A man and his messed up relationship with food. Oliver Twist gets a paycheck and look what happens!

So from where did my sometimes uncontrollable food lust originate?  Call me strange (you wouldn't be the first), but I find self-examination fascinating.  I consider myself kind of a freak at heart, so I find the process of understanding the origins of my freakishness to be an incredibly interesting exercise.  This is the case for numerous aspects of my life, but it is very much true for my relationship with food.

Time to break out my armchair Dr. Freud and get into some deep exploration.  Why do I have strong impulses to overeat when I'm around food?

Well, it couldn't possibly be me.  There must be someone I can blame.  There must be some despotic figure who waged a campaign early in my life to create my unnatural tendencies to binge on food.  I know!  It's my mom!

Just like Coke!!!!

Lest you think I'm an awful person, I think the world of my mother.  She didn't have much to work with when it came to me, and I think I turned out pretty OK.  She did a great job raising me, and she has been an excellent role model for parenting.  Yet, it is impossible to parent without inflicting at least two or three unforeseen consequences on your offspring.  As a parent myself, I often wonder about the myriad of ways I am unknowingly messing up my kids.  So I feel a little bad for publicly teasing my loving mom, but I really can't help it.  Some stories just need to be told.

The most important bit of context about my mom is that she is incredibly frugal.  She had to be.  My dad spent his entire career as a basic research chemist working for the US government (NBS/NIST and DOE for those curious), so we lived on a middle class government salary (contrary to anything you might have heard on Fox News, this is not the way to become a millionaire).  She was taking care of two kids while my dad was getting his PhD, with literally less than two cents to scrape together.  Ultimately, she was taking care of four kids.  My parents put all four kids through college, including their ungrateful third child (me) into an over-priced institution in Durham, NC.  She worked full time as a typist, earning practically no money so they could cover tuition.  It is also worth noting that my mother's mother was a product of the Great Depression.  She was even tighter.  Given all of the above, my mother's frugality would give the most hardened Scot a run for his precious money.

When it came to frugality, there was no better evidence than the food in my house.  A few notable examples come to mind:

1. Lunch bags.  Other kids got those cool, pre-cut lunch bags made explicitly for carrying their lunch to school.  I got whatever large brown shopping bag happened to be around.  I kind of looked like a homeless person carrying his belongings in a tattered brown bag.  
2. Bread.  We never got fresh bread from the store.  Instead, we stocked up on day-old bread that was on sale, and then stored it in the downstairs industrial strength freezer.  I didn't complain  as much as my siblings (my recollection, anyway), so I tended to get the heals, not the normal slices from the middle.  That's right.  My sandwiches were made out of day-old, frozen-then-thawed heal slices.  Wonder Bread you ask?  Heck no!  Always generic.  
3. Cheese.  Did I get those awesome tasting processed cheese slices that the cool kids got?  Please.  Bologna?  Never!  I got Safeway brand longhorn cheddar cheese.  Therefore, my prehistoric crust sandwiches were served with basic cheddar cheese.  And mustard.  That's it.  Some days I did get PB&J.  
4. What else came in my cavernous lunch sack?  Usually a brown banana.  
5. What about a treat with my lunch?  No.  I was the kid that literally had nothing good to trade at lunch in the cafeteria.  Oh, the shame of it all!!!!
6. What about buying my meal from the cafeteria?  Maybe 3-4 times per year.  
7. OK, lunch was sad, what about breakfast?  Anything tasty and sweet on the menu?  No.  My family was early adopters into the cult of private label.  In those days, Safeway sold a private label which was literally a white box with black letters with catchy derivative names like "Oats of Cheery".  No Lucky Charms for this young man.  
8. A personal favorite example was milk.  We got the huge box of powdered skim milk.  Just like the astronauts!!!  I don't think I tasted full-test whole milk until I was 16 years old.  
9. Dinner was usually a reasonable portioned, healthy dinner.  Fortunately, my mom was a good cook, so this was the eating highlight.  
10. What about fast food?  I probably ate out 5 to 10 times per year.  McDonalds was reserved to the trips to and from vacation. 
11. What about the drawer in the kitchen full of tasty treats and cookies?  Didn't exist.
12. Did I have desert ever?  Yes.  One night each week, I got the "Treat of the Week".  It was usually a Black Cow, constituted of private label (Cragmont) root beer and private label ice milk (not to be confused with ice cream).  

So how did this affect me as a young guy growing up?  First off, I was REALLY skinny.  By senior year in high school, I was 6'3" and about 170 lbs.  You could count ribs on me up to the age of 17.  [In my next post, I will tell you how I miraculously gained 40 lbs in about eight months in college.]  

How did this affect my attitudes toward food?  Frankly, I used to always think about those kids that had full and unfettered access to branded, processed foods, not to mention frequent access to fast food.  I looked at their kitchens, and all I could think was that they had the good life.  They had luxury.  They had dining extravagance.  I felt like the poor kid wearing my Sears Toughskin jeans (which I did until my old brother pleaded for fashion clemency on my behalf), carrying my big brown shopping bag with a crusty cheese sandwich and a brown banana.  

To this day, my palms get sweaty when I see branded food.  I still cannot stand the idea of buying generic food.  Why?  The most expensive food must certainly be of higher quality.  Right?  

I think some people grow up with frugality, and they carry it with them.  Others rebel with all their might.  I clearly fell into the latter camp.  For me, there is something comforting about being able to have and buy any food I want, whenever I want it.  This was particularly the case for many years when it came to eating out.  I used to rock a mean Big Mac back in the days after I left home.  

Just like the Armani kind!!!!

In retrospect, my mother created a pretty healthy environment for her kids.  It's not like I was hungry growing up, and I was clearly not obese, nor malnourished.  Most of the indulgences I dreamed of are exactly the types of foods that are now being vilified in the war on obesity, particularly childhood obesity.  Maybe my mom was just ahead of her time.  However, I think that I somehow formed a link between the Oliver Twist food I had and the social status and wealth indicators that I so badly wanted.  Acceptance came from wanting to fit in with the mainstream of my school, no matter how unhealthy that mainstream might have been.  

What about the Toughskins jeans effect?  Same bloody thing.  I love pretty clothes now, and I spend too much money on them.  Frankly, I went through a period of time when I didn't even like buying clothes on sale.  Somehow, it made me feel less worthy.  I'm over that, though I still like a nice set of threads (channeling my Greg Brady here).  

So that's the story of how one man developed an unhealthy relationship with food.  It had nothing to do with food itself, but rather my own perception of social acceptance and worth.  Strange, isn't it?!

Cheers,

dk