Food Memories: a backdrop for a diet discussion

A small swatch of a memory, not more than a little shred of the past, keeps flickering through my head:

A bunch of us hanging out in my friend James' apartment on Bush Street in San Francisco, probably drinking illegally procured very cheap alcohol (40 ouncers or Andre "champagne") were discussing whether or not humans were designed to be carnivores or omnivores.  I wasn't older than 17 years and  I don't believe I started the debate but I took a fierce interest in it.  I was raised solidly on National Geographic documentaries and had always taken a keen interest in anthropology and archeology and nature thanks to my mom.  Someone was arguing that it wasn't actually natural for people to eat plants, that we were meant to eat just meat.  It hadn't escaped my notice during all the years of my natural education that in nature the carnivores were equipped with very different teeth than the omnivores which were, in turn, equipped with an entirely different set of teeth than the true herbivores.  I remember the passionate debate as one of those enjoyable moments the way young people enjoy getting rowdy; hurling each other around violently and sharing bruises of a congenial nature.

I've been thinking about how I would tackle this subject for two solid days.  As I sat down to write it I realized that I have been questioned about the food I eat and had people suggesting that I should eat differently my whole life.  How I eat has been commented on, discussed, argued over, dissected, and in the early years how I eat would actually cause some people to be angry.

In our current culture it has become fairly common to encounter vegetarians, vegans, lacto-vegetarians, ovo-vegetarians (I may have made that up), and "vegetarians" who eat fish and chicken.  You can go to a restaurant and expect to be able to order, without too much rancor from the server, a vegetarian variation from the fare on the menu even if the restaurant isn't catering to special diets.  More than that, there are increasing numbers of restaurants that cater specifically to different special interest diets such a vegan restaurants, vegetarian, and now there are more and more gluten free places as well.

That's not how it was when I was a kid.  When I was a kid in the seventies only extreme hippies were vegetarian.  And some Buddhist monks in Asia. 

One of my earliest food memories is of my Grandma Shirley needling me about why I wouldn't eat the seafood.  I couldn't have been more than six or seven years old and I remember the words "meat is dirty food" coming out of my mouth which deeply offended Grandma Shirley and my shame was very sharp though I honestly couldn't understand why she should be offended.  I understand now how emotional food traditions are.

My dad*, when he married my mom, agreed to go vegetarian.   He stayed the course for three years and then threw in the towel and the food fights began.   In my dad's heart he didn't believe that a vegetarian diet was healthy and continually tried to get my mom to let us eat meat.  He pressured, fought, cajoled, and continually engaged my mom in the argument that children who don't eat meat can't get enough protein and will grow up to be weak.  I remember thinking that I hardly made his point for him what with being robust, rarely getting sick, and showing all the signs of a kid in the pink of health.  No matter, nothing would ever change his mind.  He once convinced me to eat a pot sticker at a Chinese restaurant assuring me that it was vegetarian and only telling me afterwords that it was actually pork and "See?  See how good it is?  You liked it!" but it gave me meat  burps and it also bothered me horribly that he had tricked me into eating something I didn't want to eat.  Even though I was just a kid I thought it was an unethical and cruel thing to do.

People questioning my nutrition, as I'm remembering my life in food tonight, has been a pretty frequent occurrence for the whole forty years I've been eating;  taking the form of anger, mild questioning, sly attempts to pervert my food course, loud negations that my diet is scientifically sound, entreaties to try meat, pleas to give fish another chance, cruel teasing, and an endless number of people wondering how on earth they could feed me if I don't eat meat, not to mention the number of waiters I've confounded and annoyed.

My other Grandmother (Maryalice) babysat me and my siblings on a visit west so my parents could have a night out.  It seemed like such a normal family exchange.  Grandmothers are supposed to be famous for their love of grandchildren and the exquisite care they give especially with regards to food.  I don't come from normal people it seems.  My Grandmother, well aware that we were all vegetarians and witness to a previous summer full of my miserable attempts to eat meat (resulting in being very sick), decided to make us kids breaded pork chops.

I know, I drag this story out every year.  Indulge me.  This is my life in food.

I couldn't eat it.  The texture of it was revoltingly chewy-meaty-fleshy and the taste was carcass in my mouth not food.  I had to try really hard not to vomit each time I tried to take a bite.  She stood there, like a scary bitter queen, and watched me struggle, refusing to let me leave the table until I ate my entire hunk of pork.  Because it was so painful and distressing to me I knew she couldn't love me at all.  Indeed, I'm quite sure she didn't for more reasons than just the pork chop incident.

