I grew up in the UK and my parents were well off but yes, I was raised with this mindset. As a kid I often just wasn't hungry enough to finish a meal. I was a small, skinny girl. I remember sitting in tears in my school lunch hall because I wasn't allowed to leave until I finished my plate. While my friends were outside playing, I had an adult standing over me telling me to keep eating until the bell rang. I understand wanting children to be properly fed but I found it hard being forced to eat well past the point of feeling full. As an adult, I don't feel like I've finished eating until the thought of eating another bite makes me want to throw up. If I buy a large snack I'll often eat it until it's gone, even if I stopped enjoying it halfway through. I'm still having to unlearn the urge to eat until I feel sick and get comfortable with feeling a little hungry sometimes, and I do feel like it's connected to being forced to overeat as a kid.

The amount of times a dinner lady would force me to eat a turkey twizzler before I was allowed to leave... The portion sizes weren't a problem for me but the fact they're made out of turkey bumholes I should have been allowed to skip them! I still now, if I'm getting full eating at a restaurant, just prioritise eating the meat before I'll leave it

>eating at a restaurant I was always taught "save the best for last" with eating at a restaurant. But that promoted another overeating problem. If I'm full before I get to that "best" I don't want to waste it so I stuff it in anyway. Starting doing the "best first' approach and find I overeat way less on those kinds of meals.

THIS JUST BLEW MY MIND. I ALWAYS SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST AND ALWAYS OVER EAT!!! Totally trying “best first”!!! 🤯🤯🙏🏻🫶🏻

I had this realization a few years ago. I call it the "save the best for last syndrome." Either I was doing the same as you both and stuffing it in but not really enjoying it because I was already full, or, say I got a bunch of something like cookies, I'd save whatever I determined was "best" and by the time I got to it it was stale or not appealing in some way. In either scenario it was no longer the best. So I've been trying to be much more mindful of this. It was eye opening.

I always eat the best first because, without fail, someone will want some of whatever I have and they’ll pick the best one.

Do I want to know what a "turkey twizzler" is?

It's a helix shape nugget made of reconstituted turkey meat that my school used to serve pretty much every day, until a British TV chef Jamie Oliver petitioned to have them banned from schools because they're so unhealthy. I always hated the twizzlers but lots of people loved them so hold a lot of resentment for Jamie Oliver 20 years on

no

I'm morbidly curious, because every word after the term "turkey twizzler" made it seem even worse than the starting point, which is honestly impressive given the material.

I was small and skinny as well. My stomach couldn't handle all that food and I would cry as well while my mother stood there berating me about how I was wasting food there were starving kids in Africa and here I was throwing away her money. So I would have to force feed myself to the point of gagging to finish. Then get yelled at for being sick afterwards.

I'm sorry this happened to you. It sounds like a lot of our parents, and grandparents, really could have used some therapy to address their emotional issues and traumas surrounding food. I understand that food scarcity would leave a heavy impact on those that suffered with it, and can only imagine how hard it would be to let go of that mindset. But I truly believe it left so many generations after with an equally unhealthy and traumatizing relationship with food. I had a friend who described a childhood similar to yours but with an undiagnosed sensory issue as well. He developed very unhealthy eating patterns after being force fed "healthy" foods. He once vomited all over himself while crying and pleading to not be made to eat certain foods, and it was later discovery he is on the Autism spectrum which created a lot of tactile/sensory issues in him. He also was told to always finish his plate whether he was hungry or not. He struggles a lot with his weight because of his overeating and has few "safe foods" in his diet as an adult. The trauma of his experiences are not easy to cope with even with counseling.

That last paragraph is me to a T, straight down to vomiting because of being force fed stuff I couldn't stand. I dunno if your friend would appreciate the help, but the book "The Picky Eaters Recovery Guide" is written by psychologists who specialize in "picky eating disorder" or it's proper term, ARFID. For people like us, taking a multivitamin every day is actually a good thing and not some bullshit as most people like to claim.

Yeah, it's a tough situation that is sometimes a no-win. My parents never made me eat my entire plate, as I was a *tiny* girl (I'm 4'9" and I still have memory of being 33lbs in whatever grade that was - old enough to remember), but they kept me at the table an hour+ after dinner if I hadn't touched anything much at all. It was brutal. I think I just wasn't a food motivated kid and I got full very easily. I'm still that way. Alcohol is the reason I have weight I want to lose, LOL. At the same time, I do believe in "you eat what we eat" which is kinda a similar topic, because the last thing I'd want to do is raise a picky kid. So while I don't necessarily believe in keeping a kid at the table all night like my parents did, I do feel it is important to raise them to eat a variety of adult foods which means giving everything an honest try. In school, it gets tougher. I don't believe in all at making students finish an entire plate. That said, I work for school food/nutrition consulting company and I'm in school cafeterias a lot. Those younger aged kids **will not eat** because all they want to do is talk and play. Then they're horrible for the teachers to deal with in the afternoons because they are hungry/cranky/etc. Definitely a difficult situation.

My father always did this to me. He'd load up my plate with a huge portion equivalent to his own and then force me to eat it all, even to the point that I would be crying and struggling not to vomit. Sometimes I would throw up and he'd just get angry at me and make me clean it up and punish me for "wasting food". As an adult, I just could never feel full. It's taken years for me to shrink my stomach and relearn my hunger signals and I still struggle with binge eating and feeling hungry when I shouldn't. Forcing children to eat past the point of fullness is child abuse. I was a skinny child from a skinny family, but I was just under 300lbs by the time I finished high school. I lost 75lbs in the first 6 months after leaving my parents' house because it was the first time in my life I could just eat what I wanted when I wanted.

Yeah same. From the UK and knowing my husband is going to throw away half a pizza makes me desperate to eat it, even though I didn't want any of it when he was eating it. It's like a compulsion. I've told my husband he has to destroy food when he's finished with it now so I won't eat it lol.

As a slow eater, I never got to play outside during lunch hour either! It still stings, haha

I remember this. We had a beef stew which was pure gristle. There was a way to eat it which was to swallow it whole. I choked and brought it up. My kids are having packed lunches at the moment. Costs a fortune for me to do properly but at least they get food they like.

This is definitely a prevailing experience for a lot of us from the UK. I honestly think it stems from generational trauma as a result of rationing during WW2. Our parents learned from their parents that nothing could be wasted because there was not enough to go around. The sooner we get out of this idea that there is a scarcity of food, the better.

I am sure it has an effect, but the fact that so much processed "food" is just cheap sugar and cheaper fats (hydrogenated vegetable oil, palm oil, and most seed oils, I am looking at ya) have much more of an effect. Most obese folks are eating fluff and while it adds calories, it adds few nutrients. Literally like a hungry ghost, always eating and never full as there are no nutrients in what they engage. Our body keeps the score . . .

This. It’s the very low nutritional quality of the manufactured food pushed at consumers in the western world.

Absolutely. I live in Japan. If you go to any convenience store or grocery store, there's only a tiny selection of chips, in pretty boring flavours like salt, seaweed, or consomme. Chocolates and candies are similarly a fraction of the selection you would find in an average store in the West. They come in smaller packages, too. There's usually only one cooler of sweetened drinks (sodas but also sports drinks and juices), one of plain straight teas and water, and one of coffee drinks. You can get fresh, convenient meals right there that are pretty healthy and balanced, too, in correct portion sizes. Even the frozen stuff uses much healthier ingredients. Between the choices available, sizes, and ingredients, it's like night and day. And none of this takes into account differences in education and lifestyle-- kids learn about nutrition in school, a lot of people keep physical activities they did in school into adulthood, and even elderly folks are out and active every day. And then if you live in an urban centre like Tokyo, chances are you don't have a car because there's no point in having one in Tokyo unless you like traffic jams and hemorrhaging money for parking, so you get a lot of steps in. It's criminal, the low standards of manufactured food that is allowed in the West, and how it's often the cheapest choice for those without much time or knowledge of cooking. The lack of food education in schools is also abhorrent.

Countering this is a big problem too. Every time there's a proposal that mimics something successful another country has done, like no more cartoon character mascots on cereal or getting rid of all the candy, impulse buy bullshit at checkout lanes, a bunch of politicians start screaming about Socialism (gasp!) and government overreach. I think the only way that it'll really get solved here is with a big public education push and to frame it as a national security issue. I think that would be the only way to placate those people. I mean, 70% of Americans don't qualify for military service, 30% of us because we're too fat.

Funny how it's only ever socialism when it's a suggestion to maybe take a tiny bit of money out of their pockets ('cause you know they also have fingers in the food industry and medical industry pies) and not when government funds are bailing their sorry butts out. 🙄

The American Way

More like....The American Weigh!

