"It's Never Just About the Food" (Part 2)

Navigating the practical dynamics of food and family

In case you missed the first half of my conversation with

Annelise Roberts

and

Dixie Dillon Lane

last week, you can click here to give it a read. This conversation was such a gift to me, and I’m so grateful to be able to share it with you as well.

Photo by Scott Warman on Unsplash

Sara Dietz

(SD): We left off last week on the topic of children eating off our plates. Bouncing off that topic, I’d love to hear how you each are trying to build up a culture around food in your own families. Do you and your husband come from similar “food cultures” in your families of origin? James and I definitely do not, so there have been lots of chances for us both to grow, whether in our palette or our patience.

Annelise Roberts

(AR): I think about this a lot. As parents, I think one of the most important things we can do, perhaps especially as moms, is to do the work to deal with our own hang ups around food. More is “caught than taught” and so if we are modeling normal, ordered, eating—which, I might add, is going to include occasionally overeating and sometimes using food for comfort, because those are NORMAL ways to eat—I think we have a better chance of creating a good culture around food. I will say that I’ve noticed things coming up for me with a daughter that I didn’t experience with my boys. For example, my youngest is almost one and she’s just the most delightfully chubby baby. In my mind, a chubby baby is always a good thing, and because we've had to fight so hard for our breastfeeding relationship, it feels like a huge victory—look at how fat this baby is! I did it! But then I’ve made a few remarks about how chubby or yummy she is—fully intending it as a compliment, and I’ve received a few comments about how she’ll grow out of it! And it makes me angry and sad and all the things at once. She’s a BABY. But it is also revealing as to how much baggage we carry around from day one of our lives. 

In terms of practical tips, I like Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility. It assigns parents and children different tasks in the jobs of feeding and eating. You as the parent choose what, when, and where. They as the kid choose whether and how much. I’d say this is quite close to what we do at home. I try to keep meals and snacks regular for my own sanity! I cannot constantly be feeding people, even though that's still how it feels. We say a lot of, “Okay, you can be done” but then if they’re hungry later, we’ll present whatever they didn’t finish before they get new food (with discretionary flexibility). I hate food waste, and though there’s some waste inherent in feeding babies and toddlers (that’s why we have a dog!), we try to cultivate a family attitude of eating what's on the table cheerfully, even if it's not our favorite. My children have not really struggled with picky eating, so I don’t know how much of this is due to how we've handled things, and how much is just how they are. My pickiest eater is the child with whom I was the least diligent in some of these habits, but there's no way to know if that's just how he would have been anyway. My husband and I are both from large families where family meals were the norm, but I’d say my food experience was more chaotic than my husband’s. For example, our pantry was a free-for-all. As a mom now, I look back and think, “What? We just had a free pass to the pantry?” It's not that I don't allow my children to eat what they ask for most of the time, but a small child is not equipped to make all of their own decisions about food. As with other tasks, you start to pass that responsibility along as they're able to handle it (I think? Ask me again in ten years when I have a bunch of teenagers. I might be completely wrong). 

My kids need avoid a few common allergens, so I work hard to make sure they have ample alternatives, treats, “normal” food that allows them to participate in social events as much as I can—things like making gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream cake, and keeping extra slices in the freezer for parties. I learned how to make my own bread, so I would have a good option for my youngest who couldn’t eat eggs, and my deep dive into allergy-free baking was because I wanted them to have good associations with the joy and pleasure of special occasion foods. As they get older we are having conversations about why we choose to eat or not eat things and when they can make the decisions for themselves. The hope is to set them up for success, but understand they’ll need to decide if these choices are worth it to them.

