Differences in food preferences among spouses/family

[Princess_Abby]

You know, it’s very common for people who persist in low-fat diets to get to a point where they really can’t tolerate much fat. Yet you need fat in your diet to absorb all those fat-soluble vitamins. Did you say you are pregnant now or that you were before? It’s especially important to have good fats in your diet if you are pregnant. A vegan diet is unnatural for humans and extremely unhealthy. I was a vegetarian for a good while–never totally vegan, but I believed that I should be—just couldn’t give up cheese. I lost a lot of weight and thought I was healthier, but I wasn’t really. And the truth came out in my daughter. I gave up meat right around the time she was teething, and as a result nearly all of her top teeth are decayed and there were about four that had half the enamel missing. She has had so much dental work done already and she is only three. Now that she is drinking lots of whole milk and taking cod liver oil, the color is back in her cheeks. She used to be really pale. I hope you aren’t consuming a lot of soy. Soy is extremely bad for you. You really should consider slowly adding more animal fats back into your diet. You need them more than you know. If you can’t tolerate a lot of meat, use butter as liberally as you can stand it. Get some coconut oil into your diet. Make your own stock and make soups from it. Here is a great reference:

www.westonaprice.org

I’m not vegan. I mentioned that I eat organic beef. I take omega 3s and flaxseed oil. I eat eggs, beans and organic dairy. I don’t have a high fat OR low fat diet. I don’t eat soy, either, since you mentioned it. I switched from Smart Balance back to regular (organic) butter. I have a very healthy HDL. (Also, just as something to consider, I remember you posting about your daughter being a big-time night nurser? So that might have something to do with her dental issues. Several acquaintances of mine have had similar issues with their long-term night nurslings, requiring a lot of surgeries for dental work.)

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I am still thinking about what the best thing to do is. DH and I spoke about how our kitchen, in some ways, contributes to the problem. There is very little cooking or storing space. We’re stuck here for one more year and then meal-making will be ridiculously easier. We talked about how much better it would be if I could make larger quantities and have the storage space for freezing them. Then I’d always have a homemade, healthy alternative available depending on the meal I make that evening.

We do have a George Foreman grill. I’ve never…actually used it. I got turned off by the fact that the grill part can’t be removed to go in the dishwasher and isn’t supposed to have any soap put upon it. But, maybe I should just trust that the heat from the grill will ultimately be killing off any lingering germs from raw meat. How do you all keep your GF grills clean? I haven’t looked at ours in a couple years so I can’t remember what the instructions are anyway.

Also, yes, I’ve tried ground poultry. Same results. A long-time friend pointed out to me that I’ve never been a major meat fan anyway. My dad was the type who insisted on steak twice a week. Most dinners were meat, potato, vegetables. Summers were spent eating a non-stop parade of grilled hamburgers, chicken and hot dogs. (Ew.) Items like eggplant or tofu or even lentils and beans were just simply NEVER served in our household. So, I’ve had to teach myself a little bit about alternatives to meat and I’m still taking baby steps. I’m just not going to force myself to eat something anymore that I never really ‘loved’ to begin with and now my body simply doesn’t tolerate.

Maybe I’ll start a new thread for protein-rich, healthy meatless dinners.

I do wish I could change my taste preferences. It would be a lot easier to simply eat a chicken breast and call it a great dinner.

(Btw, apricot yogurt–I laughed out loud at your pregnancy-fueled ‘burger’ fantasy. )

 

[aboverubies]

I was a vegetarian for a good while–never totally vegan, but I believed that I should be—just couldn’t give up cheese. I lost a lot of weight and thought I was healthier, but I wasn’t really. And the truth came out in my daughter. I gave up meat right around the time she was teething, and as a result nearly all of her top teeth are decayed and there were about four that had half the enamel missing. She has had so much dental work done already and she is only three.

AnnaTherese, I re-call in another thread (posted below) that you don’t believe brushing teeth prevents cavities and dental decay. Do you think that not insisting on brushing your daughter’s teeth for three years has perhaps had some part to play in her severe dental decay? I have never heard of a child experiencing such severe tooth decay simply because their mother was a vegetarian; how do you link the two?

AnnaTherese:

Contrary to popular belief, brushing teeth does not prevent cavities. Neither does mouthwash or dental floss. The only way to prevent cavities is your diet. There are primitive cultures around the world that do not brush their teeth or see a dentist ever and never get cavities because their diets are so superior to ours. At the same time most Americans do see a dentist and brush constantly, and they get plenty of cavities because their diets are filled with too much sugar and highly processed foods that are not found in nature. Knowing this has freed me to let my child take charge of tooth brushing. It’s not a battle we fight. I model and teach just because it’s nice to have clean teeth, but I don’t count on brushing to prevent her teeth from rotting. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I learned that because I found that was the one thing that I had to really take control of at first, and now I’m even freed from that.

westonaprice.org/healthissues/toothbrush.html

 

[Feanaro_s_Wife]

I can’t stand poultry or pork anymore. If I eat it, I get sick. I can eat really lean organic beef, but that’s about it in terms of meat products.