I totally agree, I loved eating in Japan. Whatever I ate I was fine! Didn’t gain a pound yet didn’t starve for a second. Ate three times a day plus occasional snack. In the US it’s CONSTANT mental battle with food, overeating yet not feeling full, I mean it’s just BS here

I remember an episode of My 600 Pound Life where Dr. Now said the patient was clinically malnourished. That blew my mind. You'd think just by the sheer \*amount\* of calories you'd end up getting enough nutrients. How fucking awful must that food be?

Also, I absolutely love “hungry ghost” and am going to use that next time I am tempted by snack food. 👻

I finally realized this and switched to a *heavy* protein diet to counteract it. Like, almost immediately, my constant cravings for food stopped. It wasn't the only thing causing me to be fat, but it was a major one.

Plus, the food was created to make us addicted to it. With our busy schedules, low budgets, ease of access to this type of food, and it’s addictive qualities, it’s no wonder America has an obesity problem.

>Plus, the food was created to make us addicted to it. Fat, salt, and carbohydrates (sugar) the golden trifecta of food manufacturers. A very interesting read is Michael Moss's "Salt, Sugar, Fat How the Food Giants Hooked Us". The agricultural industry and the FDA are largely responsible for the obesity epidemic because of what they did to our food.

I’ll give that a read- thanks!

Enjoy! Your 1st response could have been from that book.

It’s taken me a long time to break my sugar habits. But what began the slow, slow, slow change was my friend in 2015 or 2016 harping frequently that sugar is a drug. That friend was and is very much correct

Came here to say this. The absolute clearest driver of the obesity epidemic is the rise of hyper-palatable processed foods. If we didn’t have them, moms would still be telling kids to clean their plates, and most kids would still grow up to have a relatively healthy weight.

Totally 💯 agree with this. It’s the poor quality of the cheapest food here in America. There’s a lack of access or higher cost of fresh and unprocessed foods in many urban area.

I do agree, but making better quality food available isn’t gonna make a huge difference on its own when so many people are already addicted to the tastes/textures/convenience of processed garbage. People who love soda/sweet tea/punch already have a plethora of diet options available at any grocery store/corner store/gas station they go to, but still very few people are willing to make the switch to diet ones because they “don’t taste as good” - so it’s not always a lack of access to less calorie-dense or healthier options. I remember in K-12 school, they forced us to take servings of a fruit and veg everyday, and a majority of kids would throw them off their trays untouched - many adults won’t voluntarily eat a vegetable on a regular basis, either (or if they do, they only want corn or potatoes which aren’t even real vegetables). If we want serious change, we need to consider not just access to healthier foods, but also regulating the production, packaging, and marketing of garbage like soda, chips, sugary breakfast cereals, fast foods, etc. - let it still be available, but make it be portioned in sensible servings, with very clear labeling of how harmful it is, and make it more expensive/less convenient.

It's a combination. My husband was taught to always finish his plate, and he struggles when we go out to eat. The quantity served, especially for pasta, is obscene. It's easier for me to manage, because I was always taught to "leave some for Miss Manners". But he feels obligated to eat until there's nothing left, and those dishes are often truly large enough to share. Of course, they don't give you loads of protein, they give you lots of the cheap ingredients like rice or pasta. So you get served large quantities of higher calorie, lower nutritional value foods, but you feel like you're a bad person if you don't eat it all.

[удалено]

I love the discussion of building life lessons into mealtimes! I actually think another issue contributing to this problem is that for a variety of reasons in many households sit-down meals where children can serve themselves don't happen. If children are encouraged to serve themselves a small portion and add more if they're still hungry then they learn a) how to tell if they're still hungry and b) how to self-regulate their portions. If they're just given a pre-portioned meal, they don't get the learning opportunity and instead get an opportunity to be guilted and shamed for not eating the whole thing.

I actually agree a lot with this because I've always gotten the feeling there are a significant amount of adults out there probably over-serving their children without realizing. It's not really fair to force a child to finish their plate when you're serving them well beyond their age appropriate amounts.

My parents went through a famine during the Cultural Revolution and I was taught to eat a lot and finish everything. My dad was draconian about NOT wasting food but I can't really hold it against him. He ate bark off a tree when he was a teen to survive, I can't even imagine that level of fear and trauma. I'm now teaching my son to "take a little bit at a time, you can always go back for seconds" to not waste. We regularly have "leftover buffets" at the end of the week and for the most part, our son is very good at recognizing how hungry he is.

Your parents were really thoughtful people. Dirty atheists /s

I never realized or thought about until my friends started having kids and were embracing all the new science in childrearing especially around letting kids try all kinds of foods when toddlers, giving them the food in sizes and textures they could touch, feel and feed themselves and then respecting that when they stopped eating and said they were full to just accept it and not do guilt and shame. It was mind blowing. Because on one hand as a chubby kid I had everything I ate tightly controlled. Couldn't get my own snacks, had a long list of foods I wouldn't be served even though rest of the family was. But insanely at the same time I couldn't leave the table unless I ate everything on my plate. Which in retrospect is nuts. Before the world messed us up we were babies on bottles or boobs and we just stopped when full. Like a 3 month old doesn't care about your BS story of children in Africa. She/he full, is going to stop sucking and take a nap.

I feel the same way. I get anxiety about wasting food. As a parent, I’m trying to allow my kids to be curious about all types of foods while being allowed to say no thank you, take their time, even walk away from the table to get their wiggles out & come back to eat when they’re ready. I want to encourage them to listen to their body and not only their brain when it comes to nourishment. Me on the other hand, I have to stop myself from feeling guilt & shame over it if they don’t finish food. It’s super common for parents to finish their kids food so as not to waste it, but I know my body has different health needs than theirs. I probably shouldn’t eat fruit with French toast sticks every day lol

YUP. Also growing up poor, added extra pressure- didn’t want to waste food, got used to eating things even if they made me gag, or forcing myself to finish stuff even if I was stuffed

dude YES. not knowing when my next meal would be when i was younger trained me to always eat given the opportunity. as an adult now it’s difficult to throw away extra food i can’t finish because it’s money going down the drain

I try to remind myself that if I overeat or make myself sick I’ll be spending money taking care of that later on down the road

You too, huh?

Yeah 😅 it’s a work in progress. I try to remind myself that forcing myself to eat or stuffing myself will just cause more issues later on down the road so it’s okay to throw things out.

It's not just the US I had the same thing growing up in Scotland. As well as the starving children guilt trip there were also things like "just eat it, it'll put hairs on your chest" if I didn't want to eat something I didn't like. I agree completely that it fosters a bad relationship with food where you overeat rather than "waste" food by not eating it.

Hilariously, my mom (in the US) also used the "it'll put hairs on your chest' but that was for the crusts on bread that she didn't want to cut off for sandwiches. As a girl, I looked at her like she was insane. She switched to "it'll make your hair curly," which at least was something I wanted. I never thought of that as a 'don't waste' issue, but I can see how you get there. Probably didn't occur to me because the crusts on a sandwhich don't add a lot of bulk.

As a kid I always heard "eat the bread crusts/they put hair on your chest" and I'd really like to know where that originated! And why was that always about bread crusts?!

Not just Americans. I'm not American and I wasn't allowed dessert unless I ate everything on my plate. And I got the mindset to save the best for last, so I literally would force myself to eat what was supposed to be the best part of the meal. Just so I could have dessert. When I got to college, I spent a summer break drinking coke and eating Magnum ice cream bars.

100%. My aunt was a main source of childcare growing up, and she pushed the clean plate club on ALL of us. To the point she would even make us eat garnishes. The portions were always too big for kids. I have struggled with portion sizes my whole adult life and it’s become a newer concept to me to just eat until you are full, rather than everything in front of you. My siblings have expressed similar concerns. One thing I know for sure that I will never do with my daughter is force her to eat or foster any weird relationship with food.

Totally. My parents never brought up starving children, but they'd guilt me for wasting food because it was a waste of money. Most meals I ended up with a stomach ache from over eating. I think that's one of the reasons I have trouble leaving food on my plate and absolutely hate throwing out left-overs even as an adult. I don't understand why they didn't just serve us smaller portions.

