What Grandma Ate For Dinner

There's a lot of talk these days, and rightly so, about food deserts, food insecurity, and the obesity epidemic among the poorest Americans. All three are intrinsically connected and it makes me think a lot about generational connections to food. After all, for many, our relationships regarding food stem from our families and communities. One has to wonder - what happens to future generations when their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents grow up with food insecurity? I don't have an answer to that question, but I do have an idea.

Both of my parents are children of people who grew up in immigrant communities during the Great Depression, a time and place where food wasn't exactly plentiful. My dad, whom I am like in many ways, and how we eat is no different, was a part of the very first generation in his family where starvation was not a very possible threat. Food insecurity was a huge issue for many generations in my family and, in the grand scheme of time, only stopped very recently. When I consider this, a few odd behaviors I have started to make sense.

• Starvation mentality - If there is food in the house or in front of me that I want, I have a very difficult time telling myself that the same food will be there the next day. I'm inclined to eat it all out of a completely irrational fear that it might be gone the next day. 
• Not wasting food - I despise the waste or loss of food. If something is accidentally left out over night or the dog gets into it, or my daughter, E., simply doesn't finish half of her dinner and then throws away the rest without me noticing, my skin crawls and I feel sick to my stomach. A little over the top? Why, yes, I totally agree. 
• Clean Plate Club - This is something I think a lot of baby boomers and their kids (i.e. my parents and I) are familiar with. It's that whole idea that you eat whatever is on your plate until it is all gone, hungry for it or not. While my parents didn't enforce this rule with me, I ate enough meals with my grandparents to get the message and frequently follow it. 

I can't say that these behaviors stem even a bit from a long history of food insecurity, but one does wonder: How much of our individual attitudes about anything, not just food, stem from generations of similar attitudes, even if it was not directly taught, but instead some how registers in our sub-conscious mind? I have never faced food insecurity, neither has my father or mother, but so many of those who came before us did. So many that I find it so hard to believe that just because there suddenly was food that old behaviors were simply left behind and died out with the first generation that had all the nourishment they needed. What's more, I am not the only member of my family who has these issues, or similar, with food.

And so this brings me back to where I began. I look at my food issues, I look at the hurdles my family members and ancestors had to endure and then I wonder about the generations before us. Even if a person is able to escape the cycle of poverty (something that is becoming ever increasingly difficult), will their sudden easy access to plentiful and nutritious food be all that it takes to break generations' worth of poor food choices? What of their children and grandchildren? 

My own issues make me wonder if by preventing families from having access to proper food sources and allowing Americans to continue to worry about where they will find their next meal, that we will doom future generations, who will come to live beyond the borders of food deserts and will never have to worry about getting three meals on the table, to the same complicated and irrational fears and issues I struggle with now.