I Hate The Term "Food Police" And I Wear It With Pride

I hear the term "Food Police" a lot: mostly as a condescending slur on parents.

It came up on the comments for my last post, as it often does when I give speeches or people review my book. People are incredulous that I would suggest that parents can feed their own children. This distaste appears any time the topic of parents and food intersect. We are a culture that delights in chiding parents and moralizing about food and we are never happier than when we combine these passions.

My husband bought me a real metal sheriff's badge on eBay a few years back after one of my apoplectic rants about how often I hear "Well, you don't want to be the Food Police..." I wear it under my jacket or in my pocket so I can pull it out and make the slur into a badge of honor instead. I'm tired of this phrase and since I can't stomp it out I might as well own it.

Here's the truth: food isn't magic and it isn't optional. Neither are parents.

Parents have been feeding their kids since we had hands to do so. Although inherently mysterious, our relationship with food is not done with incantations and formulas; we have done it reliably and lovingly and communally down through the ages. Parents only became incompetent and penitent and apologetic more recently, but that we can unlearn.

Not coincidentally, it is only recently that food itself was deemed not necessary to eating. Eschewing food is now more important than chewing. Our eating culture is structured around avoiding elements of food. The grocery store is a guided map to "low" "no" "free" consumption that we then drive somewhere to "work" off in measured increments of self-loathing. We eat inside a moral sculpture in the shape of our bodies.

This is the hectoring unpleasantness we call healthy. This is the lifestyle we laud and the new Kool-Aid we give the kids. Do too much of it and you'll be the "Food Police" and do too little and you are part of the Childhood Obesity Crisis. The margin of normal? Vanishingly thin.

I'm an eating disorder treatment activist. So you may think my perspective is simply reactive. You are half right: I have a chip on my shoulder right over my Food Law Enforcement epaulets. The acquaintance of countless families watching loved ones slip into obsessive avoidance of food does alter my view, but not in the way you might think. Spending time in the eating disorder world has taught me just as much about the rest of us as it has anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorder.

Disempowered parents are not great caregivers. Parents trained to be afraid of food, afraid of our own bodies, afraid of "passing on" our habits and hips and favorite foods, afraid of "too much" and excess and miscalculating the emaciated margin of Good Food and Ideal Body Weight -- these are parents rendered incompetent to nourish children. Faced with a child with a predisposition for an eating disorder and a mother and father become powerless and dependent on the ready militia of chiding, condescending moral experts on food. Even normal families in today's environment grow to fear and loathe the dinner table fraught with don'ts and can'ts and shouldn'ts. We give up and feed according to the label, without a schedule, eating to live but not together or in pleasure.

I am called the Food Police because I believe parents can and should be in charge of their own family's table -- even and especially when an eating disorder is present. I believe in family meals and call on parents to be responsible for planning and serving and being there even in a culture that thinks we should put soccer practice and 110-calorie snack packs above planning a meal around a table. I call on parents to put delicious food on the table and enjoy it with their children.

The policing, it seems to me, is better applied to those who would disempower a parent struggling to do the work of raising a family. An injunction against the term Food Police might be a start.

Comments

[Jenni Schaefer - Huffpost Blogger]

Your passion is contagious, Laura! Keep speaking your truth.

[foodshethought]

When I was a kid, I ate a home cooked breakfast, a hand packed sack lunch, and sat down to a family dinner, every.sing­le.day. Hence no one in my family is overweight or has an unhealthy relationship with food. While we all certainly indulge (and me sometimes more than I should, but I can only monitor my own eating 24-7) we all understand the balance between moderation and indulgence. If I were to have kdis of my own, I sure as heck would have many conversations with them about when they are putting in their mouth in the same way I would have conversations with them about the birds-and-bees before they came home pregnant.