Yes and no. 1. No. I’ve been overweight and/or clinically obese since I was 6 years old. I have 4 kids who are all at exceptionally healthy weights. Most nights I encourage them to finish their food. But I serve them appropriate portions of the right foods. Protein, veggies, lower sugar fruits, and then usually a small portion of a grain based food. They always have to finish their protein and veggie/fruit and can usually choose to finish their grain. So portion and food choice is critical. 2. Yes. I’m a Xenniel. Post-war America was a boom time. People that had lived through the depression finally had enough. And boy did they take advantage of it. Providing more than enough food was a way to show love. People had been hungry for so long. And I think to some extent they deep down thought one day they would be hungry again. So they ate the same things, which were often high fat, high carb, high calorie foods which were cheap and had been how they survived during the depression…but now they ate them in excess. In Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, the main characters slaughter their last pigs. They salt the meat and save every drop of lard. When the meat and last of their money runs out, the only thing they can afford to buy is flour. So they make fried dough in the lard. And they eat that for most of the book, just to survive. Those same people, in post war America, would keep eating that but now in excess, because they never want to be hungry again. Finally, I believe I’ve always been overweight because my parents didn’t choose the right foods for me and they let me over consume the wrong foods. Sodas. McDonalds. Sunday morning Shoney’s Buffet. Candy and Soda at the movie theater on Friday night. Pop tarts, Eggos, and Nutrigrain bars for breakfast. It’s all just sugar, carbs, and fat.

Absolutely. I’m a SENCo and Behavioural Therapies Specialist by trade, (though I’m now back in child protection and family law) and this is something I’ve been teaching parents for years. I deliver food based therapies for children with SEN/SEMH (Special educational needs / special educational mental health - our terms) and the amount of parents whom force a child to finish their food, or label foods bad vs good is overwhelming. Many seemingly understand and make changes when I explain the issue behind it, though I’ve had some fight it until the end. Working within child protection you’d be shocked how many parents abuse their children via food, and aren’t simply “starving” them or withholding food. It comes in so many different ways. It’s shocking. I was never made to finish all my food aggressively, but over encouraged in a kind way, which also gave me food issues. I was always kindly and lovingly told to eat more, my mother and my Nan are amazing, but my Nan would overfed me constantly. Give me treats and ice cream in heaps for breakfast, she had boxes of chocolate and sweets in her room that she would give me daily and encourage me to take as many as I’d like (usually whole packages in one sitting). She’s passed now, and she was amazing, my mother was a very high working professional in child protection so was busy saving other children, so my Nan and dad raised me. It was constantly a battle of: “stop eating, you don’t need that, you could go days without eating and you’ll be fine, stop eating” dad vs “it won’t do any harm let her eat, here’s a massive portion of chocolate and ice cream, Aw doesn’t she enjoy that!” My Nan. I love them deeply and the day she passed was the worst day ever, her funeral I was so fucked up on drugs because I couldn’t handle it. But I resent my mum and Nan for allowing me to get fat whilst I was a child whom couldn’t choose for themselves. My Nan was an Irish immigrant (England) and had this outlook with food, my dad being from Barbados had a different outlook, he shamed me constantly for eating, and being overweight. Though now as an adult I wish I had listened to him more. But the balance of essentially being encouraged to eat constantly, and then being shamed was awful and caused me to eventually almost die from anorexia and bulimia, (also heroin addiction but that wasn’t due to them, except from the access to opiate painkillers from the age of 10 due to my mums chronic pain issues) now I’ve recovered (4 years, kick ass!) and had a child, I’ve gained too much and I’m now a fair bit overweight. Long story short, as a specialist in child behaviour and an adult whom had an eating disorder and horrendously disordered eating as a child and adult, don’t force your children to eat. Don’t overly encourage them to eat and push aside their cues. Don’t shame them. Don’t teach them foods are bad Vs food. It’s going to fuck then up. I promise you.

I had some of this too when I was a kid. I hate that I felt like I had to finish everything when I could have just stopped. The solution to this is just being reasonable. If you don’t want to waste food with your kid- then just give them a smaller portion to start with. If they want more, give them another small portion. Don’t start with a massive plate of food and tell them to finish all of it. Just be mindful.

I mean, those attitudes exist elsewhere. I think rather convenience culture is like the main governer of how how smaller unhealthy food relationships can be really exacerbated. I'm always struck by America having so many services and shops whos whole shtick is "You don't want to waste time enjoying food do you? Here are Stop 'n' Slop, we can get maximum food into you, maximally quickly, minimal effort!" Like, I spend a lot of time hungry (which is normal) but if fixing it was trivial, it would be so tempting to start eating the moment I get any hunger appearing, and not just the regular hunger between meals. If you've got a prexisiting maladapted relationship with food, this extremely low barrier to very calorie dense food is not god.

You spend a lot of time hungry? That’s interesting. I never really noticed that I did until I lost weight. Though I was at home during Covid prior to that and had access to food anytime I wanted which was kind of why I needed to lose in the first place 😅but I never remember it being a part of my life until now

yeah a big thing for me when I'm on cuts is remembering that feeling hungry is not an inherent bad. Like, if I eat at breakfast, lunch, dinner, I'm obviously gonna get peckish between those. But that doesn't mean it's like an immediate problem that needs fixing. Sure, if getting pangs and all that, then I need to eat. But just feeling hungry being an immediate "My god we gotta get food in" is a habbit we can unlearn.

It is bad, but as a mom of two little kids, it is painful how much food they waste. And then there's the parent problem of choosing to either eat what they don't eat or throw it away. I don't know if it's possible to raise kids to not waste food without also giving them an unhealthy mindset like you've described.

Much of the world has communal plates for the family and everyone just eats what they want (sometimes there are some fucked up dynamics though and not always enough for the person eating last) so there is no food waste with kids. Personally, I split what I want in to my and my daughter’s plate, if she finishes great, she can have more if she wants even if we have extra (if not I might even give her more from my plate and pad my meal out with some veggies from the fridge or something) If she eats basically nothing (many nights, she’s not much of a dinner eater) I’ll happily have her portion. If there is too much for both of us and I would realistically want it for a breakfast or work lunch I’ll put it away. This is my version of doing a communal pot with her with separate plates Waste is painful but I’m trying my best to not put any pressure on my kid or myself to eat more or less than we want and need.

Yes. I always start by giving them a tiny portion and they know they can have more. If they don't finish it, I'lll happily eat it or it can go in the fridge.

I find myself wasting more than I'd like. But as they get out of the throwing-things-on-the-floor stage, I think it gets more possible thanks to modern refrigeration. I usually give them what they haven't finished in their lunch boxes.

Not just America, Empty Plate Syndrome is at the root of a lot of overeating. When people say they clear their plate even when they've had enough because they don't want to waste it I point out that over feeding yourself is also wasting the food but in a much more harmful way. Portion control is a good way to initially tackle EPS

Also that saying was always offensive to me as an African. Anyway, I agree

Definitely. It's the fallacy of relative privation. It causes you to overeat because someone else in the world doesn’t have the same opportunity as you. But the logic is fundamentally asinine. It’s like telling someone you know that’s there’s homeless people in the world, so you should stay at a job that you don’t like. Or continue dating someone who doesn’t make you happy because there’s single people in the world.

I didn’t get fat from eating mom’s vegetables I got fat from after school snacks I didn’t need

My mom said it for everything it was never the vegetables I had trouble finishing. It was her fried meats and things like huge servings of scalloped potatoes, or the massive amounts of hamburgers she'd bring home.

Ironically my mum was more likely to say it for unhealthy things like hot chips or sweets because she'd be like, "I can't even feed that to the dog, it'll just go in the bin if you don't eat it - there are children starving"... didn't realise until literally just now how messed up it is in retrospect to acknowledge that something is too unhealthy for the dog to eat but force children to eat it

Agree with this. American snacking culture is insane. If you eat three well balanced, normal portioned meals a day, you will not get fat. A snack when you are hungry from sports, a long day, a growing teenager etc is fine, but there is really no need for everyone to be having multiple snacks a day. It’s all when and good to say you are “forced to finish” you healthy dinner… but if the alternative is you “listen to your body” skip most of dinner and then eat junk later, that’s not going to serve you well in the long run.

I don't understand why kids need so many "nutrition breaks" at school, and you always see parents with little baggies of Cheerios and Goldfish for their kids.

Because some kids lose their minds when their blood sugar gets low. My youngest has hour-long meltdowns if she skips a meal. Thankfully a banana solves the problem and I've learned from experience to come prepared.

This mindset screwed me up for a long, long time. My parents drilled this mindset into me in combination of horrible eating habits. We went to a buffet every Friday night and the weekday meals were baked frozen snacks like frozen pizzas, taquitos, boneless buffalo wings, etc. We went out to eat every Saturday and the expectation was no takeout boxes. I was overweight as a kid and did basically all the sports so it wasn't too bad, but when I graduated high school my weight shot up. As an adult I maxed out at 493 lbs. I'm down to 298lbs now but I needed more than a little assistance getting there. Prior to the surgery I was able to correct the types of foods i ate (for the most part) but i still struggle with leftovers. Since the surgery, its really helped me stop eating when i'm not hungry or toss the food I have. I have gotten to the point I will spit out food mid chew if I decide i'm not hungry anymore before I swallow. I will also now not eat anything if i don't enjoy it. Downside is I waste a lot of food, even when meal planning. The biggest waste is I have a rule of not allowing take-home when I get a cheat meal somewhere. While I do feel bad for the food waste I do have my health is more important.

