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Can we talk about Fundies and food?


lawlifelgbt

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I just wanted to start an open thread on how much fundies screw up with feeding their kids. If I were a fundie kid, you bet your butt I'd be always sneaking food.

Who do you think, among fundies, is best or worse regarding food?

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I'd say that Erika Shupe used to be the worst, but she's improved over time. Now it's probably the Rodrigues if only for the lack of it and the fact that the parents eat so differently than their kids. The main problem with most families is they see food as yet another way to control their brood, instead of teaching them to make good choices from an early age they just have inflexible rules and the kidults never learn what hungry or full or saiety means to their own bodies because it's all controlled by their parents.

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I also agree on Erika. But yeah, the Rodriguii make me so angry, too, since the parents eat so much more and better food than the kids get, in such close proximity with them.

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i think the Nog's are suffering the most. I simply don't know what they eat given the disastrous situation.

Rods's are second of those that i read about: we have seen empty pantry shelves. Some FJs have said maybe their genetic make-up makes them so thin compared to their father. But i'm not sure if that is the only reason. The parents' habits are unhealthy but not worse than other fundies

(Shupes now have "healthy school dinners" - at least according to Erika, i hope that is at least somewhat true.)

 

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I think the competition created by having umpteen siblings is also an issue. Who can forget Jill Duggar Dillard's admission that she sometimes took food to the bathroom to eat? I imagine that it creates a tendency to wolf stuff down before it disappears, whether one is hungry or not. 

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14 minutes ago, ViolaSebastian said:

I think the competition created by having umpteen siblings is also an issue. Who can forget Jill Duggar Dillard's admission that she sometimes took food to the bathroom to eat? I imagine that it creates a tendency to wolf stuff down before it disappears, whether one is hungry or not. 

That to me is also why Smuggar used to post Instagram pictures of the huge portions of chain restaurant food after he got married, and before those scandals broke.

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Food insecurity alone can really mess with a person's eating habits. Food insecurity AND double digit siblings? It's a wonder every last one of them doesn't have food-related issues.

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Can't forget the Maxwells! They may not be starving and a steady diet of bean burritos probably isn't the worst thing in the world (although any vegan worth her salt could surely add some actual flavor to the tortilla-wrapped turds the M's eat). But between the two animal crackers thing and the semi-regular fasts and whatever else is mandated by Steve's control issues, well, just one more reason we call it Maxhell.

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Are fundies still into juice fasts?  John Schrader claims to go on them.  Cheryl Long did several and convinced her daughters to do them.  They talked about how being on the fast made them feel like they were part of a secret society.  I read a book called "Diet Cults" that claimed that most people don't go on diets to get healthier, or even to lose weight.  They do it because it gives them a set of rules to follow that makes them feel morally superior to other people.  I can definitely see why that aspect of it would be appealing to some fundies.

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Emily of the former Under 1000 blog.  Skirt cheese.  A single lettuce grown in a tin for the whole family.  DNA being denied soda and offered bizarre home-fermented concoctions instead.  Gloodles.  

Just awful, worst homemaker of all FJ history. Those poor boys are gonna be fucked.

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35 minutes ago, acheronbeach said:

Emily of the former Under 1000 blog.  Skirt cheese.  A single lettuce grown in a tin for the whole family.  DNA being denied soda and offered bizarre home-fermented concoctions instead.  Gloodles.  

Skirt cheese and gloodles = tough to beat

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The Duggar diet has seemed especially repellent to me, though some of it might be personal bias:  I hate pickles and would probably eat roadkill before JB's barbecue tuna sandwich.  There's also uncooked ramen, babies being fed cold food out of cans, processed soups, casseroles made with processed soups, processed cheese...and have we ever seen a Duggar drink a glass of 100% fruit juice?

OTOH, they're not foraging for food in or near a swamp.

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On top of the food policing, fundies still buy into the "worldly" belief that women especially should keep slim for their men. I remember Erika Shupe wrote about trying to manage how much her oldest daughter eats because she was "carrying some extra weight in her legs" [my paraphrasing]. I always thought that was horrifying, because he daughter was perfectly slim while she said that. You also see the "Trim Healthy Mama" diet being peddled around various fundie groups. I'm pretty sure I've also heard Jill Rodrigues mention something about keeping slim so she can be attractive to her husband.

The only fundie group/family I've heard worry about men's weight was the Maxwells. As others have said, Steve and his family have a really regular diet (same food all of the time, only in certain amounts) and exercise very regularly. Steve has also made a number of comments about how awful it is to be fat, and how its a sign of spiritual failure.

