When I first met my husband, he was living the stereotypical bachelor life with a cupboard full of boxed meals like Hamburger Helper. Granted he made these boxed meals with super healthy wild game meat but that didn't cancel out all the other overly processed ingredients in the box. He also used to eat fast food, not giving it much thought for a quick drive through McDonald’s lunch while in town for work.
I’ve always been a homemade, scratch cooker for many meals I make. That’s just the way I was taught how to cook growing up “a little of this and a little of that” and the family recipes were passed down to me. I'll admit I'm not perfect and back in the day before I read Fast Food Nation in college over ten years ago I occasionally ate some fast food. I don't have time to make EVERYTHING from scratch so I still buy some pre-made things at the store like tortilla chips or organic chicken nuggets for the occasional quick meal instead of eating out. I am conscious about our food choices so the pre-made things I do buy at the store are always natural, organic foods.
The Infamous Shopping Trip
A few weeks ago on a Saturday morning, we headed off to our favorite Amish market with the discount scratch and dent groceries for our quarterly shopping trip. By the time we got there it was close to lunch time and we hadn’t eaten so we were hungry. I had my list of things to get and began filling the cart. Unfortunately so did my husband. Before I knew it the cart was overflowing with overly processed, pre-packaged junk. He even made a point to buy cookies just for our little nugget. She’s had homemade sweets like banana bread but never a store bought, preservative packed, sugary cookie. I was mortified.
As we headed to the check out line, I told my husband I was disappointed. I try so hard to feed our family healthy, wholesome foods and put a lot of time and energy into making them because I enjoy it. I love helping to keep our family healthy by making homemade nourishing meals and snacks. And here he was bringing home loads of junk.
On the way home we had “a talk” about the food situation. That is when my husband made his food confession: he just doesn’t care what he puts into his body. It saddened me to hear him say that. Deep down I probably knew that all along but just didn’t want to believe it was true. His words still sting my ears.
What are we going to do about it?
I wasn’t a super control freak at the store and didn’t make him put anything back. He can eat what he wants, he is an adult. But because I love him and care about him and our family and what we put into our bodies I will continue to cook healthy, wholesome homemade meals from scratch. Here are a few things my husband and I agreed on to address the food discrepancy in our family.
- Next time we’re due for a trip to the Amish store to stock up it will probably just be our little nugget and I going to do the shopping. My husband doesn’t like to go shopping anyway so we agreed that if he doesn’t go to the store, we won’t have the issues of him bringing home the junk.
- We're going to make sure we go shopping when we're NOT hungry which helps us to make less impulse purchases and stick to our list and budget.
- My husband agreed to start thinking more about what he puts into his body and try to make healthier choices.
My husband has been incredibly supportive of our eating choices. We switched to a primal, whole foods, organic {when possible} diet about two months ago - all in the hopes that my autoimmune issues will improve.
ReplyDeleteI am thankful for his support, but I feel it is partially due to the fact that I welcomed a kosher diet and Jewish lifestyle for over two years to support him and a change he was making in his life. He kind of owed me one ;)
He still eats things I don't {and don't want our daughter to eat}, but not in front of her. When he does it is when he is on lunch at work. But he fully acknowledges that he feels better when he eats fresh, whole foods.
Normally he does well with lunch choices. Because of his work he has to treat his food as fuel. If he eats poor quality food he suffers and so does his work. One night he came home and confessed {like it was some big thing lol} that he ate deli Chinese and some parfait dessert thing for lunch. And he felt sick. The soy, glutens, and HFCS immediately didn't sit well with his system. He said "never again."
I think what is working for us is a united front in front of our daughter. I also share articles with him - he is a skeptic and needs to see the research before fully buying into anything. Which I appreciate, but at the same time many food related health concerns don't have information on long term effects yet.
It's hard to hear him talk about foods that we used to eat with such nostalgia LOL But I try to not let it get to me. Since I do the cooking in our home the majority of the time? I feel okay about it and hope that I am making up for when he eats something not so great. ;)
Thank you for sharing your experience Erin! I hadn't thought about the idea that the good, healthy foods I make for my husband could help make up for something he chooses to eat that's not too healthy for him. My husband likes to jokingly talk about foods he used to love and knows I won't buy, especially Doritos! I do sometimes buy him the "natural" version of cheesy chips as a slightly healthier alternative since he loves them so much :)
DeleteMy husband calls me his "super crazy health nut wife." He doesn't care too much about what he eats, but he supports me for the most part, and has come a long way since we first got married.
ReplyDeleteMy husband refers to me the same way Alix! He has been supportive and compliments the foods I make which made me think he was more on board with it. I guess I assumed that after six years of eating the healthy foods I make and listening to me talk about how important good food choices are that he would have made healthier food choices on his own. I'm still holding out hope he will start to do that more after this last shopping trip!
Deleteright there with ya annie. Barry is Taco John's most loyal fan. I just figure as long as I make healthy dinner he at least gets one healthy meal a day and that is better than nothing!
ReplyDeleteI never would've guessed that Dawn! Walter was more a McDonalds fan and loves to joke about taking Ada to McDonald's to get her first Happy Meal because he knows it gets me fired up and then I start on my ranting about how terrible fast food is :)
DeleteYes, I'm right here with you ladies! And the hardest part for me is the influence it will have on my little one. Husband will eat whatever I make, but still eats fast food when he's working. He doesn't bring home junk other than the ever present orange gatorade but I figure if he really wanted to change then he will, no amount of nagging or hints will speed up that process. But I do try to make sweets from scratch every now and then so it doesn't feel like we don't eat treats. And if I'm cooking the most nutritious food possible then at east he's getting it most of the time.
ReplyDeleteI'm living with my parents who both have health problems and make very poor food choices most of the time. Through much self-inflicted torture where I was trying endlessly to educate them and change their minds.. I learned that it's totally impossible to change anyone! A person must make changes for themself. You are doing everything you can do, Annie. Offer good, healthy, nourishing made from scratch meals. Do the grocery shopping and grow food so you have control of the food that goes into the house. Keep it up and don't push your beliefs on people, just spread seeds of love! :) Share your gifts. You're doing great!
ReplyDeleteI am fortunate that my husband agrees with me on food choices.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't much you can do except cook healthy meals at home. It is always up to the other party to make changes on their own. He should thank his lucky stars he married you because he could have married someone else, and his health probably would be poor.
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