A part of our being brought up....

[johai]

I've been gone for a while and I am glad to be back. I have a new attitude and a different take on this site.
The other day I was talking to some friends and for a reason that I cannot recall, we got onto the subject of food. You know your favourite foods etc., then someone said that they remembered when growing up that they were always told to eat everything on their plate because there were people starving in..............Now I remembered what I was always told.
Maybe we can get a better handle on our identity if we had the other members reveal who they were told was starving. It may be silly or interesting. Why don't we see.

Johai

 

[Outta here]

Welcome back johai - I'm glad you've decided to give us another try with a new pespective - I hope you like this one better ;-)

We do have a peculiar commonality in our culture with the question you've posed don't we? Never thought of it that way before. For me it was the starving children in Indian and/or Africa. I remember the standard answer I always wished I could retort to my mother "Well let's put this liver and broccoli in a box and send it over to 'em then!"

Of course in those days children didn't retort anything to their parents... just thinking about retorting was an act of rebellion for me. :lol:

Your question also speaks to the issue of how we came to be a nation of over eaters - well, over consumers of almost everything actually. The previous era of going without created a mentality of lack - which no longer fits with our current era of over abundance within our society - and meanwhile children still starve elsewhere.

 

[Praxius]

Ethiopia, Africa in General, China... probably India too.... but mostly it was Ethiopia. My family was informed with their stereotypes

 

[johai]

Thank You, Zan and Praxius for your input.

 

[Lester]

Q: what's the fastest animal on earth
A: An Ethiopian Chicken

 

[johai]

Lester,

I vote for best joke of the week.

Regards,

Johai

 

[karrie]

Do you think perhaps that line underscores our obesity 'epidemic'?

While we live in a land full of food, we've managed to have it drilled into our heads as children that it's scarce. If we think food is scarce, we eat what we can get our hands on.

Hmmm... use that line at your children's risks folks. ;-)

 

[johai]

I sincerely apologize for my comment on Lester's joke. It was in bad taste and ignorant.

Johai

 

[Lester]

Yes it's a terrible joke(but funny), I wonder why that is- that we make light of tragedy.

 

[Outta here]

It's a coping mechanism, Lester. I've worked in some fairly stressful environments - one of them being a manager of a 12 bed group home for multiply challenged adults, another was working with youth at risk - young offenders, prostitutes, kids with addicitons etc....

I can't and wouldn't share any of the jokes and antics we got up to - but I will say that the more challenging our shift was, the wackier and more inappropriate our jokes and behaviour became. It's probably what saved us from going completely around the bend on more than a few occasions.

 

[talloola]

Eat all of your supper 'barbara', you know there starving people in India who could use
that good meal.

 

[Lester]

My Mom used to say " eat your dinner or you'll get ricketts(apparently some kind of malady)

 

[talloola]

My Mom used to say " eat your dinner or you'll get ricketts(apparently some kind of malady)

Oh yeah, the ricket thing, I forgot about that one.

 

[CDNBear]

Funny, I was told...

"Bear, eat your dinner. There are people down the road that are going hungry."

I always offered to take them the squash and beans, but my Grand Mother just gave me the look. That was always enough.

 

[johai]

8O Well I started this thing but never gave a response, actually I have two:
I was told `China`. (Quebecer)
My lady was told `China` as well. (SWO)

Neither of us can figure out where our parents picked up on that in the 50s.

 

[hermite]

I seem to recall my starving children were in India.

This did bring back another memory though. I was told to eat my bread crusts because it would give me curly hair.

And to eat my veggies because they would put hair on my chest. Now, being a girl, that one never made a lot of sense to me. :dontknow: My dad had a weird sense of humor. 8O

 

[CDNBear]

I was told down the road, cause I was living on a Res in Northern Kebec.

 

[Nuggler]

We were always told the starving were in Africa, and that was a long time ago. Things haven't changed much apparently.

But even here, in good ol Backwater, there were people hungry. Not starving, but damn hungry. This was when welfare was welfare, and you had to be hungry to get it. And prove it. Dam demeaning it was.

Mum used to pack us a whackin big lunch that 3 people couldn't eat, with explicit instructions to share it at school. Went through a pile of chickens and mayo.

8O

 

[annabattler]

I was born in 1942, to parents who had endured the Great Depression and World War 2...my father raised chickens(to supplement his meager income)and our first "home" was the second story,above the chicken house.
We had the mandatory vegetable garden(which I hated tending!!),and the mandatory "fruit cellar",a cool room intended to preserve the fruits of the garden and all of my mother's preserves.
Small wonder waste of food was something not to be tolerated....I suspect early pioneering farm families had the same attitude.

 

[CDNBear]

I was born in 1942, to parents who had endured the Great Depression and World War 2...my father raised chickens(to supplement his meager income)and our first "home" was the second story,above the chicken house.
We had the mandatory vegetable garden(which I hated tending!!),and the mandatory "fruit cellar",a cool room intended to preserve the fruits of the garden and all of my mother's preserves.
Small wonder waste of food was something not to be tolerated....I suspect early pioneering farm families had the same attitude.

I was raised by my Paternal Grand Parents, both depression kids.

I ate potatoes with every meal...lol...no kidding, every meal. Same thing with the garden. I didn't even know you could get fruits and veggies in a grocery store, lol.