Its funny how they all claim to really reject worldly principles when they still tout the same patriarchal body-policing of women bullshit you see everywhere else. 

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7 hours ago, defraudingjezebel said:

Its funny how they all claim to really reject worldly principles when they still tout the same patriarchal body-policing of women bullshit you see everywhere else. 

It's another form of power and control. That's why they do it. That's also why I wouldn't be surprised if many fundie girls engaged in disordered eating or have full-blown eating disorders; food and diet are all about control.

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I think it has been discussed several times, but Zsu also seems to have a weird relation to food! She is all into butter (I won't judge cause I LOVE butter!) and sugar, but always claims to cook very healthy and organic. The fact that organic can be unhealty too doesn't occur to her. Then a lot of people at FJ have wondered wether the kids get enough food since money is tight around the Anderson's House of Horror and there a lot of hungry boys, even before Solomon was taller than his father.

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I think there are different topics inside this one.

Control is one of them. Using food as a way to control kids, both feeding them too much or starving them is not only a fundie thing, it's terribly common (well, starving them is not so common, but forcing feeding is still happening in a lot of families despite pediatrician advice). Also, eating disorders are not related to being fundie, it happens in all kind of families. I understand that overcontroling parenting can lead kids to a lot of disorders, but not only fundies are controlling. Also, eating disorders are complex, it's not only because control or lack/excess of food.

The second question is about food quaity. Again, it's not about being fundie or not. It's about budget but also probably about culture. I'm sure there are fundies cooking healthy food and I'm sure people as Bates or Duggars would have fed their kids crap even having little families or even being non-fundie. If Kelly or Michelle had known how to cook healthy, they had never fed kids with that nasty foods, because you can cook healthy and cheap and fast if you want to.

 

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8 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

Emily of the former Under 1000 blog.  Skirt cheese.  A single lettuce grown in a tin for the whole family.  DNA being denied soda and offered bizarre home-fermented concoctions instead.  Gloodles.  

Just awful, worst homemaker of all FJ history. Those poor boys are gonna be fucked.

It will be hard for any fundie to beat Emily when it comes to bad food and being super controlling over food. Not even Steve with his limited animals crackers goes as far as she did!  She also would only use a crock pot and baked bread in a old can inside the crock pot. It did not look good. 

11 minutes ago, Melissa1977 said:

If Kelly or Michelle had known how to cook healthy, they had never fed kids with that nasty foods, because you can cook healthy and cheap and fast if you want to.

The thing that amazes me with Kelly and Michelle is that IBLP offered healthy cooking classes and cook books for large families. Gothard was super into pushing healthy foods. A whole Wisdom Book was about the health benefits of making your own whole wheat bread and being healthy.

They were unhealthy because they were both forcing children to cook meals for the entire family(I think with the Bates it was poor Alyssa) and it would have taken more effort from the parents to change. Their diet is just another sign of how lazy they are. It was easier for children to open cans and heat things up. 

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40 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

 

The thing that amazes me with Kelly and Michelle is that IBLP offered healthy cooking classes and cook books for large families. Gothard was super into pushing healthy foods. A whole Wisdom Book was about the health benefits of making your own whole wheat bread and being healthy.

They were unhealthy because they were both forcing children to cook meals for the entire family(I think with the Bates it was poor Alyssa) and it would have taken more effort from the parents to change. Their diet is just another sign of how lazy they are. It was easier for children to open cans and heat things up. 

Yes but even for kids who had to cook, there are healthy&easy options. My grandma as a kid was really poor and she cooked very nutritious meals. She put potatoes, veggies and some meat in a pot and made an absolutely easy stew (which is much easier nowadays with a crockpot). Or a soup with just some veggies and lentils. Even omelettes or scrambles eggs are easy to prepare. Or raw food: real bread with real cheese and not that ugly poor man pizza or fresh fruit and yoghourt.

I understand that having eleventy kids and homeschool them leaves no time. I understand their overwhelming journeys. But feeding their kids crap is not tolerable, it's about health. They could teach their kids to properly cook, so no excuses.

This said, I have the impression that American people doesn't use to cook very much. Is it true? Or is it just a wrong idea? No offense please, I've never been there and it's just something I've been told.

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I used to be a Head Start preschool teacher and hoarding food was a big warning sign for us of something going on at home for a kiddo. I feel like this would be applicable to most funded because of a mix of rigid structure bordering on emotional abuse as well as financial hardship. It often leads to eating disorders later if it's not addressed when a child is young.