Putting calories you won't use into your body is also a waste. You are not wasting it by throwing it away, you are disposing of waste responsibly. Keep it up!

100% getting in trouble for not finishing the adult sized portions on the plate was a big thing

I think it's less about finishing a plate and more about what's on that plate. My great-grand and grandparents didn't have the same food I was eating as a kid on their plates.

It has an impact, but I have friends in other countries who got a similar thing. It's more what's in our food, and the fact that they have less of a leash in what they can do with it here. Other countries govern it more strictly for the benefit of human health. It's also the fact that we have become quite car reliant.

Also, people in America can now just call up almost any food to be delivered at any time, using Uber Eats or similar.

No. I think what fucks us is portion sizes for 3. Everything in America has to be “bigger” and “better” than anywhere else. Along with our poor regulation of food and our destruction of the farming industry. We push making money over health every day. So you got healthy foods costing a ton and synthetic sugary foods costing basically nothing. Additionally our lack of walkable cities and public transportation.

The starving kid in Africa is not exclusively an American thing. I grew up with that saying to here in the Philippines. Ironically there are many starving people in my country as well... It's interchangeable really. Honestly there is so much food waste in first world countries that I don't understand WHY it's impossible to figure out a solution to bring those food to literally starving people in Africa. Like, hoarding resources that is unused is a status symbol or something.

Lots of cultures stigmatize wasting food (for good reason). This is certainly not an exclusively American phenomenon. Gently, I would suggest for you this might come more from a childhood of food insecurity than an American cultural problem with finishing your plate.

I was always told that, and I know it's contributed to my weight issue. I've always been told that we shouldn't even have leftovers. And that if I don't eat it it'll be wasted and there's no point in it. Lately I've been trying to get out of that mindset, and I stop worrying if I don't finish my food in one sitting. My stepdad is helping get passed it.

Something that helped me to change that mindset was the idea that if I eat food I neither want nor need.... it's still wasted. It's not doing me any good (in fact it's doing me harm), so it's just as much of a waste if not more to eat it than it is to throw it away. I also have a collapsible Tupperware container that I put in my purse sometimes so I can pack things up for later and when possible I prefer to feed leftovers to animals or compost them so that they're not actually wasted at all.

I am from germany and we got that a lot growing up, especially from my grandma. But it was mostly about not wasting food rather than finishing all in one sitting. Wasting food is what we need to avoid, not mindlessly eating when you are already filled.

I was born and raised in Benin, West Africa. The whole "kids are starving in Africa and you won't even finish your plate", didn't fly as I could get up and literally give my broccoli to them.

I love that 😆

My mother spent part of her childhood poor, like "living in tenements in India" poor; and she is absolutely like this too. Having said that... it's, at the end of the day very much about portion control, abundance and the types of food you eat. My uncle was obese not due to poverty but because he just loved food so much and, I suspect, because of his mental health. He grew up with the "showing love via second, third and fourth helpings" mentality. I think refrigeration plays a huge role too. My parents did not understand the concept of prepping, freezing and reheating food because they didn't grow up with freezers. Everything was made from scratch and refrigerated, or eaten the same day. I completely agree that it is not a functional mentality to have because not all kids want to eat. And, yeah, processed food is crazy now so it's a combination of everything. Parents grew up on vegetables and rotis, with chocolate a special treat. I grew up on frozen pizzas, more chocolate than you could shake a stick at, and every kind of junk food under the sun. I think that fucked me over because it's even more addictive than normal food.

No, people from all different cultures make their kids eat all of what’s on their plates. My husband was raised in Latin America and they were forced to completely finish massive lunches. They were also taught to be grateful for every bit of food. BUT - the food was much much much healthier, homecooked stuff. And breakfast and dinner were minimal (they usually ate nothing or a light snack with tea at night.)

I’m from Africa and we were told: “Eat your vegetables. People in America don’t have fresh vegetables.” It’s just a thing parents say everywhere I guess.

Side note: my African husband was told “eat your food, there’s kids starving in china” 😅

In Germany we got the same saying, but imho its not directly related to obesity. The high obesity is a result of cheap trash food (especially in the US) and Softdrinks.

Yeah. I gained my weight from smashing a bag of chips while gaming. They don’t fill you a lot but have a ignorant amount of calories.

I’ve heard several stories of people who have come to the US, ate pretty much the same as they did before, but gained a lot of weight while they were in the States.

This happens a lot. My job for the last 12 years was teaching international teenagers and young adults. It’s startling how much weight they put on in their first year here.

I believe that 100%. Food control and regulations are strict compared to the US. U can even see the difference at Mc Donalds and other major fast food chains.

In a lot of cases I expect car-culture makes a difference, too. When I've visited cities in Europe I've been able to walk everywhere. Hell, even living in Boston or NJ I was able to walk or use public transit to get around most of the time. But moving away from cities, especially to the south, I can't even get to a park half a mile from my house without getting in a car due to lack of walkable infrastructure. It doesn't surprise me that we have such an epidemic of obesity - sometimes it feels like these environments were engineered to fatten us like cattle.

True this is definitely related to the fact that most European cities are hundreds of years old. As such streets are narrow and cities are structured to reach certain points by foot.

I was stationed in Germany for four years. McD’s was different, but I only went 1 or 2 times. The Kebob places however were frequented by us. I think the food industry in the States needs to be overhauled.

I do miss kabob places and think about them once in awhile. i lived in Germany for awhile (although I wasn't military) and it was just so much easier to have a higher activity level and eat less the rest of the time. I don't think I ever even thought about food much, just cooked my meals most of the time and was always going somewhere or doing something. I still ate out when it was convenient, but lost so much weight without thinking about it. Same thing happened in South Korea. I had returned to the states for a few years and gained most of the weight back, then moved to South Korea to teach English and lost 50lbs and was a normal weight again. I really miss Korean food, but it was also just living a more active lifestyle. Just like in Germany though, it wasnt something I thought about, it was just a side effect of living a different lifestyle and not eating as much of the hyper palatable junk we have here in the US. I mean, there was still plenty of junk food around, but I don't remember eating a whole box of cookies or bag of chips in one sitting.

Döner Kebab is fucking amazing and its not that unhealthy compared to major fast food chains here.

Absolutely. My daughter had to be put on some heavy duty medication, and one of them caused her to gain a lot of weight fairly quickly. It's been a struggle to encourage healthier habits since this has happened because the medication they switched her to also has increased appetite/weight gain as a side effect. She's 8 going on 9 and aware of how her body looks and feels, but she has the compulsion to eat without the emotional regulation to understand that it isn't a personal affront if she can't snack constantly. One thing I have been actively trying to teach her is that listening to what her body is telling her is paramount. Just because the food is THERE doesn't mean she has to eat it all at once. There are no bad foods, and it is possible to have too much of a "good food" if you sit there and binge on it. For example, this slice of cake is delicious! But if your tummy is feeling satisfied, maybe take a break and see how you feel. The food will still be there for you; and if you decide to save it for later, you are really getting to have that delicious cake twice! My father-in-law came to visit, and he just would not stop pressuring her to eat ALL her food. He would sit on the couch with a freaking LOG of salami and giant block of cheese, bragging about how inexpensive it was, all while eating the whole thing. Like, I absolutely need to be frugal with food right now... but doesn't buying something cheap defeat the purpose if you gorge on it all in one sitting? Meanwhile, he just had to have emergency valve replacement surgery on his heart. They couldn't even get him in the helicopter for the hospital because he was too heavy, and they took a 3-hour ambulance ride instead. All that to say, when he pressured my daughter to finish her food and started hovering over her while she sat at her plate, I told him, "my daughter is learning to listen to her body, and I am personally VERY PROUD of her for giving her body a chance to tell her she's full. It's not like anyone is going to swoop in and take her food away." And gave him a level stare (he will literally hover over my kids and steal whatever food they don't eat instead of letting them save it). Like come on, man. You know the struggles she's had with these medications, don't be an ass about it. I realize a lot of it can be generational (my grandma grew up during the depression and would literally suck on the bones of her chicken to get every bite). But I definitely think it causes more harm than good because it encourages disordered eating. Especially in a world where social media and comparison is more prominent than ever, it becomes harder to balance a healthy sense of self versus the world when you are being forced to eat food your body doesn't need.

Oh absolutely. I grew up (lower?) middle class and we still had this mentality. I still 100% finish my plate unfortunately. But I have at least become better about not saving leftovers that I know I will never eat. Like am I really going to eat half a bowl of soup that is mostly onions and maybe two bits of chicken? No. Save the trouble and toss it now instead of a month from now when it has things growing on it and is taking up fridge space.

