Eating well, living well

Family reunions can reveal more than changes in height and weight of our younger generation who we don’t see all year. It is also a good time to discover the eating habits of the youth, their parents and grandparents and what shapes these food choices.

Family reunions make you get to know your next generations better. This is when the children who have grown up show you their natural selves as you spend a whole week together. This also gives you a glimpse of how their parents (my niece and nephews) have nurtured their minds and their bodies.

Everyday at buffet breakfast (yes, despite Covid there was a buffet) where one is afforded the many choices of bread, rice, waffles, meats, fruit, ice cream, you can see what the youth are choosing and how they will be living life with these food choices. You just observe but note that this is how a family eats all year. Not just at buffets, but with choices this is what they choose. One heaps  crispy bacon on a plate, while one feasts on all the carbs like pancakes, bread and waffles. You think about predisposing factors for lifestyle diseases but choose to stay quiet as you observe how the third generation eats.

Then you listen closely and there are the topics for discussion – many for mental health or mental wellness. How do they get by? What are the values inculcated by their parents? Do they value money, fame or Tiktok? You also discover speakers and debaters among the group and ask them to demonstrate a recent speech they made at some august assembly of youth leaders.

Living well does not mean just consuming good, clean food especially when you have the luxury of youth. It also means being able to express yourself to family and relatives you do not regularly have meals with. A combination of social skills and everyday meals, and knowing how to eat with people double or triple your age (from the youth perspective).

While the elders discuss days gone by or how family used to eat this or that, the youth ask questions about their grandparents, their heritage, their culture. It’s like a looking back at your roots and remembering lessons imparted by the elders. More than just a family reunion for photoshoots, reunions are best used to impart family values. The young are smarter than we think. They subconsciously absorb what they hear and see during these rare occasions. So we must also be conscious to impart our family values as they are all ears. What is important to the family? What values did our seniors or parents teach us?

And this is why breaking bread or eating with family is very important. Not just to talk about food, but to talk about life. What did we used to eat at home? Where did I learn to eat sushi? What did we have for breakfast? I remember being invited to a “Culinary DNA” talk show on YouTube with Anton Diaz and Nancy Lumen and they explored into my family eating  history and how I developed my eating habits. It was quite a revelation even to me as I spoke from memory on how our parents shaped our culinary DNA. And I strongly believe that while habits are shaped at home, many other influences in life make us who we are, in the eating department.

But, with a family history of rich bad food, for example, how do we make it right it for the next generation? We slowly imbibe new studies in eating well. It need not be boring, but you can label it “eating sustainably.” Parents of Gen Z and millennials will not have a difficult time as “sustainable” is what these two generations eat for breakfast. They will embrace eating well not because of their own bodies but because of Nature, Mother Earth and how their everyday eating affects what our world will look like 20 years from now. They do care and you may be surprised at how they embrace principles of Slow Food (www.slowfood.com) which are eating good, clean and fair food. What is that, you may ask. It’s simply eating to make the world respect farmers, honor heritage food and do their part in responsible consumption.

And this is something you can do at reunions and let the parents of the younger set imbibe it as well. This way they can practice responsible consumption at home for the next full year. Parents mind their children’s food choices today, unlike in past generations when we had to eat what was on the table. Today, with social media influencers dictating what tastes good or what’s trending, kids may not be shaping their food choices with the sound advice of parents. So it is important we get involved and make eating together fun and educational. Where did the chicken come from? What is the taste of organic vegetables vs hydroponic? Why is arugula bitter? It’s my favorite and I describe it as peppery, not bitter. I explained that bitter comes with overgrowing arugula for money... Hello Farmer, do not overgrow it, please.

For me, eating well is knowing where our food comes from. When faced with hard choices one day a week or two days a month, I balance it by making sure I have more “traceable days” than “unknown sources” days. And next is choosing the better option. Pork and veal over beef, chicken over pork, fish over chicken, vegetables over fish. Beef is one of the most damaging meats environment-wise. Pork is not too clean, and chicken may not be free-range or organic.

Fish is sometimes farmed and not deep sea. And vegetables, they could be sprayed with pesticides if sources are unknown. Boy, it’s a tough choice, is it not?

But that’s just me. So I have chosen to be FLEXITARIAN. A balancing act because I seem to be able to eat everything served but I make my choices. I have a running inventory in my head of what healthy food I have eaten vs some really bad ones. And choose to balance always. A little healthy and a little not so healthy (like a good steak) that you will not pass up. But I find that choosing well is the key to living well. It’s not deprivation. It is choice. A conscious effort to eat not only for ourselves but for a nice reward -- a better planet.

So take your family reunions as a chance to inspire consciousness, too, in the next generation. You’ll even find yourself eating better, living better.