Family Style Dining

How do you eat well when you are concerned not only with your own nutritional needs and tastes, but the rest of the family as well?

I have a particularly difficult situation right now. My son and daughter-in-love and their two very small children are living with us. In addition, we have a 20 year old and an 11 year old. Add my husband and me, and eight is more than enough.

Even a family with only relatively small children will have food issues. Unless you are a follower of the "I cook it, you eat it" school, you try to factor in various tastes and needs in planning meals. My sister-in-law berated a niece for not eating her cucumbers, acting as if a diet without cucumbers would be fatal. Ironically, when the little girl left the room, SIL said, "I don't eat cucumbers." I say "ironically," be she said it without irony.

As we know, vegetables are important. A nice mix of colorful (did I hear rainbow?) vegetables and fruits is important to eating well. Fortunately, there are lots and lots of fruits and vegetables, so you do not have to eat your spinach unless you want to.

I often hear parents lamenting that their child eats nothing but Lima beans and mac & cheese. I smile and say, I remember that phase. For my children it came right before they discovered salmon steaks and raspberry vinaigrette. My oldest was 10.

Salmon steaks were saved for Grandma's house, but our kids helped pick & prepare the meals at our house. We weren't always consistent & we ate a lot of tacos & spaghetti, but they learned how and why to choose a balanced, interesting diet.

One thing I have done well is to help my children become good eaters. They will try new things, they like variety, they cook, they eat their vegetables. We have done this by never forcing them to eat anything and never engaging in food battles. We offer a variety of food. We try to make healthier choices even though we can't afford the salmon steaks. My children often make better choices than I do. At least they are not prisoners of food like I have been.

So rule number 1: No food fights.
Rule number 2: Model good choices.
Rule number 3: Let your children participate in choice & preparation of the food.

But add new adults into the mix. I love my DOL, but her food culture is not mine. She eats very few vegetables and she fries just about everything. She won't eat a sandwich or a salad. A meal, breakfast lunch or dinner, is a huge undertaking. Every meal is Sunday dinner. I have never seen this much meat in my life.

As we tip-toe around each other, trying not to offend, we end up with hurt feelings and a lack of satisfaction in body and spirit. I know this, but I hate to talk about things. However, something has to give.

I don't want to force her to eat like I do, but I cannot eat like she does. I am overweight and have high blood pressure. I'm very sorry, but I can't eat the fried fish or chicken, the ham soup, the hamburger helper. I can't eat a meal with an ingredient list that starts with "sodium" and then goes on for an inch and a half in Latin.

How do I say this without sounding like a food snob or a whiner? How do I insist on my choices without turning dinner into a food fight or at least a very cold war?

This is where knowing and doing separate. Like food and activity choices, I know what I need to do. I don't know how to take the step... to actually do it. And this is where I really need god & all the angels.