Growing a garden and processing our own meat have both provided good opportunities for conversation. Our kids always want to know what kind of animal they’re eating, which I suppose some people might find macabre, but I’m glad they know where their food comes from and how much work it requires.  Meat processing is a family affair, and one of our boys got to go along on an antelope hunt this year! Gardening is similar. If you want your kids to try a vegetable, have them plant a garden. There’s nothing more tempting than picking fresh veggies. I don’t want to make this sound idyllic, because my toddler still spits out swiss chard, and one of my children reliably gags on homemade pizza. So, it’s a process. But I think modeling and participating are both important to building a good culture around food. We also try to not talk about people’s bodies. We don’t own a scale and haven’t since we were married because it’s not good for me. I keep track of their growth, obviously, but after the baby stage I generally trust their bodies know what to do. If my kids are persistently pestering for snacks, I assume they need more protein and try to offer something of that ilk. We are not super strict with sugar, because in my own experience as a child, that backfired and I was obsessed with candy and sugar wherever I could get it. We don’t have dessert every night, but there’s often a sweet treat, or chocolate at some point. I am hopeful that not making a big deal of sugar one way or the other will be helpful. I eat chocolate every single day, and due to that “mom’s food is better than mine” phenomenon, all my kids like dark chocolate, which I find very funny. 

Dixie Dillon Lane

(DDL): My kids also like dark chocolate, for the same reason! Annelise is so wise to talk about how food attitudes are caught, not taught. 

My husband and I both had a lot of home-cooked food growing up, though there were differences in our food cultures. We both experienced regular family dinners and come from about the same socio-economic background, so we haven’t really had conflict over food in creating a family culture together.

One thing that may be a little unusual about how we approach food in our home now is that we never call a food “bad.” We don’t even say “that food is not good for you.” We say that some foods are treat foods that we have every once in a while, and some foods are everyday foods. But even treat foods are good, not bad—they help us celebrate, and they bring joy!  We also explain that individuals have different tastes in food and that these are not value judgments; we all have our preferences.

So we try not to give any food a negative value, just as we try not to assign value to certain body types over others, even when we need to point out something that may not be a good habit in ourselves or needs to change for thriving health.

We explain, for example, that women’s bodies are supposed to develop fat stores in puberty in preparation for the miraculous possibility of growing and nourishing a baby. We also know that boys commonly have a period of gaining weight right before their adolescent growth spurt, in preparation for that. Wow – a healthy bit of fat is such an amazing part of God’s design! 

We also are blessed to have friends who model good self-care and eating patterns and joyful living whatever their body type. They are wonderful examples to us and our children.

Our family also ties our eating to the Catholic liturgical year, which carries with it a lot of wisdom about cycles and seasons of fasting and feasting. We are careful not to be scrupulous about fasting and try to model healthy discernment, but we do give up sweets as a family for Lent. However, we balance that Lenten sacrifice with a very cheerful enjoyment of treats even during Lent on Sundays and family holidays – we try to see food in part as one of the joyful pleasures of life that God gives us because He so loves to delight his children.

Like Annelise’s family, we do try to attend to providing mostly healthy, well-prepared, nutritious food, and dessert is not a daily occurrence. But there is always a dessert on Sundays, and little treats here and there happen often! Spontaneous surprise trips out for ice cream are a wonderful part of life. And yes, sometimes we even delight our children and ourselves with a surprise apple pie as dinner itself – with some cheese or eggs on the side, perhaps, of course.

We try to rejoice in food, and be moderate with it without being fearful of it.

SD: We also try to take that attitude of, “We try to eat a bunch of different kinds of foods because they each help our bodies in different ways.” I think Kids Eat in Color offers some really great resources and scripts for talking about food variety that avoid that kind of value judgement, while also tapping into kids’ natural curiosity! I think the only food we say is “bad for children’s bodies” is coffee, because I am not ready for a caffeinated toddler running around in full destructo-mode! On a personal note, I’m really trying to change my language from, “I don’t like this food” to “I’m learning to like this food”—on the topic of food attitudes being caught, I want our children to have that openness to new things that I’ve really struggled with. 

And finally, let’s chat about grocery shopping--somehow both my favorite and my least favorite home management task. It can feel like a lot to try and balance those “food culture” ideals with the reality of raising a family on a limited budget! My biggest rule around grocery shopping in this season is “don’t shop hungry”, but I want to believe that this concept of stewardship can be a sort of guiding principle here--being good stewards of our tables and our time and our finances. What do y’all think?