**I apologize because I haven’t read through the entire thread. But I see that you can eat a bit of organic beef and was wondering if you have tried organic, free range, vegetarian fed poultry or pork?

Hubby and I used to eat a lot of chicken breast too. We’d get the warehouse pack from Costco and eat it many different ways. But there came a time where I just couldn’t stand the taste of it anymore. Then I started buying “natural” chicken from a local butcher and WOW what a difference! I actually look forward to eating chicken now.

Once in awhile I’ll have to eat the regular store stuff and it turns my stomach. The flavor is just “off”. Same with pork. I couldn’t even stand the smell of it cooking until I tried the natural pork.

As for spouse’s different preferences, hubby hated fish. Hated the smell and taste. Now he eats it. I just had to experiment with different types and recipes and now there are some fish dishes that he actually requests! But I still have to insist on salmon once in awhile because I like it and it’s healthy but he still would never eat it again if it was up to him, lol.

Malia
**

 

[AnnaTherese]

(Also, just as something to consider, I remember you posting about your daughter being a big-time night nurser? So that might have something to do with her dental issues.

)

Quote: AnnaTherese, I re-call in another thread (posted below) that you don’t believe brushing teeth prevents cavities and dental decay. Do you think that not insisting on brushing your daughter’s teeth for three years has perhaps had some part to play in her severe dental decay? I have never heard of a child experiencing such severe tooth decay simply because their mother was a vegetarian; how do you link the two?

Because, my dear, I didn’t discover this way of eating until about a year and a half ago, after her teeth had already decayed. At the time I was a vegetarian, I was also an avid tooth-brusher. But it didn’t work. Her teeth rotted despite my efforts to brush them clean. (Incidentally, so did George Washington’s. There’s an interesting children’s storybook about this, and we have seen the display of his dental story and false teeth at Mount Vernon.) Since then I have learned about this. Weston A Price’s book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” is extremely enlightening. You can see the photographs he took of all the primitive peoples he visited, their excellent dental structure and amazing accounts of the absence of tooth decay amongst these people, who never brushed their teeth, indeed probably had never even heard of toothbrushing, and then you also read about the modernized cultures who lived on processed foods, especially a lot of sugar, and how so many of them suffered from tooth decay, and it all suddenly becomes very clear… Decay happens from the inside out, not the outside in, which makes all the difference in the world in terms of how to solve the problem. My daughter was nursing and living on mostly breastmilk and a very little food when her teeth came in. I probably very simply had too much sugar in my diet. Too much soda, which I was addicted to, too much chocolate, and so on.

And just to be clear, I do still brush my daughter’s teeth. If she doesn’t clean them well enough, I set the timer until she does it right or I help her if necessary, but I don’t force it if she puts up a lot of resistance. It’s nice to have clean teeth, and if they are already decayed, toothbrushing can’t hurt. But I don’t depend on it to save her teeth, because frankly it doesn’t. I don’t fret over it. Like everything else in parenting, I do the best I can and then I let it go. I hear about so many parents who have taken their dentist’s advice so seriously to the point of their children going into tantrums every night because their parents insist on brushing their teeth for them. I have done that and everytime it’s like my conscience pipes up and screams at me, “This isn’t right!! Stop it!”

I don’t know why my daughter was such an avid night-nurser (and daytime nurser) other than the fact that I was not able to store enough milk at a single time, so she took less of it more frequently, or perhaps I didn’t have enough fat in my diet and therefore wasn’t able to provide it in my milk. Whatever it was, next time around I’ll do it differently and we’ll see. But no, I am not convinced that night nursing causes tooth decay, since these primitive cultures would have also nursed at night and simply had no tooth decay. It simply doesn’t make sense. Why would God design babies to want to nurse at night (which I believe He has) and make them in such a way that this is necessary, and then give them tooth decay because of it? That makes no sense to me. It does make sense though that humans (ncluding me), through their propensity to sin, have become lazy in food preparation and have depended too heavily on the work of others, and now we suffer the consequences of consuming the bread of idleness.