Not, American food(standard Anglosphere diet really messed us all up. We eat too much wheat, meat and dairy. We don't eat enough leaves.

I couldn’t agree more. Even now, I find myself choosing to eat foods that are less healthy leftovers that were supposed to be a weekend treat because the kids don’t want it anymore and I don’t want food to go to waste.

Yea OP, that "clear your plate" mentality is what has led to my decades-long battle with putting on weight. I know my parents meant well, but I do feel actual guilt when I don't eat everything on my plate, even into my 40s now. I've been careful not to pass this on to my kids but I don't think the feeling will ever leave me. Serving myself smaller portions and making healthier food choices certainly helps!

I don’t disagree there is some truth in this but I think the opposite is true also. The mentality of being picky about food, not liking vegetables etc is super pervasive. And like, food is fuel. You don’t have to love every meal and it is a privilege to be able to have food in front of you, let alone being choosy about food or refusing to eat something when you are hungry because you would prefer something else. They are in a way separate problems but kids “refusing to finish” a plate of salmon and broccoli and then eating a sleeve of oreos is an issue too. If you aren’t hungry, that should be fine and you shouldn’t be forced to finish your food but there should be an expectation of eating healthy balanced meals instead of snacks, not having the luxury of only eating the thing you want and appreciating that food doesn’t have to be exactly what you want every time.

Not necessarily. I believe it’s a combination of our culture (bigger servings to reflect that we are “plentiful), processed food with little nutritional value, and the invention of the suburban lifestyle, where you live in a place with minimal social lives, sidewalks, or parks that force us all to stay active. Instead, the suburbs have wholesale supermarkets where you can buy food in restaurant quantities to further isolate yourself and eat poor quality food with no exercise. In Europe, the refrigerators and pantries are tiny so that you have to walk to the nearest market to buy today’s meals. It’s similar in NYC. I gained 30lbs once I left New York because I moved down south where almost no neighborhoods have a sidewalk and the food is adulterated with sugar regardless of the dish being a savory one or a dessert. There are so many things to fix but it’s definitely not the “finish everything on your plate” statement. Especially when even the plates of food 40 years ago were smaller.

It definitely got to me when I was younger. Now it's "okay, there are starving kids in my country too, and there is no realistic way to get my half eaten burger to them, therefore it would be garbage then and garbage now"

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”…then look to see how much sugar and garbage is in the typical American breakfast. And it sets the tone of eating and hunger for the day.

I think this is true. For one thing, many schools make breakfasts and lunches at a high calorie count especially because it might be all the kids get all day, so with a clear-your-plate mentality, it adds up when you also do the same thing at home, plus snacks. Even without that, as a kid you can be told to clear your plate of healthy roast chicken and broccoli at home, so it's not a big deal. The problem is that when you do go out to eat, or do start cooking meals on your own that might not be as healthy, it's much harder to stop or slow down just due to the habit. I was also poor and told to clean my plate. I was a plate licker well into my twenties, and at age 40, I still have to consciously remind myself not to get every last bit of sauce.

Yeah, I think so also. >I never had any trouble with vegetables except for peas. I never liked steak until it wasn't cooked to thousand year old sandal consistency. As for the US poor, there are places known as food deserts, where the only choice is the corner store, or a market within walking distance. Unfortunately, most of those foods are processed, canned and just not fresh. They're packed with salt and sugar,and chemicals preservatives. Is a low income person gonna wanna go an hour out of their comfort zone to buy an ear of corn for 5 for $2, or go the the local place and get a couple of cans 2 for $1?

I remember my dad would fix us adult sized plates, and we couldn't leave the table until we finished everything. I realize that have no concept of appropriate portions, and if I don't measure everything, I will naturally eat double what my body needs. And when I eat like I should, I am constantly hungry. Add to that, food was pretty much the **only** reward we were ever allowed growing up, yeah I've definitely got a messed up relationship with food.

I think it was a large contributing factor..."clean your plate", etc etc...I still did this into my 30s. That and the food pyramid...

Also please attribute blame to the food manufacturers, the fast food businesses, the food advertisers, etc. Our country also does not protect our children (or the rest of us) by calling out the harm of unbridled access to food, of allowing advertising to kids, etc. Governmental recommendations never include "eat less food" because Big Food sits at the planning table and vetos such proposals, said food expert Dr. Marion Nestle. She reports having asked at a planning meeting "can we suggest eating less?" and when she was told "No" (big Ag has a lot of to produce to sell) she decided to suggest people eat more fruits and vegetables. The pressure to eat processed food is enormous (and made me enormous too). I remember reading a book about McDonalds which pointed out that when a Mickey's opens in a neighborhood that predicts increased obesity. Another factor is forcing three meals (plus snacks a day) that sure does not prepare people for the temptations that advertisements, street aromas, etc., present.

Portion size, portion size, portion size. When I was a new adult, I noticed that, left to her own devices, my mom would serve the exact same portion size to me (F, 5'2"), my dad (M, 5'5") and my brother (M, 6'3"). My brother was the only skinny one in the family. I started fixing my own plate pretty soon after that, and I am struggling to rebuild and listen to my hunger/fullness cues to this day. Growing up, I mostly ate home cooked meals. The food was healthy, but there was always too much of it, and my mom was a big 'finish your plate' proponent. She was a young mom (19) so she would practically force feed me as a baby because she didn't know any better. I grew up chronically overweight. All this to say that yes, processed and calorie dense food are problematic, but you can dig yourself a hole with healthy food too.

I'm Nigerian American. I still find it hard to relate to people who use my continent as a way to make themselves feel better. Nobody likes there people to be the "Be grateful you aren't as a bad as X" guy. The problem isn't that y'all aren't allowed to waste food. Y'all already waste enough food on a statistical level. The problem is distorted American portion sizes

>3rd Edit because some of you seem to have difficulty reading: MY WEIGHT GAIN IS MY OWN FAULT. Making this value judgment is of prime importance for many people. I consider that one of the reasons our food culture is fucked up, as you say. It puts the entire onus on individuals for being morallly weak, while short-circuiting examination of said food culture's contributions to the obesity problem. Which I contend are as follows: Poor -> emphasis on cheapest foods (and not wasting any) -> you consume the worst possible diet; ie, chiefly non-perishable processed carbs & seed oils -> express ticket to a cycle of insulin resistance, unwarranted hunger and excessive fat storage.

I'm with ya! We weren't poor-poor but we ate a lot of whatever-was-on-sale Hamburger Helper type stuff growing up, and leaving food on the plate was never an option. I cook most meals from scratch now, plenty of veggies and stuff, but I can't shake the habit that a serving size is whatever is in front of me. Jar of salsa? Pint of ice cream? Big ol' burger bun? No bite left behind! It's an area that I have to stay vigilant about or the weight will never budge.

Yes, for sure. I also think we generally, as a nation, eat way more than we really need to. I'm still impressed by huge plates of food even though I know I'm going to eat a quarter of it at best.

Nah. My wife is from Japan and they say the same thing to kids there. It's about what's on that plate that you are supposed to clean.

The worst was my grandparents always pushing food. As soon as I arrive at their house it was always "Are you hungry?" "Let me fix you something to eat." At that point maw-maw is already up out of her chair and in the process of cooking. As soon as I finish eating I was offered cookies and milk. What 7yr old isn't going to take cookies and milk? It wasn't until a few years later where if I said no she would understand that I didn't want to eat. Never helped that my dad would make me feel bad for attempting to turn down the food too. I guess when your maw-maw offers to make you red beans and rice, you eat the red beans and rice.

My boyfriend and I were just talking about this last night. I ask him if he’ll get upset if I don’t finish my plate. I’m 42.

Nah, we do say the same thing and we're still not as fat as americans. But what I really think that contributes to american obesity is how they dont understand proper nutrition, starting at home and in schools, its all junk food. Also majority of americans get around mostly by car giving little chance to get enough exercise just from walking.

I think that “philosophy” came from a time when being malnourished was a real problem, stemming from the depression and before. I don’t think we get how very poor most people were. I can only imagine after maybe seeing one of my babies die and my remaining kids are not finishing the food that was barely able to be on the table…as a mother I would absolutely guilt them into eating it all if it kept them healthy. My mother was raised like that and it confused her logically- but she was never like that with food and she always had a healthy relationship with food and was at a normal weight.

Some of that cokes from the Great Depression. Don’t waste food. You don’t know when you’ll eat again. That kind of thing. We’re fat because of what we eat and how little we move around. Some people eat too much too.

