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A "food shock" variation... My late grandmother, whom lived to the respectable age of 99 years, experienced the Dutch hunger winter. A period of famine during

by fleddr 4y ago

A "food shock" variation... My late grandmother, whom lived to the respectable age of 99 years, experienced the Dutch hunger winter. A period of famine during WW2. For the rest of her lengthy life she could not tolerate any type of food waste. As an example, she'd buy a cabbage and then eat cabbage the entire week, even as it increasingly goes bad. She had zero interest in food quality or nutritional value, just food in itself. Behavior learned during the famine where you don't have the luxury to discriminate. As an example, she once babysat me and my brother and made an abundance of snacks. Just way too much. Quite soon we were full, but the single word "finish..." and her stare told us all we needed to know. We finished, with stomach cramps. Out of respect. Also, she had 9 children and survived 7 (genetic blood disease). She survived two husbands. In her extended family and friends, she survived...everybody. We have a single photo of her childhood, where she stands in front of her house. Which was...made from clay and reed. An astonishing reminder of how even in today's developed nations, wealth for common people is brand new. Despite plenty of opportunities in her lifetime, she rejected material wealth outside some basics. Zero material desires. Despite all this, not once in her life have I seen her sad or complain or moan. If us grandchildren did something bad or stupid, she didn't give a shit. You're still alive, in health...so what's the problem? Carry on. She didn't eat very healthy, smoke a pack a day and didn't exercise. And still she made a daily trip on her bicycle to get her own groceries. Or make two trips in a row if needed. Up to the age of 98. The collapse was short and sudden. After a hospital stay she was returned home to die. As she got carried out of the ambulance she saw my dad's work: her front-garden completely replanted with hundreds of blooming flowers, a sight to behold. "That looks nice" She was never very generous with compliments. And those were her last words. I'd call her Iron Lady, but it's an insult really. Iron is too soft to describe her. She lives on as my compass for life. When I worry, see darkness in the world, contemplate about world events and threats, I think of her. I'm alive, and I'm eating. I'm fine. Her scars are my lesson, and it's liberating. She lived in an occupied country, ate grass and flowers, whilst nearly freezing to death. She encountered enough personal loss to fit several lifetimes. And still lived a full life and remained positive throughout. So if at one point I have to cancel my Netflix, yeah...I think I'm going to be fine.

hinkley 4y ago
My great grandmother was 9 at the end of the Great Depression. Not that she talked about it, but I did an assignment for an anthropology class that was basically, "bother some old people about one of these Bad Times." She actually was a good cook, a lot of her dishes rode the line between simple and fancy. She had either the oldest fancy stove or the fanciest old stove I'd ever seen, and she treated every glass jar she met as a reusable container (to this day the majority of glass jars on store shelves are the same dimensions and threading as a Ball Mason Jar lid), had odd collections of belongings and many of her wide, wide variety of plants seemed to have come from an extensive network of barter and gift economy. We spent one trip to her house clearing her entire pantry of expired food, because my mom found one can, asked some questions and did not like any of her answers. Some of it was bad. Rob you and leave your body in a ditch bad.
- fleddr 4y ago
  I so recognize that behavior, and in our family it has carried on into the boomer generation, my parents and in-laws. Half the food in their house is expired. They have this lifelong habit of needlessly stocking lots of food as well as opening a food package and then not finishing it for way too long. Our parents never experienced a famine yet did experience a different culture of food logistics. Very large families (my mother has 8 siblings) so you need lots of food. Food being more seasonally available only, so stock up. Older houses having deep cold cellars to store food, whilst modern houses don't tend to have that, but they don't unlearn the behavior. Yes, I too have found lots of food expired by years. The most shocking thing is that quite a lot of it looks exactly like it was bought including a salad with an egg on top of it. When you slice a freshly boiled egg and put it at room temperature, it turns dark in an hour. This egg is 8 years old and looks brand new.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Yeah the whole thing with Boomers was not just that everyone in the neighborhood had kids, it was that a lot of them had 3. 4. 6. The dynamic with 4+ siblings is to heap your plate with food because all the serving dishes were empty long before you realized that you were hungrier than what was left on your plate. That it was another generation before obesity became a huge issue probably says more about how many manual chores the boomers still had to do. You can suck up an extra 500 calories a day pretty easy, pushing things around and hauling them in and out of storage. An extra thousand or two if you're on a farm.

by fleddr 4y ago

hinkley 4y ago

My great grandmother was 9 at the end of the Great Depression. Not that she talked about it, but I did an assignment for an anthropology class that was basically, "bother some old people about one of these Bad Times." She actually was a good cook, a lot of her dishes rode the line between simple and fancy. She had either the oldest fancy stove or the fanciest old stove I'd ever seen, and she treated every glass jar she met as a reusable container (to this day the majority of glass jars on store shelves are the same dimensions and threading as a Ball Mason Jar lid), had odd collections of belongings and many of her wide, wide variety of plants seemed to have come from an extensive network of barter and gift economy. We spent one trip to her house clearing her entire pantry of expired food, because my mom found one can, asked some questions and did not like any of her answers. Some of it was bad. Rob you and leave your body in a ditch bad.

fleddr 4y ago
I so recognize that behavior, and in our family it has carried on into the boomer generation, my parents and in-laws. Half the food in their house is expired. They have this lifelong habit of needlessly stocking lots of food as well as opening a food package and then not finishing it for way too long. Our parents never experienced a famine yet did experience a different culture of food logistics. Very large families (my mother has 8 siblings) so you need lots of food. Food being more seasonally available only, so stock up. Older houses having deep cold cellars to store food, whilst modern houses don't tend to have that, but they don't unlearn the behavior. Yes, I too have found lots of food expired by years. The most shocking thing is that quite a lot of it looks exactly like it was bought including a salad with an egg on top of it. When you slice a freshly boiled egg and put it at room temperature, it turns dark in an hour. This egg is 8 years old and looks brand new.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Yeah the whole thing with Boomers was not just that everyone in the neighborhood had kids, it was that a lot of them had 3. 4. 6. The dynamic with 4+ siblings is to heap your plate with food because all the serving dishes were empty long before you realized that you were hungrier than what was left on your plate. That it was another generation before obesity became a huge issue probably says more about how many manual chores the boomers still had to do. You can suck up an extra 500 calories a day pretty easy, pushing things around and hauling them in and out of storage. An extra thousand or two if you're on a farm.