Gluttony

I was watching a documentary on DHC last night and heard a doctor say that our food habits are developed as early as infancy. We learn how to eat by how our parents feed us during early childhood.

Last week, a relative mentioned to me how worried they are about my mother and her new eating habits. She eats constantly, can't seem to satisfy herself, and, consequently, has put on an unhealthy amount of weight. They asked me, "didn't your mother use to eat like a bird?" Understatement, I'd say.

Since I can remember, my mother has suffered from a mild to moderate case of anorexia, depending upon how out of control her life was at the time. No one ever labeled it, but she explained the lack of food in our house with "well, I never eat much anyway, and Rain gets free lunch at school." We received food stamps, but when they'd come in, she'd sell of a good portion of them for discounted cash, which she'd use for cigarettes and alcohol. We never ate breakfast at our house, we never had milk or bread out of the rationalization that they'd go bad too quickly. Mother always had a case of Dr. Pepper that I was not allowed to touch, and we kept a supply of off-brand boxes of macaroni and cheese--only margarine to prepare it with--and hot dogs, maybe a few cans of tuna for the macaroni and some bags of beans to be made in a crock pot. To this day, I can't eat any of those things, except maybe a really good tuna salad.

This all had me thinking about how these habits may have affected my adult life. Since she couldn't--and didn't--cook, I read every cookbook I could find to master this art. I still collect cookbooks today, it's one of the few gems that will ever attract me to a flea market. I frustrate my other half by always insisting that I clean my plate in a restaurant, even though the portions are notoriously oversize. I battle the weight, fluctuating from a 2 to a 14 in dress sizes, mostly because I just love good food. A food counselor asked me once what need I was trying to feed, and I told her "the need to eat." She was extremely unhappy about that. I don't relate food to emotion, I relate food to the wonderful sensations on my tongue. Moving away from home was like exploring a whole new world to please the senses, and I added to my hobbies "trying new cuisines."

If one tried to analyze this, they could read any number of euphemisms desired.