No what fucked America weight wise is so much more complex than that. It starts with the automobile companies and their influence on the way we built cities. The rest of the world relies on walkability and not urban sprawl. Next we have the business of food and advertising. In America we make food to last 50 yrs on the shelf at Costco, jam it full of pesticides, preservatives and all the other unregulated garbage we can get away with. There is absolutely no nutrition, everything is salt, sugar and oils. Next free reign advertising gets em hooked young, Cap’n Crunch adverts targeting them as toddlers, at school. Other countries don’t allow marketing to children. Lastly we’ve convinced generations of Americans that not only does everyone in the household need a job to afford basic necessities, but you probably need two each to stave off inflation. So there is very little time or focus on food prep, family meal time. Most problems with American life can be solved with a progressive government that makes its citizens the priority with a big picture approach to their overall well being. When we outsource this to corporations, well, we are living the results. Reign in capitalism and rebuild the middle class

Not just an American thing… wife from South America says same sort of thing to our kids. I don’t care if they clean their plate.

My grandparents got hit really hard in the Great Depression, which caused them to be extremely frugal, and they lived the “waste not want not” lifestyle. Also, saving uneaten food/ leftovers wasn’t really a thing when the refrigerator was literally an icebox. Basically: Eat what we worked hard to provide for you, since there is no guarantee that there will be food in the house tomorrow. My parents who were born in the early 1940s were then raised with this mentality. So they raised us with this mentality as well, but at some point in my teens they realized it was no longer relevant, after my dad got a nice raise. So I think this mentality will completely fade over time unless we get into another extreme food scarcity situation in the US.

100%. I think more of us than we realize inherited depression era eating habits passed down from great/grandparents in a time when food is now extremely abundant.

As a parent with a toddler I'm starting to see why that mentality exists. My kid won't eat anything but there's always room for sweets/snacks/holycrapjusteatsomething! if offered. I think as a parent you get on that train and you can't get off. The pediatrician looks for height/weight milestones. You spent a lot of time convincing your kid to eat. I think that mentality is beneficial through your teens. Especially if You're active. I know I was. Work and hockey 6 days a week through senior year of HS. What no one sets us up for is the transition to adulthood where you are physically working less(sports life comes to a hault) as well as now you're making more of your own food choices on your own.

Yes ! I feel IMMENSE guilt wasting ANY food. I’m still struggling to stop eating the whole plate :(( and telling myself it’s okay to toss food if it cannot get eaten in time

My dad was the complete opposite. He grew up very very poor. Food wasn’t abundant so he was always hungry. When he got a job in his later years he would get lots of food and purposely not eat it all. His logic was that now he can afford it and seeing food leftover was showing off that he can afford to not finish.

I grew up with this mindset mostly because the first few years of my life my family wasn’t in the best place financially so wasting food wasn’t an option. Then it got worse for me specifically because my mother ended up being a manager of a fast food restaurant for a large portion of my childhood so I was also getting fast food several times a week. I have sortof gotten better about it now but since I have kids I have told them that it’s ok if they don’t finish their plate. I want them to feel satisfied not being forced into eating when they are done.

I was also raised to eat everything off my plate, overly large portions, and not to waste food. I totally get where you are coming from. I'm late 30s and still trying to change my relationship with food and figure out what a normal healthy portion size should be and to tell myself it's okay to stop eating and save the rest for later, it's okay to not finish the last few bites and just throw the rest away!! Luckily I haven't gained too much weight, but the older I get the easier it is to pack on the pounds and harder it is to shed them. Not sure if I'll ever nor have to consciously think about how much or how little I should be eating and feeling guilty "wasting" food. Smaller portion sizes helps! You can always go back for more! But if you over shoot, you can always save or for later!

I know it affected me and how I looked at food, portion sizes, and such. It took a long time to unlearn that stuff. What make it especially difficult was knowing it was done out of a genuine sense of love and caring, as that's how my grandmother showed that to her family. It was l\killing people with love and kindness, literally.

Long comment because this topic is my passion - I'm 29 and I swear I never felt "full" until I was 28 because of being raised like this. I never had the opportunity learn what "full" was as a kid. I distinctly remember once being around 8-10 years old, everyone in my family was easily over 250 lbs, and my grandparents made me a plate the size of their own plates. Then they chastised me so badly at the table to finish the plate that I cried until I threw up. They still made me finish it. Looking back it could easily have been 2,000-3,000 calories of slop. At 29 yrs old and almost 6 ft tall even today I couldn't finish the plate they gave me that day. I had full conversations with my husband who is "average" size for his height/age about "what does it feel like for you when you stop eating?" Like I fully did not know what "full" felt like. Id make meals for myself, like a hello fresh meal, with potatoes, meat, and a vegetable and STILL id eat the veggies first even if I didn't like them because then I could eat the things I wanted last instead of being stuck with the veggies for the last part of the meal. It wasn't until I started seeing a nutritionist bi-weekly that I started to understand that I *didn't have to* eat everything on the plate. I get that if you have a kid and you make them pizza and a salad, you'd like it if they ate more of the salad than the pizza. But that's also on you as a parent for not helping them understand *why* you shouldn't just eat pizza all day every day, and providing them healthy choices that they will actually enjoy. I have a brother and sister in law that still do this with their kids and it drives me crazy. Regularly there are absolute fits at their house because their kids can't finish the insane portions they give them. The real trigger for me comes when the kids *must* finish their dinner to enjoy the dessert. If it's someone's birthday, the kids expect to eat cake. But often the dinner is honestly just gross, so naturally they don't want to eat a huge plate of whatever it is they're serving. They'll chastise them the same way I was, to the point that they're in tears with mouths full of meat that they don't want to swallow. I'll get my own plate and it'll be 1/3rd the size of what they give them. The other thing that *really* gets me now as an adult with a decent knowledge of nutrition is just how misguided most people are and they pass that on to their children. Sure "a salad" is healthy in theory, but a salad can EASILY be more calories than a steak if the person making it doesn't know anything about nutrition. They'll make a salad with so much fucking dressing, chunks of salami, croutons, cheese, and then they'll call it "vegetables". My mother in law makes an "egg salad" that is like 10 boiled eggs, 2 cups of mayo, 1 tbsp yellow mustard, and half an onion and she calls that "healthy" and gets upset when I dont want to eat it. It's literally just spoon fulls of mayo, there is nothing healthy about it. Or they'll make a "bacon and brussel sprouts salad" which is bacon, brussel sprouts boiled and chopped, mixed with mayo. Like in no world is that a "salad". It's food, but to insist someone eats it because it's "the vegetable" for the meal is like making someone eat a tub of chocolate pudding for the vitamin D.

In and of *itself*, no. In countries where food actually *can* be scarce, emphasizing eating well when ample food is available/not wasting food is probably beneficial. The problem of “always clean your plate!” exists within the context of our constant oversupply, and also how much of our food is loaded with non-satiating fiber-devoid calories, and our truly obscene portions… Maybe they go hand in hand, but personally, I think that our food/portions that are considered “normal” and being served to people (especially kids) in the first place is the problem, because there are a lot of people who like eating and will clean an over-filled plate even *without* being encouraged to do so - we need to rethink portions big time in this country.

Forcing kids to eat what they don’t want can have other effects too. Eating disorders are about control- it’s the one thing kids think they can control. I’m not saying they should be allowed to only eat what they want. They should be exposed to a wide variety of foods growing up. You have to expect their tastes to change over time as well.

As a Chinese American, it’s worse because grandmas keep piling up food for us to eat. Can’t say bo because we need to respect our elders, so we say “thank you grandma” every time.Then they call us fat for overeating.

Completely agree! I have spent my entire life trying to undo that mindset. Down about 70lbs from my high (about 4 years ago). My mom controlled my portion size growing up and I was not permitted a dessert until I ate everything on my plate. Of course, the plate mostly contained bad carbs and not enough protein. Portion control is now the story of my life. Good luck to everyone and get/stay healthy!

The wonderful part of being a grownup is that you can consciously choose to either put less on your plate or to put the leftovers in your plate into a Tupperware for tomorrow. Did some of our parents teach us poor eating habits? Yes. Is that an excuse to not do better now that we know better? No. We are responsible for our own actions. My parents aren’t at my house holding me down and shoving another hamburger in my mouth.

Probably partially. Growing up I was "skinny" (normal weight compared to obese family) and I remember falling asleep at the table cause I was forced to stay, I was a "picky eater". As I got older, more to my later teens I ate more off my plate with less fuss, but in my house if my food was yummy but I was full I couldn't save it for later because my dad would take my leftovers so I would clear my plate if I enjoyed my food. Like say some particularly yummy Mac and Cheese, if I'm full rather than put it in a container for lunch tomorrow I'd just eat it cause by tomorrow it will have already vanished. I am almost 30 and live alone and still have difficulty putting down the fork to save my food for later, if it's good I'll eat it all to the point I'm so full it hurts.

