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My sister and I were proud members of “The Clean Plate Club,” and we were told to consider the starving children around the world if we even hesitated over the last bite of mashed potatoes. Imagine my shock when a friend report that, in her home, she had to leave something on her plate after each meal for “Mr. Manners” to demonstrate restraint and a lack of gluttony.
“My mother would die,” I told her.
Wasting food was the only thing close to sin in my Jewish family. Not one item of food, not a single pea, was ever tossed. I do not exaggerate. Anything left over from a meal would go into my father’s lunch bag the next day. My father never complained if my mother packed him a green bean sandwich along with a jar of pickle juice to quench his thirst.
My earliest food memories are of eating on behalf of other family members. My father would offer me a spoonful of vegetable soup and say, “This bit is for Uncle Abie” and “This one is for Aunt Phyllis.” If I hesitated, he’d add, “You don’t want Aunt Phyllis to starve to death, do you?”
Of course I didn’t. My sister and I kept the entire extended family alive and well.
As I got older I learned, to my dismay that I stayed skinny no matter how many people I ate for. I was nicknamed “Boney-Maroney” by my classmates and taunted with the lyrics of a popular song of the day:
I got a girl name of Boney Maroney
She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni!
I no longer have that problem. Today my biggest challenge with food is to stop eating when I’m no longer hungry. I reflexively finish everything on my plate—and on everyone else’s plate. A therapist friend, Jane Hirschmann developed a new approach to eating that got me thinking about out the fact that this behavior doesn’t really help starving children and it certainly doesn’t help me, but tossing food from a plate still feels sinful.
Even now, well into in middle age, it’s hard for me to let my membership in The Clean Plate Club lapse. I confess that food still rots in the refrigerator behind my back, perhaps expressing my unconscious rebellion against my mother’s extreme frugality and aversion to waste, a way of living that I know the world needs more of.
Almost everyone has some craziness about food. Since it may be hard to recognize your own, I suggest you begin by observing other people’s crazy behavior toward their kids. For example, your brother may say to his daughter, “If you finish your vegetables, you can have desert.”
There are five lima beans on your niece’s plate and she dutifully puts them into her body, even though she isn’t hungry for them and doesn’t want them. You may recognize this as pretty irrational or controlling behavior on your brother’s part.
Unless, of course, you say this sort of thing to your own kids.