That has little to do with the original question. But I think my original intent was that if you are able to slowly add more fat into your diet, the problem with you and your husband will go away. My MIL isn’t anything close to a vegan either, but she can’t tolerate much fat at all. She tried coconut oil at my prompting and decided she couldn’t tolerate more than 1/2 tsp. because it gave her stomach problems. All of her dairy products are “low fat”. In fact, she is very afraid of fat in general and has told me that if you eat too much fat, you’ll have dry skin…actually, it’s the opposite. My friend who has been studying all this for quite some time has confirmed this for me; if you cut down on fat, as the OP obviously has, you lose your tolerance for it. You can gain that tolerance back, but you have to take it slow. Do it incrementally. That’s all. I hope you have the time to check out that link. It truly did change my life. I’ll post it again.

www.westonaprice.org

 

[Princess_Abby]

**I apologize because I haven’t read through the entire thread. But I see that you can eat a bit of organic beef and was wondering if you have tried organic, free range, vegetarian fed poultry or pork?

Hubby and I used to eat a lot of chicken breast too. We’d get the warehouse pack from Costco and eat it many different ways. But there came a time where I just couldn’t stand the taste of it anymore. Then I started buying “natural” chicken from a local butcher and WOW what a difference! I actually look forward to eating chicken now.

Once in awhile I’ll have to eat the regular store stuff and it turns my stomach. The flavor is just “off”. Same with pork. I couldn’t even stand the smell of it cooking until I tried the natural pork.

As for spouse’s different preferences, hubby hated fish. Hated the smell and taste. Now he eats it. I just had to experiment with different types and recipes and now there are some fish dishes that he actually requests! But I still have to insist on salmon once in awhile because I like it and it’s healthy but he still would never eat it again if it was up to him, lol.

Malia
**

We only buy organic meat, eggs and dairy. I definitely agree there’s a huge difference.

 

[Brenda_V]

Princess_Abbey - I don’t like the George Foreman grills either because the grill plates don’t come out for easy cleaning but I do have a Hamilton Beach one that does and I really like it. You two might consider putting in the budget $50.00 to get one (or $100.00 to get the George Foreman “next grilleration” one that comes apart) so you can fix vegetarian dishes and just add a piece of grilled meat to it in order to satisfy your husband. At least this can help until you move and have a better kitchen storage situation.

Now that summer is just around the corner consider making dinner salads, dh gets grilled meat with his, you get canned beans with yours - of course adding the cheese makes for a complete protein and you have one basic meal for all.

Brenda V.

 

[puzzleannie]

I’m

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I am still thinking about what the best thing to do is. DH and I spoke about how our kitchen, in some ways, contributes to the problem. There is very little cooking or storing space.
. . .
We do have a George Foreman grill. I’ve never…actually used it. I got turned off by the fact that the grill part can’t be removed to go in the dishwasher and isn’t supposed to have any soap put upon it. . )

DD has a newer version with a grill that does come off but it still requires a lot of cleaning, but no more so than using the broiler in your oven, which is a cleaning nightmare. I wait for it to cool, use damp paper towels over the grill and close it while I do the rest of the dishes. by then the gunk is ready to wipe off. Just keep wiping with a sponge and hot water, I use a sponge made for teflon with scrubby stuff on one side. I finish with windex and a paper towel to get all the grease. the next time I use it I wipe the grill surface with a damp paper towel anyway because it has been in storage. DD uses hers several times a week and loves it.

what you say about kitchen organization is great. we had to get organized when we were in the camper, then the mobile home, very tiny. Microwave is first choice, with proper dishes, we have a set ordered off internet with steamers in 3 sizes, perfect for thawing, steaming veggies, even a 3 course meal for one person. Next is my mini-george foreman. DH is vegetarian and we have had a vita-mix blender in daily use for over 10 yrs. grinds flour for whole grain breads, purees fruit for smoothies and veggies for soup, does sauces, dips, drinks better than any other blender. wet chops cabbage and carrots for slaw, wet chops potatoes for hash browns. For small chopping jobs I use a small black and decker chopper–not a mega food processer which we own but never use, too hi tech, too many attachments, to much to clean.

We have fruit smoothies every morning, veggie soups almost every day, in fact with gastroparesis is almost only way I can eat veggies now. I do my meat in the Foreman for a week, freeze individual servings, steam in microwave steamer to thaw, and can have supper ready in less than 10 minutes.

Get rid of anything in the kitchen you don’t use, or learn how to use it efficiently.