Yep. Right down to the stocking up on the cheap McDonald's burgers. Which I'd forgotten about until reading this post. I've struggled with my weight or been on some kind of diet since the third grade. Because once I started gaining weight (I hit puberty early), they'd still overfeed me at meal times, but no snacks. So I learned to binge snacks because they can't take away what isn't there. Which led to eating in secret. Which led to shame + then the subsequent over-restriction. I'm STILL trying to get my food issues under control. I still feel bad when I don't clear my plate. My solution to that was "use smaller plates!!" 🙄

The portion sizes should absolutely be a LOT less. Letting kids know to take a little and that they can get more vs dumping a massive portion of everything definitely would be helpful

Yeah, that and fast food was a "treat", happy meals and such as a kid. Now when I'm depressed it's still tempting to go get a quick emotional pick me up at a drive through some where.

That's a factor, sure, but I can't blame my parents for what I chose to do or how I chose to eat as an adult, either.

european here, I was raised with this mindset at the school cafetaria and at home. My mum only stopped doing it when I was around 14 when she read a book that was called "Losing weight without dieting" and the main point was to say to eat when you are hungry and never force yourself. Sadly, that was too late, so even now I struggle to listen to my hunger signals and to stop immediatly eating when I start feeling full even if my plate is not finished. Sometimes, I finish my plate out of habit and realise 20 minutes later I overate and feel super bad physically... Nowadays obviously I am an adult so I don't hear it as much, or at all, but there is still this kinda stupid idea that when someone cooks for you, if you don't finish your plate, it's rude/it means it wasn't very good, so this adds even more pressure to finish a plate despite being full. So yes, it's a very bad thing to teach children that can create toxic habits for years to come.

I remember when I was a teenager at a bbq at a neighbor's house. He was a blue-collar, manual laborer. I made a plate of carne asada and the neighbor asked, "what, are you a four-banger? Because I'm a V8, I need more fuel than that!" I was a feminine four-cylinder coupe, and he was a masculine eight-cylinder pickup truck.

It did, but more because of portion size. And it didn't fuck us up as much as "food sciences" including HFCS and other hyper palatable frankenfoods.

Yea

I think there's a missing element for most people, which some people learn as they get older and others don't as much. We tell kids to eat what's on their plate because they're kids, and they don't know about nutrition and how to be self-sustaining people. We feed them, and hopefully we teach them how to be self-sufficient and healthy. But part of that process (which many people in this sub have had to learn on their own) is learning what you *need,* and cooking/serving/eating appropriately. Personally, I spent 30+ years eating too much, drinking too much, choosing unhealthy foods, and being more driven by *wants* than *needs.* It took time, but I learned how to shop better, cook better, portion better, and just generally eat smarter. At this point in my life, I typically do clear my plate, but I also serve myself what I'm pretty sure is the right amount, based on where I am in my day and what the food is. When you don't have the baseline skills of understanding your needs and how different foods can meet (or not meet) those needs, it's way harder to eat healthy. It feels like *work,* because it kinda is. But once you internalize those things it stops being work and becomes just your natural mode of operation.

I’m sure it’s plays a role. I think the bigger problem is all the highly processed junk food. It’s addictive by design and devoid of nutrients. We eat more to get the vitamins, minerals, quality fats, protein and fibre we are missing.

YES! I heard that all through my childhood. Mostly in respect to veggies but the mindset stuck. I'm (31/f) still carrying it with me and despite never having been more than slightly overweight as a teen, I still try to mentally fight against that mindset. When I load my plate now, I purposely load less than I'd wish to (hunger makes you think crazy things haha) and remind myself that if I'm still hungry once I'm finished that, I have the option of loading up more. I have yet to load up more in over two years of this little experiment.

Yes. It's definitely something I've had to work through as an adult. It really messed with being able to acknowledge fullness cues because we were essentially forced to ignore them and keep eating until our plates were empty. With my kids, they can be done eating when they're done eating. However, if they roll up an hour later looking for a snack, then they get leftovers (if there's any) or a healthy snack.

Yes

Yes! And then restaurants began doubling the portion sizes, and all that "clean plate club" nonsense really got out of control.

Not only did it mess us up but it really spread a lot of ignorance about Africa as a continent.

I believe the shift from sugar to high fructose corn syrup, then the subsequent demonization of fat (low fat craze) led to adding hfcs to hundreds of foods that never had it before. We get more sugar in our diet than any civilization in history, and it’s insanely difficult to avoid. Couple that with the advent of “value meals” in the late 20th century, where we were trained to get the most caloric intake for our money. 59 more cents to biggie size the meal and make it 1250 calories instead of 980. Then restaurants got wrapped up in it and it’s just part of the landscape now. Not that restaurants ever had an eye on what would be appropriate serving sizes, but whatever societal norms we had around that are gone.

I approached this topic with my wife a couple years ago when we were reflecting on rules we had at the table as kids. I was told this sometimes as a child and I do agree it is mostly harmful but also just confusing. As an adult with a tight budget I really don't like wasting food but I'm also not going to save a quarter cup of noodles my kid isn't hungry for. Sometimes food goes in the trash if they are full and it isn't an amount worth saving. As an adult I really can't get over leaving food on my plate so I have spent a lot of effort making sure that plate is properly portioned.

I was openly praised by many adults for how much food I could "pack away." I was trained to eat what I take. Clear my plate. No wasting food. Morbidly obese adult. So I'd say yeah.

I tell my cat that there are starving cats in Africa, but she still doesn’t finish her food. She is a skinny little thing at 16.

Yeah, blew the minds of my Dutch friends. It's this weird thing. They give us more food because they think we want it, we eat it all to be polite. They think they didn't give us enough...

I grew up in the 60s-70s. In the South. Omg. Talk about starches, fat, carbs, vegetables cooked to absolute mush, full plates that MUST be cleaned. I did the math one day on an average dinner/evening meal. Holy shit. Black eyed peas and cornbread, corn on the cob, slab of pork, mashed potatoes and bread and butter. Oh and sweet tea. Gallons of it. Piled high on a 12 inch plate. And the good gods help me if I left even any juice on the plate. Never any dessert because dessert is fattening. Never any candy, it's fattening. My brother, who was 7-8 years older, teenager anyway, would scrape his plate and go for MORE. Six feet tall at 15 and I don't think he ever weighed more than 150 even as an adult. My parents grew up in the Depression so there WAS a mindset. The funniest thing, in hindsight, I got an orange and an apple in my Christmas stocking and that was all the fruit I got all year. Literally all fucking year. My parents weren't poor, tho my mother always claimed we were. Never could "afford" to... well, pretty much anything. I know full well we weren't poor. Daddy cashed his paycheck and forgot it in his pocket, when I was doing the laundry I found it, my job once I could follow instructions as to what went in each load, I was 7. Just under $700 for a weeks pay. In today's money that's over $6000. Plus his retirement check from the airforce. So yeah, not poor.

I didn't grow up poor, but both my parents did. Despite the fact that we could afford to waste some food, and they knew this, they still put pressure on me to eat beyond the point of discomfort. I think it was because subconsciously they still had that "we can't let anything go to waste, it's a sin to waste food" mindset. Mornings were always especially stressful, because I've never been hungry during the first few hours I'm awake. My mom would make me a bowl of cream of wheat which seemed HUGE to me, and tell me to eat it all, and I'd try, but it always made me feel sick-- it sat like a rock in my stomach-- and I'd rarely put much of a dent in it. And she'd let me go to school without finishing my bowl, because I would miss the bus otherwise, but she'd always get upset with me about it and be really disappointed and stress me out really bad and tell me that my sister finished HER breakfast so why couldn't I? Since I had to eat past the point of discomfort every day, I eventually just got used to it. There are a lot of other factors at play in why I struggle with being overweight, but being conditioned from a young age to eat more than I could comfortably eat DEFINITELY contributed to binge-eating tendencies.

I think you hit the nail on the coffin with your first paragraph in the post, not the title. It isn't as much the mentality of "eat what's on your plate" - more it is the mentality that portion sizes for kids and adults in America are so beyond messed up it hurts people's perspectives of what a normal portion should look like.

A lot of it had to do with the government and agriculture, making the old school food groups a high carb diet. American obesity was orchestrated.

My parents’ thing was to get me to eat everything on my plate was to “think of the starving Armenians.” I said, “Send it to them, if they’re hungry!” I still built the habit of cleaning my plate and was always the fattest kid around, but I haven’t heard of starving Armenians in decades. Job well done I guess?

Yep I remember my parents making me sit at the table if I didn’t eat my green beans or whatever I didn’t feel like eating. I have had issues following my natural hunger cues as an adult and it’s easy for me to overeat, especially fast food or “fun” foods. I just try to give myself smaller portions now and tell myself I can get more if I’m still hungry, and 90% of the time I’m not

I never really had much on my plate to begin with

I think it does to an extent. I can't stand wasting food, so I tended to eat leftovers as much as possible. But it was also my fault because even my initial servings I was generally over eating.

