Peace be upon you fussy eaters
There are only three certainties in life: death, taxes and end-ofyear newspaper columns littered with regrets, reflections, hindsight, foolish optimism and the bald-faced lies we call New Year’s Resolutions. But hey, why break with tradition?
A year ago, I vowed to turn vegetarian, or at least mostly meatfree, in 2017. ‘‘I say mostly because I’m realistic,’’ I wrote 364 days ago, though that didn’t cut the Colman’s with Stuff readers.
Apparently you can’t have a foot – or hoof, shoulder or rump – in both camps. You’re either an ethical eater who cares for the welfare and integrity of our fellow sentient beings, or a callous carnivore whose only dilemma is whether to serve your steak medium or rare.
This, of course, is fake news promulgated by high-horsey proselytes. You can have your bacon buttie and eat it too. There is always some middle ground and, six months ago, I found it in the pages of American food activist Brian Kateman’s book The Reducetarian Solution: How the Surprisingly Simple Act of Reducing the Amount of Meat in Your Diet Can Transform Your Health and the Planet.
As consumers, we can all make conscious choices, and every little bit helps. If our budget allows, we can seek out pasture-fed, freedom-farmed meat or plant protein fashioned into meaty looking fillets. We can grow our own fruit and vegetables without using pesticides or leaching nitrates.
We can pay a little more for freerange eggs and organic chicken, like the happy hens that live a bucolic life foraging under the apple trees in Bostock’s Hawke’s Bay orchards. And we can all eat a little less meat and dairy.
I may have repeatedly broken my vegetarian vow for 2017 but I’m consuming half the meat I was a year ago, if only because I’ve sworn off spaghetti bolognaise. I’m over it. It is my 4-year-old son Lachie’s favourite meal, and also the only meal my husband knows how to cook, so we eat it several nights a week. Or at least, the men in the house do.
My 6-year-old son Lucas, however, suddenly prefers the pasta to the mince. He also prefers potatoes to pork, green beans to bacon and corn to lamb chops. At Christmas, he declared that he didn’t really want to eat animals any more. I responded with my best poker face, for I’m conflicted as to whether to hug him in ecofriendly solidarity or hold him down and force feed him a sausage.
He is his mother’s son. When I was growing up, my fussy eating caused more family fights than any other teenage acts of rebellion, with my parents’ insistence that I eat everything on my plate matched only by my resolve not to.
At 15, I stopped eating meat (or at least all the meat I couldn’t covertly slip to our pet cat under the table) and I didn’t start again until I was dating a Canterbury lad whose mother did the most delicious things to lamb tenderloins.
It has been well over three decades since the liver-and-bacon Sunday lunchtime standoff, an infamous battle of wills in which my parents refused to let me leave the table until I’d licked my plate clean of congealed guts and gravy. There were tears, threats, bribes and blackmail. I sat there for hours, scowling at Mum and Dad, but I still didn’t eat a single mouthful.
In an article for Psychology Today, Texan Professor Raj Raghunathan once described this futile if well-meaning parenting strategy as ‘‘the nurturer’s curse’’. In a bid to teach our children to make healthy food choices, we lose our rag and turn to psychological torture (horror stories of starving African babies) and withhold their pudding instead.
‘‘Being sweet-natured, powerless, and dependent on parents for support,’’ writes Raghunathan, ‘‘these kids co-operate, but even as they do so, real damage is being done to their psyche. They are learning to equate food with punishment.’’ When I was Lucas’ age, I vomited a plate of peas all over my aunt’s table, having been told I’d better eat them or else. Two weeks ago, my attempt to force Lucas to eat a plate of scrambled eggs had the same outcome. He got upset, and I felt like a failed disciplinarian and a hypocrite, for unless hard-boiled or poached until rubbery, I’ve always been a bit uneasy about eggs myself.
Said the Roman writer Publilius Syrus, ‘‘where there is unity there is always victory’’. So for the sake of peace and school holiday goodwill, I’m taking my cue from Marie-Antoinette with a very specific 2018 New Year’s Resolution. ‘‘Let them eat Coco Pops,’’ I say.
At 15, I stopped eating meat and I didn't start again until I was dating a Canterbury lad whose mother did the most delicious things to lamb tenderloins.