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18 hours ago, ViolaSebastian said:

I think the competition created by having umpteen siblings is also an issue. Who can forget Jill Duggar Dillard's admission that she sometimes took food to the bathroom to eat? I imagine that it creates a tendency to wolf stuff down before it disappears, whether one is hungry or not. 

We only had 4 kids in our family, but money was tight, and only those who devoured their food first got seconds.  Even as teens, mom only cooked 1# of ground beef for all 6 of us.  I have two tweens, and we cook 1.5-2# of ground beef for burgers, and 2-3# for sloppy joes and beef tacos.....and there is JUST ENOUGH left for dh to pack a lunch with for the next day.  (On the tacos, I forgot....I normally cook 1.5# of ground beef, and add 1# of beans and 1# of corn to supplement and reduce some of the cost.)

In college, a friend took 45+ min to eat all her food.  She ate so slowly.  Another friend and I were done in 5-8 min.  But the first friend was an only child, with abundant food.....2nd friend and I were from larger families, and grew up poor.  We ate quickly, cause it was how we maybe got seconds as kids.  

We never went without meals as kids, but food was limited.  I cannot imagine having to scarf down food with 18 siblings....all trying to get as much as possible!

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11 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

Emily of the former Under 1000 blog.  

Yeah, no matter how odd some of the other food restrictions, dietary choices, etc. sound, this one wins. 

3 hours ago, formergothardite said:

The thing that amazes me with Kelly and Michelle is that IBLP offered healthy cooking classes and cook books for large families. Gothard was super into pushing healthy foods. 

Yeah I remember this being discussed before (Duggar food related thread I think). It's pretty crazy just how far off their diets were from those suggestions (kitchen soda fountain, anyone?). Bend the rules when it's personally convenient, stick with the ones you like, but still sell the rules as excellent and inflexible to others. They could easily have taught the kids to make healthier, cheaper meals from scratch, and probably a proper garden, too. With all the talk about self-sufficiency and traditional values, they still seem to take a very mainstream approach to their food. 

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One of the things that I never really understood about the eating habits of the Bates and Duggars was the massive amount of processed food they ate, given that they had tons of people with nothing but time on their hands. For the most part, they didn't work, spent relatively little time on schooling, had almost no outside activities, etc. Combine that with an emphasis on creating "Ph.Ds in homemaking," you'd think someone could be arsed to plant a garden or make sauce from scratch. 

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I always ask myself why the women are expected to be perfect homemakers but a lot have such poor cooking skills, even if there are "few" kids in the house.

However, for me the worst in terms of food is Emily. I fell down that rabbit hole, read about tube meat and skirt cheese, her grocery list, how she justified everything and was so disgusted....

After that comes JRod and the Duggar/Bates. Bleh!

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I agree with everything said above about it causing eating disorders.  Joshly and even JD gained weight once they were making some money of their own and old enough to have the freedom to buy whatever they wanted.  The Rod kids make me the saddest.  Jill is selling pink crap (that she also tests out on her kids) and David has clearly never missed a meal but then they have 12 waifish children.  Which is made all the more apparent by their ill fitting clothes.  If any of the boys managed to marry young and have a real job I wouldn't doubt if they gained 25 lbs and grew 2 inches in the first year.  

As for the Duggs/Bates, Kelly and Mich were just super grateful to have a teen daughter to foist off meals on to.  Alyssa was the cook from I think 11 or 12 for her entire family and the 3 oldest Duggar girls had to split up the meals.  The buddies had to feed their charges breakfast.  Mich could care less what they ate as long as it was cheap and quick and she didn't have to do it.  If I had 19 kids to homeschool and care for 24/7 I also would probably be feeding the kids processed crap and teaching the 10 yr old how to make tater tot casserole.  But this is why I didn't try that lifestyle out.  We've seen the older girls get married and attempt to cook/eat more healthily.  We'll see how much that carries on if they have a dozen more kids. 

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1 hour ago, zee_four said:

I used to be a Head Start preschool teacher and hoarding food was a big warning sign for us of something going on at home for a kiddo. I feel like this would be applicable to most funded because of a mix of rigid structure bordering on emotional abuse as well as financial hardship. It often leads to eating disorders later if it's not addressed when a child is young.

I've heard it's a sign of something bad- but is it clear what exactly? I hoarded food a lot, but as an older kid once my mom started cracking down on preteen chubbiness.

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