If I bought one more appliance it would be an electric fry pan if I had a family. I had an electric wok we used for everything, but I gave it away because it did not fit in the camper, but wish I still had it. I hardly every cook anything actually on the stove in pans any more. an exception would be making stock or boiling pasta.

for entertaining, including weddings, we planned starch dishes like potatoes, rice, pastas, (some with some without dairy) veggie dishes, and meat dishes, no combos, so people could take what they like and keep to their preferences. Family holiday meals are done this way. altho for the 2 of us we each cook separately and shop separately, and usually eat separately due to my crazy schedule.

when I live alone while DH is working on contract I shop and cook the way the French do, every day on the way home buy just for that evening and the next days breakfast and lunch, fresh from the fruit stand and corner meat market.

if only 1-2 people will be eating meat, buy a griddle or grill with ribs that fits on the stovetop and do 2 pieces of meat. there is one I saw at Target. cut down on pans, just keep what you use. for me it is a small wok style fry pan 12", 8" omelet pan, 3 quart sauce pan, and a 5 quart stock pot, used once a month to make stock and chicken soup. we don’t cook pasta in large amounts anymore. I spent money on good microwave utensils because I use them more, they are good for small families. microwave is easier to clean than stove or oven.

 

[Convert_in_99]

My sister has three children:

One won’t eat meat or veggies.
One won’t eat fruit or sugar.
One will ONLY eat meat, fruit, carbs and sugar…but NO veggies!

She serves mismatched meals…Cafeteria style!

 

[puzzleannie]

DH just came back from a week with DD and her 4 kids. One eats only chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese and applesauce, and broccoli but it has to be cut in “trees”. One eats only quesadillas. One eats pasta, no sauce, butter only, and meat, but it has to be on a separate plate, cut up small. All will eat salad and fruit, but differ on how they want it cut up. Her son eats anything, whatever you put in front of him he chows down. SIL is on a low cholesterol diet, and DD is trying to do weight watchers. Poor DH said he could not get a square meal there. She also spends a fortune at Sams and the grocery store each week, go figure.

 

[mdgspencer]

I met my wife in the Philippines three years ago, and naturally she likes food that can be very different from American food. For example, she loves rice and doesn’t eat bread or potatoes. And even when the food is similar she can cook it very differently, overcooking chicken in my view, for example, so that it isn’t quite edible. However, I think that in marriage it is better to be willing to give 100% if you want to have a good marriage, and so I eat the food as prepares for myself and herself without worrying about it. When Christ washed his disciples’ feet during the last supper, he said we should do the same.

 

[Convert_in_99]

I met my wife in the Philippines three years ago, and naturally she likes food that can be very different from American food. For example, she loves rice and doesn’t eat bread or potatoes. And even when the food is similar she can cook it very differently, overcooking chicken in my view, for example, so that it isn’t quite edible. However, I think that in marriage it is better to be willing to give 100% if you want to have a good marriage, and so I eat the food as prepares for myself and herself without worrying about it. When Christ washed his disciples’ feet during the last supper, he said we should do the same.

This is SO beautiful. Sounds like she has a GREAT husband!

 

[Hellisreal]

My husband has about 3 or so “special” likes that I absolutely refuse to cook for him since “his mom did it this way” ect. (never the way I did, because I never made the stuff he liked as a kid so I did not know how to properly burn the meat just so, (fried steak in a pan with lard burned on both sides and cooked well well done) also his Scrambled egg dump with anything and everything that is going bad in the vegtable bin with diced tomatoes and again, cooked until the eggs are browned and hard. The pan requires 2 sos pads to clean it afterward. That (cleaning)I will do for him, but really cringe when he does that “dish”. Then there is the liversausage with slices of onion layered up in a sandwich, wich makes me sick so I cant do it.
But, he doesnt mind doing it himself. He is understanding about it.

He would tell you that I have a few gross likes too. The ones he does not like are - artichokes made in any way, shape or form.
Noodles in soup
any kind of potato salad with mayo

 

[drawnhome]

Princess Abby, I am not much of a meat eater and really don’t like chicken, so this is what I do. I love unusual pasta dishes, and many good recipes can be found that are easy and meatless (look for recipe books by Marcella Hazan). For my husband and my sons (all meat lovers) I can easily put some chicken on top of the pasta, it looks elegant and they love it. Either grilled, or oven baked with a parmesan crust (easy easy).

Also, it is simple to make a meatless sauce for the pasta, put some aside for yourself, then add the meat for the rest of the family if that is how they like it.

We are used to doing things like this, I have one daughter who can’t stand potatoes, and a son who shudders at rice. One son doesn’t eat fish, and my husband doesn’t like legumes. It’s a bit of fancy footwork at first but now we have a repertoire that everyone seems to like.

And when my daughter’s not here we eat LOTS of potatoes. When my son is out we enjoy LOTS of rice dishes. When it’s just me and my girls…lentil soup!!!

God Bless