Thursday, March 19, 2009

Children Are Starving in Africa

A comment Ms. RD made about "The Clean Plate Club" in an earlier post got me thinking: how many of us were told to finish everything on our plates as kids?

Last semester, in the Freshman English class I taught, we watched Supersize Me, Morgan Spurlock's documentary about his experience eating McDonald's for three meals a day, for thirty days. One of the topics we discussed involved where our attitudes towards food come from. We decided that while parents do have a lot of influence over the food choices their kids make (especially younger kids), older kids and teens are often influenced by their peers, teachers and school staff, the families of their friends, and advertising.

As a child, my mother would let me munch on raw vegetables as she chopped them for dinner. My grandma would always complain that I wouldn't eat any vegetables when it got to dinnertime. My mum would say, "so what, she's getting the vegetables either way, and they're probably better for her raw!" My parents didn't make me eat everything on my plate, but they did make it clear that if I didn't eat what was there, then I didn't get to pick anything else instead. Either eat what everyone else is eating, or have nothing. I didn't get the "Clean Plate Club" attitude at home.

However, this message did sink into my pysche somehow. One courier of the message was Catholic school. I wasn't a picky eater, but the dinner ladies could be pretty mean about making you eat everything on your plate, even if you didn't like it. One day, an older boy, a "server" at our table, made me eat liver (which I hate) and then blancmange (which if you have never heard of, is this vile wobbly pudding with a skin on top). I proceeded to puke all over his shoes. They never made me eat anything I didn't like again.

I did hear this message also perhaps from my grandma, who now wouldn't dream of saying such things, but did when I was younger, and I know I heard the "children are starving in Africa" line from various adults. I remember learning how far away Africa was and trying to make the connection between the leftover brussel sprouts on my plate and the children Bob Geldoff sang about. I could go ahead and leave the brussel sprouts and give them to the starving children, but wouldn't my brussel sprouts be both cold and moldy by the time they flew them to Africa? Or, I could eat them, but if I ate them, how did that help the starving children? They didn't get the brussel sprouts either way. This mode of thinking doesn't teach children healthy eating habits or social and global responsibility. It just, rightly, confuses them.


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