I have never been able to understand why me not eating meat should be so distressing to so many people.  I never really viewed being a vegetarian as a choice as much as it was just the way I was.  When I attempted to eat meat it was not food, my body rejected it and got sick with it.  Being a vegetarian may have been my mother's choice for me but it turned out to be the way my body is best nourished.

The certainty that so many people have had over the years that I can't possibly be getting enough protein has been like an unceasing buzzing in my culinary life.  Standing in the grocery store with my Aunt, a staunch meat eater, telling her what I was having for dinner and her saying "But what about protein?" and me explaining that I put feta cheese on my salad and ate beans earlier in the day and eggs for breakfast and, in fact, have never had difficulty providing my body with enough protein.  I remember trying to explain to her that it isn't important to get all your protein in one lump investment of food in a meal but that the protein from all the food sources you ingest counts and adds up.  I remember trying to explain that people also get protein from grains and even from some vegetables.

I am clearly not going to get to my evaluation of my diet versus the Paleo diet tonight.  My head is too full of these food memories.  I'm swimming in them and realizing that I have spent my whole life defending my diet to people who have no right and no business to question it.  Perhaps now i can understand why someone might wonder what I'm doing wrong.  Everyone who isn't fat wonders what fat people have done, what food crimes they've committed to become obese.  I don't think the answer is generally truthfully different for anyone who is overweight.  Overindulgence and lack of exercise is nearly always the cause.  It is no different for me.

Was my mother right to raise me as she did?  Did my diet serve me well?  It did.  I never got the flu until I was an adult.  I got colds but not very often and they weren't severe nor did they hang around for long.  I had no allergies.  I had strong bones.  My teeth, it's true, were soft but not due to my diet but because our family has soft enamel that will decay in spite of excellent oral hygiene.  My skin was gorgeous** and I was never fat, never thin.  I had plenty of energy and was active and didn't bruise easily or break any bones or experience any health issues until I started chain smoking and developed a smoker's cough.  My blood was healthy and rich enough for a nurse at a blood bank to remark on it. 

Until I had a baby I was never fat a day in my life.  I got the weight off by ceasing the over-indugences my pregnancy inspired in my lifestyle and returning to healthy portions and eating the way my mother taught me to eat and getting  active again.

And then I broke my hip.

But we all know that story.

I have never felt the need to seek a new way of eating.  I have had no motivation to rewrite my food code or to drastically change my habits.  Until I got pregnant I had always had a healthy relationship with food and rarely overate and I also had a healthy body image.  Oh yes, yes, old friends will remember my complaints about my ass and my thighs and my unfortunate pear shape but my complaints were not deep, they weren't things I really worried about so much as noted out loud when comparing my body to others.  For the most part, I liked my body well enough and wasn't obsessed with weight.  In fact, I rarely ever gave weight or size a thought.  I fluctuated and that seemed natural.  When I got a little too thin for my friends' comfort they would gently ask what was wrong and I would feel surprised, not having noticed I dropped ten pounds.  I would pay a little better attention to eating healthily and regain pounds to a natural point without it being an obsession.  And then I wouldn't think about my weight again for a long time.

If the way you eat makes you feel great, fleet of body, full of energy, clear of mind, and pleases your culinary tastes then there is not much reason to seek a new one. 

Over the years since I was a freak vegetarian kid in a land of meat eaters, things have changed a lot.  There are now tons of people eating roughly like I do and people no longer get all fluttery and freaked when they find out they are going to be cooking for a vegetarian because now-a-days most people have some kind of vegetarian dish up their sleeves for just such an occasion.  Science has seemed to corroborate much of the food wisdom my mother taught me that everyone else doubted.  People like my dad have been pressured into looking at their consumption of red meat and told that it might be healthier to eat less of it.  My mother's insistence that it's not difficult to get plenty of protein in a plant based diet has been rewarded by many dietitians finding after much study that this is, in fact, true.



In my next post I will share with you my opinion of basing a diet on what mankind might have eaten 30,000 years ago. 






*My step-dad who married my mom when I was 5 1/2 years old and raised me. 

**Not bragging.  I heard it all the time.  In spite of people being so suspicious of vegetarians when I was growing up, people frequently remarked on my clear healthy skin.