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Forbidden Childhoods


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one day when i was about 12, my father decided that i couldn't have sugary cereals anymore.  it seemed random, and i suppose he was just in a bad mood.  but that was the rule from then on in.  luckily, i very much enjoyed rice krispies and cheerios, which were on the "ok" list.

as it turns out, as an adult, i don't have a taste for sugary cereals, and i certainly don't like sweet milk.

it should be noted that during my first year of college, it had captain crunch with crunchberries and cheesesteaks 3 meals a day every day. of course, i was stoned out of my gourd, but i think i more than made up for lost time on the sugary cereals.

glad i wasn't alone with the "no sugary cereals" rule.

Edited by tommy (log)
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Grew up vegetarian {Being from a hindu family }, but not everybody was vegetarian - My materal Grandpa had his own small kitchen, where forbitten foods were cooked by him along with forbidden beverages {Army Issue XXX Rum}

anil

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We didn't have a lot of sugary cereals growing up but Mom would buy Golden Grahams and Buc*Wheats. (I loved those and wish I could still buy them...wonder how I'd feel about them as an adult? Sadly they are no longer on the market.) Milk with Quik was okay since it got us to drink milk. We had fast food periodically but had to have the orange drink, not soda, with our cheeseburgers. Soda was only permitted on rare occasions, which got more common as we got older. Nothing was ever across-the-board verboten. We didn't eat shellfish or pork at home (we didn't keep Kosher but we were Jewish and this was one of the parental compromises) but we were welcome to consume these foods while dining out.

I was always permitted coffee and alcohol. My father thoroughly enjoyed teaching me about alcohol. We had wine with dinner every Friday night to celebrate Shabbat. There was no alcohol mystique in my house, it just existed and if you wanted it you had it but if not that was okay too. (My adult approach to alcohol is strikingly similar, actually.) And I always loved the smell of coffee so I started drinking it when I was 7 or so. My folks mostly had decaf so they figured it wasn't a big deal, and I started drinking it half-coffee half-milk so it wasn't too bitter for me. Mom and Dad figured if they liked it and wanted it every night they couldn't tell me I couldn't have it.

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I grew up living in pretty much 3 different places

Mom's house:

No sugary cereal (honey/oat cheerios & honey combs being the exception), no white sugar only honey or raw brown sugar, no white bread except if it was french bread. no convenience foods except for frozen creamed spinach & canned creamed corn because they were the only vegatables my brother would eat. no margarine (thank god!), no ham no bolongna Kosher salami only as far as lunch "meats" and then every once in a while chicken roll I guess'cause it was cheap. no american cheese or velveeta. No soda ever, only real juice noit even cranberry juice "cocktail" used to go to my best freinds house & have margarine & white sugar sandwiches on wonder bread. Cookies were homemade though there were often hidden stashes of crunch n munch & pepperidge farm milanos in my mothers studio

Grandparents house:

no white bread white sugar no lunch meat no chips no cookies unless my grandma made them ( the worst cookies ever) no salad dressings, only vanilla ice cream no convenmience foods at all ever no soda (except special occasions then there was gingerale)chips only later in life when Bella discovered little soy blues, chocolate was hidden throughout the house though ( cadbury fruit n nut in the fridge behind the weird polish salves, chocolate coffee beans coffee table drawer behind the cards box of whitmans chocolate in the thrid drawer under the "good cloth napkins) Cookies & cakes were kept in the spare bedroom I don't really know why.

Dad's house:

Also no sugary cereal, no soda, no chips of any kind, no american cheese or velveeta however frozen pizza & canned ravioli was ok as were TV dinners but not boxed mac & cheese , cookies only Pepperidge farm or Mallomars (worlds greatest cookie!!!) no chips ahoy or anything like that and no asparagus because for some reason my father thinks it makes you sterile..(we're kind eccentric)

"sometimes I comb my hair with a fork" Eloise

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I find this whole culture of parents forbidding foods and then hiding them elsewhere to be bizarre. My mom did this too, so it's not unfamiliar, but it is still weird. Even now there is sometimes candy squirreled away my parents' home office. What are the reasons people do this? Should you ban it if you eat it yourself? Is that fair?