DDL: “Don’t shop hungry!” Great advice. But if you do shop hungry, go first to the yogurt aisle and get yourself one of those drinkable yogurts (Chobani makes a good one), and shamelessly open it and drink it. It’s worth the $2.50 to prepare yourself before you head into the tater tot. I love that Sara uses the term “stewardship.” Getting that yogurt (or the bag of pretzels to feed to the hangry toddler sitting in the cart, or whatever) is good stewardship, and saves you money in the end! Don’t be penny wise but pound foolish, as the old saying goes!

The cost of groceries right now is astonishing. Even reliable, inexpensive staples like rolled oats have more than doubled in price in the last couple of years. Always make a list, and make a meal plan (whether loose or strict), and whenever possible, go shopping by yourself! Still, often you do have to bring your young kids, and that can make you a bit flustered. Oh, well. Realize that mistakes at the grocery store are just part of the cost of doing the business of raising a family!

In terms of cutting costs, making food from scratch helps, but of course meat and dairy and produce are more expensive than pasta or sugared cereals.

I have learned two lessons regarding this in the past several years. 

First, accept that you may need to cut corners, but also that you get to choose which corners to cut. You may need to accept eating more carbohydrates than you would like, for example. But you can choose whether you do that through chips or sweet potatoes or pasta. Or you can save up for a bread machine (or ask for one as a gift) and make easy homemade bread, with no preservatives, a dinner and lunchtime staple. Think about Good, Better, and Best and choose according to your budget at the time.

Second, you may need to really tighten your belt for a certain season. If you have a difficult couple of months ahead financially, feed your family pasta twice as often as you normally would just for those ten weeks while you do a financial reset. Don’t worry—it will all even out nutritionally in the end. Make the mac’n’cheese from scratch if you have the energy (this is the recipe I use), and you’ll see that it is actually quite a good source of calcium and protein! 

Don’t abandon your determination to feed your family well, but again, don’t obsess. Know your real limits—allergies, time and energy, finances, basic nutrition—and then figure out what compromises are reasonable when you run up against a problem.

And always buy the ice cream. Remember Francie’s mother’s attitude in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: even in the tightest times, one little source of indulgence or even waste makes all the difference.

AR: Dixie has some very solid advice here. Grocery shopping used to be one of my favorite tasks, but with food costs the way they are, I’ll admit to it being a bit less enjoyable these days.

One of the best shifts in our family food budget came about accidentally. We spent a year living on a ranch in rural Wyoming, 55 miles from the nearest grocery store. I had to start thinking about shopping differently. I could go grocery shopping a maximum of once a week, and generally that involved a Walmart pickup order and perhaps a quick stop into Albertson’s to find a few items that Walmart didn’t carry. If I forgot an item, I just had to figure it out. It became important to have a plan, keep a stocked pantry and make do with what I had on hand. We all survived. I even made it through my first trimester cravings without impulse buying whatever sounded good (I’ll be honest, this was miserable. If there is ever a time to throw your grocery budget out the window when finances allow, it’s the first trimester and postpartum). When we returned to an area where the grocery stores were closer, these habits stuck. Grocery pickup eliminates impulse buying and also allows you to see the total before you check out, which is quite helpful! 

I think distinguishing between wants and needs is important. And so, though it might sound harsh, part of maintaining a reasonable budget is becoming less precious about what we’re willing to eat. Game meat isn’t my favorite, and sometimes I dread figuring out how to cook it. But it’s in our freezer, so it’s what we eat. With things like produce, we shop seasonally, which means that in the winter we don’t buy fresh berries or peaches, because they’re not in season and they’re not on sale. I don’t think it hurts people to observe some limitations. You can just as easily hit your nutritional bases with cabbage and a five pound bag of carrots, as with other less hardy vegetables (cabbage is underrated if you ask me). 