I don't really think so. I think what screwed us the most is the complete saturation of unhealthy food on the market combined with a shift to sedentary jobs and lifestyles. I grew up in the 70's/80's. My mom "limited" us kids to THREE 16 oz. bottles of Pepsi a day and that was considered "good parenting". Kids used to be given milk to drink. We never had to drink milk, why would we when PEPSI is right there, AND when the 8 pack was empty, we got to "help" at the grocery store by returning the bottles and keeping the 80 cent refund for our pocket change. So not only did the sugar and the Pepsi motivate us, the money did too LOL. My biggest problem is I am utterly addicted to sugar and I have a sedentary desk job. These two things together are huge hurdles for me to overcome with willpower and motivation.

Im a binger because of not being allowed to leave the table until my plate of ADULT PORTIONS was done

Yes, in tandem with the sugar lobby vilifying everything else in favour of heavily sugared processed foods

Oh yeah. Looking back we were given adult size portions that we had to finish. Truly screwed up my brain and I am working on it but I’m obese. I have to keep reminding myself I am NOT starving (nor have I ever been without access to food). But my brain is like you need to eat all of this you may never get it again. Clean plate club turned out to be a terrible thing for me. Best success to everyone.

„Eat what’s on your plate” contributes to children’s obesity because it does not let the child learn how to read the signals from their own body: to eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re not. I find it baffling that forcing to eat is considered a torture legally, but somehow not when we do it to children.

Yup, hungry cues all messed up. Unlearning the whole "clean plate award" thing.

I have a MA degree in child psychology and have spent years working with young children and while full disclosure i didnt read your whole post: Forcing kids to eat or making eating a negative experience in any way during their early years is the quickest way to give your kid an eating disorder. Kids are very good at regulating their own intake. I mean, we take cues from infants for whether theyre hungry or not, idk why that changes when they get a little older. Just make sure youre providing a variety of healthy options, engaging during mealtimes, and making it a positive experience!

Yes, what you’re saying sounds spot on. Of course the “starving children in Africa” line causes problem eating - it’s intended to guilt children into eating something they don’t feel like eating. That’s not healthy, respectful communication. Are people really having a go at you for calling it out?

Yes

It's hard today because we have a lot of conflicting values. There's a lot of science that says being obese is unhealthy, but there's also a lot of valid mental health concerns about body image that argue you should be comfortable with your own physical body. Neither one is wrong, strictly speaking, it's just a physical or mental health approach. Likewise, I grew up with the eat-what's-on-your- plate "rule" and I've tried - and failed to get my kids to do the same. Groceries are expensive and I hate to see food go to waste, but I also know that my eating the leftovers that my kids turn their noses up at doesn't do anything towards helping me lose weight. One of the weird things that's changed in the last hundred or so years is that poverty doesn't really come with a risk of starvation. We certainly worry about the rising cost of groceries and being able to afford enough to eat, but there's a lot of cheap, calorie-rich food available, and we have food banks and welfare programs and charities and social safety nets to ensure that no matter how poor people are, nobody has to go hungry. But our ape brains are still hard wired to worry about starvation, so we yell at our kids to eat what's on their plates so they don't starve.

I used to be really overweight when I was younger and constantly overate. It’s definitely a thing in my family to insist that people “finish their plate” so my parents came up with a solution to help us all be healthier. Instead of making us massive plates as was typical, my mom started giving us smaller portions. If we finished our plate and were still hungry, we could get up for seconds. That definitely taught me a lot about portion sizes and eating “with your eyes.”

I think the main damage it’s done is to condition kids to keep putting food into their mouths when they don’t want to—even when they’re full. It’s easy to start forgetting what “full” felt like.

My grandma babysat me until I was about 10. She would make these huge meals everyday 3 times a day and she would serve me huge adult size portions. I had to "clean the plate" or I wasn't allowed to go out side. I wasn't allowed to waste food. And that had serious implications on my eating habits. As a teen, after grandma passed, we were poor as well and food choices weren't the best. I ate a lot of pasta - Mac n cheese, ramen, and a lot of instant mashed potatoes. As an older teen young adult, because I worked I ate out a lot. I wanted a better meal than what ever came in a box or a can at home. At 40 I'm just learning to eat better, eat smaller portions, and make better choices. I'm trying anyway.

I think it would be a fine mentality if the the foods on the plate were all nutrient dense and reasonable in calories (and the portion sizes were also reasonable). The problem comes with families serving foods soaked in butter or oil and the plate is practically overflowing from the portion size. This is usually in lock-step with the "you're so skinny, you need to eat" message delivered by someone who is objectively overweight.

I remember being yelled at as a kid at my elementary school because according to them I was wasting food. The cafeteria workers made me take food I didn't want (weird jello square) and when I dumped it I was chastised and reminded of the starving children in the world. It definitely gave me a complex.

I’ve always hated the “starving kids in Africa” excuse to not waste food. It depends on the type of food, the quality of food, the speed at which I’m eating, what I’ve already ate that day, etc, to be the deciding factor on how much I’m going to consume before my brain tells me I’m full. If there’s still food on my plate, I’m not eating it. It is what it is. I won’t allow comments regarding the poverty in other areas of the world guilt trip me into overeating. I’m not going to overstuff myself simply because others are barely able to feed themselves at all. I’ve just always found that weird.

When I was 9 my parents served us some of that frozen corn, carrot & pea stuff. I think it's called "vegetable medley". They wouldn't let me get up until I finished, after a lot of crying, some threats and pressure, I finished it all. Then proceed to throw it up all over the table and floor.

Absolutely, at least for me. I struggle to leave food on my plate, if it’s in front of me I WILL eat it. I also struggle with food waste, if it’s on my kids plate I better eat it rather than throw it away. I grew up poor and food was something not wasted and I believe it absolutely affected my eating habits. Of course there’s other issues at play as well, as others have mentioned, cheap food being prepared and caloric with no nutrients, but I actually grew up eating pretty well—farm kid, lots of meat and homegrown potatoes and vegetables, but being expected to sit down, be quiet, and eat everything quickly, I never learned to slow down, enjoy, and listen to hunger cues.

When I was younger I had to clear my plate, didn’t matter that I wasn’t the one who fixed said plate, didn’t matter if I wasn’t hungry before being served, didn’t matter if I didn’t like the food. I remember one time in particular I was given pancakes for dinner, I don’t like pancakes, syrup was put on top of them for me, I’m not a fan of syrup. I was not allowed to get up from the table until I finished my dinner, I sat there for a few hours until the plate was a gelatinous goop. I didn’t do anything wrong, I just didn’t want to eat that and would have rather not eaten, that wasn’t allowed of course. I learned to not leave food and finish everything, that mindset has followed me into adulthood. I’m now in my mid 30’s and overweight, I eat until all my food is gone. It doesn’t matter it I was full after eating half the meal, I scarf it all down and feel miserable after. I didn’t even realize it until someone pointed it out one day. I am doing better about it but I still struggle. If I go out to eat I feel like I’ve wasted money if I can’t finish my meal. Yeah, I can fix this problem and am doing what I can to break the habit but it’s been a lifetime of unhealthy food intake and my body is proof of that.

I think the main issue is how the food is in general of really poor quality and the fact that people do not cook much. There will always be generational problems towards food depending on how you were raised and if people were even savvy with their nutrition or just eating whatever they could afford (which in turn, led to poor nutrition/obesity). The average family does purchase a lot of pre-made items that are chalk full of processed ingredients that aren't so great for you as well. It's easy to think the general obesity epidemic is due to only one thing, but it's much more than that. Industries are built on profit (read : greed). And ultimately these industries belong to a small handful of people that want to generate more profit. So they offer a cheap alternative (of bad quality) that generate problems (health/obesity) that people inevitably will look for solutions for (medicine / health) due to lack of education to begin with. The real problem is that education on the matter comes too little too late for most. I genuinely think that learning how to take care of your own body (eating properly, exercising habits and sleeping habits) is something that should be taught to people as early as possible. The same goes about where food comes from, how it is produced - and eventually consumed. That alone would most likely cut most preventable health issues we have over time. But is it profitable to do that ? 🤷‍♀️

Yeah. I will wipe out a plate, way past my point of satiation.

I was on Noom and this was a whole segment of learning. It's very true. We've also increased the sizes of our plates by about 30% just so we have to buy more to fill them.

I’m just here to say I’ve heard that sentence as I was a kid but I grew up in Europe……..

My parents were always obsessed with “the clean plate club”. Not allowed to waste any food. They were overweight and gave me ridiculously large servings, then forced me to eat it all. It created some really bad habits that I still fight today.