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I find this whole culture of parents forbidding foods and then hiding them elsewhere to be bizarre. My mom did this too, so it's not unfamiliar, but it is still weird. Even now there is sometimes candy squirreled away my parents' home office. What are the reasons people do this? Should you ban it if you eat it yourself? Is that fair?

I hide stuff from my kids, especially my son, because he's got a deathwish. Left to his own devices that kid would have succumbed to cholesterol poisoning years back...Kids need to have certain things hidden from them. My god, doesn't anyone have young children. Suicide by chicken tenders is painful....

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I disagree Spencer.  Moderation in everything.  Plus, when your kids find whatwever it is you're hiding, they'll think they're living in a web of deceit.  No kidding.

Its totally true. I remember being extremely pissed finding my mom's stash of chocolate and fudge and all kinds of crap. Its probably better to give it to your kids in small amounts than to make something completely verboten and hide it from them for your own personal consumption.

Of course, later in my teens during the early 80's I was much more interested in their supply of Thai stick than the hidden Godivas and See's ...

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

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My kids, I categorically state, are not normal...My son resembles John Belushi in front of a pile of Peruvian gold whenever we drive by a Burger King. I've got him pegged as a line-backer, a big son of gun, looks like he's in eighth grade and he's only six. He sweats, gyrates, pounds at the window like a caged animal when ever he sees the golden arches. At home he's constantly running sorties on the refer. like it's been updated since his last go round ten minutes ago. So I push the Tyson Mega Chunks to the back of the freezer, hide the Ring-Dings, the Box-O-Bologna behind the burlaped oranges. I make the milk more prominent than the Cokes, sticking them in the lettuce crisper under the romaine like it's an Iraqi jet fighter. If I didn't surveil my par stocks I'll be selling ass on Third and Crump to pay the grocery bills. If that does irrepairable damage then so be it. I'd rather twist the guy up because he ain't experienced all that's great about the world of obesity than because I had to work the night shift to pay for his fucking two hundred dollar a week Krispy Kreme habit.

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My kids, I categorically state, are not normal...My son resembles John Belushi in front of a pile of Peruvian gold whenever we drive by a Burger King.  I've got him pegged as a line-backer, a big son of gun, looks like he's in eighth grade and he's only six.    He sweats, gyrates, pounds at the window like a caged animal when ever he sees the golden arches.  At home he's constantly running sorties on the refer. like it's been updated since his last go round ten minutes ago.  So I push the Tyson Mega Chunks to the back of the freezer, hide the Ring-Dings, the Box-O-Bologna behind the burlaped oranges.  I make the milk more prominent than the Cokes, sticking them in the lettuce crisper under the romaine like it's an Iraqi jet fighter.    If I didn't surveil my par stocks I'll be selling ass on Third and Crump to pay the grocery bills.  If that does irrepairable damage then so be it.  I'd rather twist the guy up because he ain't experienced all that's great about the world of obesity than because I had to work the night shift to pay for his fucking two hundred dollar a week Krispy Kreme habit.

hmmm.thought the kids were off limits...anyway, I agree...there are a small precentage of kids that dont't have ability to say no..keep them away fromn the BK's until they are conditioned properly.

As far as me as a kid...anything goes. I think that by the time I was 12, I was smarter than my loving mother...not her fault, she was just who she was...I treid to make myself drink milk, etc....at age 13, I read scientific journals about skin...trying to avoidbreakouts..and learned about the correlation between diet and physical (dermitilogical) health.

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my mom was a Buddahist, so there was no meat in the house whatsoever.  There are also no garlic or onions either because it was the particular sect of buddahism that she belongs to.  Growing up in  Taiwan, I wanted meat, fish, chicken duck, everything.  The irony of it was that as an adult I am free tol eat whatever I want, but discovered that I am allergic to all chicken, duck or any kind of birds, and I don't like the taste of beef or pork.  That left me with just fish.

What about seafood?

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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On halloween we gave away sugarfree bubble gum and pennies. Our house got egged every year.