While the pictures of beautiful lunches and cute breakfasts on Instagram can be inspirational, they can also be stressful! Kids are not mini adults. They also enjoy repetition, so it is okay that breakfast and lunch are the same rotation of a handful of items! The purpose of a meal is to feed people, not to impress the Internet. Perhaps you do well with a lower carbohydrate diet, but I can almost guarantee that your children need carbohydrates. Kids are growing, and their body’s preferred source of fuel is carbohydrates. Our meals always have some form of a filler starch—rice, potatoes, gluten free pasta, banana bread, toast, oatmeal, rice cereal—because otherwise I’d never be able to keep four growing boys (and now a rapidly growing baby) full. 

Eating a limited diet is absolutely more expensive and sometimes this is so frustrating. But I also realize that I could pay for food that works well for our family, or I could pay for the consequences. So we prioritize food, but things like home decor often don’t fit into the budget. It also helps to have a bit of a rubric for which ingredients you prioritize. I try to buy the best quality meat I can, which means shopping around or eating less convenient cuts of meat – think drumsticks or chicken quarters instead of boneless and skinless. One of my doctors shared a helpful tip for meat buying, which is, if you’re buying grass fed, organic or local, buy the fattiest cut you can, if you’re buying conventional, buy the leanest cut you can. Because fat stores both nutrients and toxins, this helps you benefit when the meat is high quality. And ask around! We found a ½ beef this year for about $2 less a pound than was locally available because a friend’s parents raised beef in the next state over and had some still available. 

I use the USDA Thrifty Food Plan calculator as a way to get a grasp on what a realistic goal for our food budget is. Unfortunately I know that it’s not like the budget always expands with the food prices, and so many families are feeling the pinch. You just have to do the best you can. I’ve had friends surprised that with all the health concerns, we don’t buy all organic, and I sort of laugh… because, uh, do I look independently wealthy? We still buy good coffee. Life is too short to drink bad coffee. 

SD: “The purpose of a meal is to feed people, not to impress the Internet.” ONE MORE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK. But truly, all of this is so real. The “store snack” to keep yourself from buying a ton of junk food, the sale apples, and the unbelievable price of blueberries these days. We do choose to splurge on blueberries sometimes to keep the kids regular, but as you both alluded to—there’s plenty of room for priorities and prudential judgment when it comes to splurges or “excesses”. We’re currently in a challenging financial season, and I’ve experienced a lot of anxiety about grocery shopping over the last few months. Ultimately, the peace of mind I keep trying to return to is that while our grocery budget can be an important piece of our overall budget, shrinking our budget to the point of anxiety won’t singlehandedly cure our financial woes. It’s one piece of a larger financial picture, just like our food and nutrition is just one piece of a larger picture of our overall health and wellbeing. 

Friends, thank you so much for taking the time to chat! Before we part ways, if readers want to connect with you, how can they do so? 

DDL: Thank you so much, Sara and Annelise! This has been so wonderful. I’d love to invite your readers to come explore my work at The Hollow and also to visit Hearth & Field and the Arena blog at Current, where I write at least monthly. And of course, I also help edit the monthly liturgical living 'stack, Signs + Seasons. And you can always e-mail me by clicking my name at the bottom of any of my posts at the Hollow!

AR: It’s been a great conversation! Thanks so much for hosting this Sara, and for asking me and Dixie to participate! I would love to have anyone peruse my work at Writing While Washing. If you’re interested in navigating the choppy waters of the food and wellness world, you can join me over at The Everything Free Life, where I make no claims of expertise, but hope to share some of the things that have helped me along the way. I’m really hopeful that we can create a more realistic and balanced culture around what it means to live well, even with chronic illness. And, like Dixie said, you are always welcome to contact me by e-mail by responding to any of my posts!

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Unrelated to this week’s topic, but if you’ve been following along with this semester’s book club discussion of A Devotional Journey Into the Mass (or even if you haven’t, but you have questions about the Mass), our Zoom discussion will be hosted TONIGHT at 7:30pm CST. You can click here to add the event to your Google calendar, or click here to hop directly onto the call.