North England thing.

We were basically the same - 4 nights a week would be some sort of meat (pork chop, lamb chop, chicken breast), or fish, potatoes and then two veg - peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans etc. One night would be salad and fresh roast chicken, Sundays would ALWAYS be a full roast dinner with the family and Saturdays would be lunch at nanas and dinner at Grandmas - which would again be fresh food.

I remember going to KFC maybe twice in my teens and only ate MacDonalds when we went to the fair ground or a long car journey and had to stop at motorway services.

Lunchboxes at school would always be a sandwich, apple, banana and a bag of crisps. My folks never bastardized anything aside from MacDonalds and we would get fish and chips or a Chinese take-away if mum wasn't up for cooking every once in a while and boxes of chocolates around Xmas or weekends. The attitude was always you "eat to live, not live to eat". We were allowed sweeties, if we used our pocket money and ice cream, but moderation was the key thing. I think as we weren't super well off that played a part in it - a family tub of ice cream was to last a week or two so we didn't have dessert every night.

I still follow this - although I probably enjoy food a little bit more these days as it's no longer purely just a functional tool to feed your brain and get you through the day. Moderation. My folks still do this - we went to an all-inclusive hotel for a week in the summer in Spain. There were all these people just piling their plates up and stuffing themselves silly. Mum and dad just took a bit of what they fancied and stopped when they were full. End of. They taught me to never take more than I need and that greed is a very unattractive quality.

Unless there were strawberries or grapes in the house. Then it was every one for themselves. They were so expensive growing up that I still see them as an indulgent treat, even though I can definitely afford to eat them everyday now!