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Well, I don't have much to contribute here. I don't remember my parents forbidding foods.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I wasn't allowed to have soda for the longest time, except shirley temples, and then I was finally weaned into Pepsi by splitting a can with my mom. Also I never had any of those fake juice drinks. It was always cranberry juice. No sugary cereal. I owe it to her that I am 24 and haven't had a cavity yet.

We always had healthy meals; I never touched fast food or fried food until I was like 14.

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I'm another one who was actively discouraged from trying coffee, also with the old "it'll stunt your growth" line. Didn't make much sense, since family lore has it that all my mother lived on while pregnant with my older sister was coffee, cigarettes, hard-boiled eggs, and anchovies. Then again, my sister is only about 5'3" or so.

Nothing else was verboten, although a lot of stuff was simply not offered. This was the 1950s, when there were fewer varieties of junk food/sugared cereals/etc. available anyway.

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Because my dad died of complications caused by adult-onset diabetes, brought on by no less than 5 cans of soda a day (!), my mom made sure I stayed away from most sugary stuff when I was growing up -- although that wasn't always the case when I was a teenager. On the other hand, we had much more processed stuff, primarily because of convenience's sake. (Read -- single working parent with only child, therefore, limited time on hand with which to prepare and cook dinner, etc.)

That probably explains why --

a) I drink a lot of water all the time (not to mention partial reason for my aversion to anything alcoholic and caffeinated (although I will drink Earl Grey/soda from time to time); alcohol besides the fact that I can't metabolize it as easily as most people, but that's another story);

b) I prefer fruit to anything sweet or dessert-ish, although sometimes my resolve falls apart; and

c) why there's NO junk food or very little processed crap in my kitchen that I can lay claim to. My roommate on the other hand, who's always been a big person, will eat it if its there. (And he wonders why he's gained all that weight. I'm not kidding. He went through an entire box of Entemann's chocolate chip cookies in one sitting. I've done that when I was a teenager, but I can barely bring myself to think about it now. :unsure: )

Soba

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Besides hot cearal, only puffed wheat or Rice from Shop-rite. Just to give you an idea. it goes down from that.

Living hard will take its toll...
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We had the same forbidden foods (70s/80s) as most everyone else here. Sugary cereals, anything by Hostess, etc. We also never ate anything she disliked. I was in college before I discovered eggplant. During my first semester or so of college, I rebelled -- Froot Loops for breakfast every morning, sandwiches of Wonder Bread, Kraft Singles, and Miracle Whip. But that got old and within 12 months, I was eating healthy, substantial food again.

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hm, I discovered sugary breakfast cereals when I was in the Navy.

I'm glad to know that I wasn't missing out on anything.

There are things out there that I've never had, however -- Velveeta's one of them.

There are things that I've had that I haven't had in DECADES and I'm not about to go back having them --

Stouffer's, Swanson's, Chef Boy R Dee, Kraft's Cheese and Macaroni (yeah I know its supposed to be said the other way, but I kinda like it this way heheheh), Grape Nuts, and most canned soups. Wonder Bread falls into this category as does most prepackaged crap and things like fruit roll-ups and frozen vegetables.

On the other hand, I long for the days when I could drink milk with abandon.

Soba

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Food glorious food....when so young friends would come over to eat sushi, artichokes, spaghetti and clam sauce, rare beef, oysters, etc....and I'd go to their houses to eat chips and candies. I have no idea how my father knew this stuff...we could have one sweet...fudge that he'd make and I'd be *cook's helper* meaning I'd get to eat the ball tossed in the cold water to see if it was done yet. Cook's helper turned out to be a very cool position with four kids in the house and I made it my own.

Kid story. Daughter 3, driving by a slaughter house, her seeing the cows looking miserable, me explaining. "I don't want to eat cows again then, Mama" Me - ok...but no more liver pate, bacon, steak (mother earth days, raised 'em, killed 'em, cooked 'em) etc." She looked at me, looked at the cows..looked back at me and said..."Kill them" Today, 24 years later, she's been a vegetarian about 10 years....and I still don't eat snack food. Forbidden indeed.

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