[Dtermined]

The job of the police is to 'serve and protect' and this is what a parent's job is to do! You had better believe I will protect my child from harm and whether she is in harm's way due to a predator, or self inflicting harm on herself from a temporary mental illness, I MUST protect her. A person whose mental illness causes them to believe that they don't deserve to eat needs intervention by a loved one to step in and speak for them and INSIST that they eat. If my child refused her asthma medication, should I sit idly by and watch her die from lack of breath, or should I insist that she take her medicine? Of course we all agree she should take her medicine. When dealing with an Eating Disorder, FOOD is the MEDICINE! Therefore, why would anyone argue the point of a parent insisting that their child NOT starve themself? Food Police? Loving Parent? Same thing.

[sparky66]

Yes, our society has become food phobic. We all need to be reminded that food is pleasureable and as parents we can focus on teaching our children to enjoy all foods in moderation. Let's slow down and use an important sensory organ, our tongues.

As a mom to 12 yr old girl with anorexia I should not be considered a "food police" no more than a mom to a 12 yr old girl with diabetes should be called a "food police" or "insulin police". With both of these diseases food is a vital part of health and recovery and prevention of relapse or a trip to the hospital.

Just as a mom sees to it that her diabetic child receives the needed foods, including the amounts, daily, parents of children with eating disorders do the same. A physician does not advise the diabetic child's mom to let the child decide the menu, and let them decide if they want insulin, so why would they advise a parent of a child who is starving to death, to let the child decided what and how much they eat?

[HaveYouEaten]

I have read Sari's piece also and thought It excellent.
Laura writes: "Parents only became incompetent and penitent and apologetic more recently, but that we can unlearn."
Who decided that parents should be demeaned and dis-empowered this way?

[9876543210]

Sari Shepphird, PhD already wrote persuasively on this topic a couple months ago.
http://www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/treatment_notes/2009/04/the-food-police-toward-a-new-vocabulary-in-eating-disorders-recovery.html#more

[FEASTmom]

"I am called the Food Police because I believe parents can and should be in charge of their own family's table -- even and especially when an eating disorder is present."

That's a big 10-4, shout it out sister!

[HaveYouEaten]

If I am called "Food Police", "Too enmeshed", "Too involved with my child's care" , let me say thank you for acknowledging that I love and care deeply for my child and I will not let an eating disorder take her life.
I spent many tens of thousands on care for my daughter only to find out that my instincts, all the queries I had raised about her having an eating disorder where spot on and dismissed by professionals ( She was supposedly depressed, not anorexic.) for almost a year . She was anorexic the whole time and I kept being fed lies about it was her struggle to grow up, that I was the problem, it was all about control...­.Of course this was perfect for prolonging the disorder so my daughter quickly bought into the lies, adopted them as her mantra. Her disorder did not want her to eat and this was achieved by getting the primary caregiver, me, to back off.
To fed and care for a loved one when they are ill, to give them the food they need and expect them to eat it because you know this is what they need and they can't recognize that takes great courage, patients, love and daily dedication. Parenting at it's toughest.
The descent into an Eating Disorder is often rapid, the journey back is painful and slow.
To any of you on the journey with me, I salute you.
.

[ElTommo]

lol wut?

[KristineM]

I hear you loud and clear, Laura, and I agree with you 100%. I am an emeritus member of the food police and proud of it. My daughter manifested anorexia years ago, and no one gave the label "Food Police" to the staff at the hospital where she stayed 3 nights or at the partial eating disorders program that she attended. They did, however, give her food that they required her to eat, so I think they qualify, too. Their policing actions, plus my requirements for her to eat at home later kept my daughter alive.

The problem is that eating disorder sufferers usually need a significant amount of time to heal in all ways after reaching their optimal weight. It takes awhile to learn how to feed yourself and be able to guard against triggers for relapse. Most eating disorder residential programs don't go on nearly long enough, and even if they did, most families cannot afford them. So the rest of that work must be done at home in the vast majority of cases. And for those who go to outpatient therapy, all the work must be at home. May the parent food police continue to do their very important work.