Hi, so did anyone grow up in the church having barely anything to eat, because my whole TBM family are the biggest health freaks I know! If I go to my grandma's she barely has raisin's and nuts and every single vegatable on the planet and your just sitting there starving!

At my house there is only vegatable's, and anything whole grain or organic...my aunt is constantly telling her kids that they shouldn't eat anything besides veggies or fruits or just as long as it's whole grain and organic-(same with everyone else in my family)-and it just really sucks because there is like nothing to choose from besides a salad or plain fruit most of the time, and my whole tbm family is just crazy about the topic organic!

I swear nearly every conversation is organic this and organic that and then it will lead to talk about the word of wisdom, and how we all need our leafy greens to keep us strong and protect us against "satan's trap" they also like to discuss coffee and tea ALLL THE TIME!!! So something tells me that they want to drink it themselves..can anyone relate to having these crazy TBM health freak fams and having nearly every dinner consist of nothing but veggies galore??



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2017 01:30AM by sunbitch.

What you describe is not normal vegetarian food. (You are describing the equivalent of someone who is NOT vegetarian eating ONLY steak and chicken and pork.)

There are national and cultural cuisines which are vegetarian, and are varied and delicious. (Indian food, for example).

Most vegetarians eat a highly-varied diet which can be very American (in all of its various, now-American forms: Mexican food...Thai food...Chinese food...Persian food...Sephardi food...Italian food...French food...American Southern food...Ethiopian food...and can even include BBQ seitan, tempeh, and etc., and there is vegetarian bacon as well!).

Google: VEGETARIAN TIMES. This is the go-to place for beginning vegetarians, and it bridges into cookbooks for any kind of ethnic or geographical cuisine that you might be interested in.

What you are describing is not normal vegetarian eating...it sounds like some kind of monastic/ascetic sacrificial regimen (a kind of perpetual semi-fast).

If your relatives aren't interested in good vegetarian food, then it is up to you. Start with the easy stuff...keep branching out as you try new things...and you can soon be among the best vegetarian cooks in your area!

P.S. If you have a Whole Foods, or a Sprouts, or a local health food store in your area, begin there. All of them have cookbooks available, as well as already-prepared (then frozen or refrigerated) foods. Many grocery stores also have Amy's frozen foods (in the "single meals" section, or near it), so you can try a whole selection of pre-made veg foods from a variety of ethnic traditions. (The Amy's Spinach Ravioli is what I would recommend first.) Also: if you have a vegetarian restaurant in your area, check out what they have to offer, too.

When I was growing up, we had The Good Life on Lankershim, in North Hollywood, which was a magnet for people who worked at Warner Bros. and at Universal City---and a destination place to shop for people from further away (like the West Valley, or over the mountain in Beverly Hills and Bel Air).

The Good Life was mostly a health-oriented food store (they started carrying toilet paper and detergent, etc., when Verna Walker, the wife of Clint Walker (who was a TV star), told the owner that the only time she went into a regular grocery store was when she had to buy toilet paper and cleaning stuff, so that's when The Good Life put in a rack of these kinds of products in their rear entrance, leading to the parking lot).

In addition to the foods for sale, though, they had a small snack bar that used to turn out incredibly good soups, salads, sandwiches, and things like enchiladas and "meatloaf"...and they offered free 4x6 recipe cards for these dishes (free) to anyone who wanted them. I still have some of them!!!

This is a potentially incredible adventure being offered to you!!!

Run with it!!!

:) :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2017 02:05AM by Tevai.

I am actually not a vegatarian, what I meant was if you have grow up with very little limitations of food as in like was everything healthy/organic and just plane boring tasting, and why TBM'S are so crazy about health and such..I wasn't sure if it was a regular mormon thing or not?

sunbitch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am actually not a vegatarian, what I meant was
> if you have grow up with very little limitations
> of food as in like was everything healthy/organic
> and just plane boring tasting, and why TBM'S are
> so crazy about health and such..I wasn't sure if
> it was a regular mormon thing or not?

My post was intended as a seed-off of: "If life gives you lemons...make lemonade."

If the facts are that your family is effectively vegetarian [and, on a different level, health-oriented, whether they understand what they are doing or not], then you have the ability to transform what THEY buy for food into delicious foods with interest and great taste.

Instead of complaining about what you don't like, take those now "boring" ingredients and make them into what you WILL like!!!

And if their interests are health-oriented, then use that for YOUR good. Start reading up on the wealth of recipes, cuisines, and proven health benefits of different foods, and use this information to make your future healthier (than it would otherwise have been), and---in addition---keep you looking a couple of decades (or more) "younger" than would otherwise have been the truth. (Believe me, if---as an adult, and starting somewhere in your mid-thirties or so---you consistently look a couple of decades younger than the girls you went to school with, you will be thanking your relatives FOREVER!!!)

In other words: I understand your complaints and they are valid.

Now...modify your perspective until you realize you are being given (as a free gift from the Universe!) a gift that you will be happy with for all the rest of your life, if you use it optimally, and preferably starting "now."

There is a reason why Christie Brinkley looks like she does at age 63. Google her.

This can be YOU at age 63, too...

...but only if you realize that the gift you are being given IS a gift...as well as an opportunity that (thirty or forty or fifty or sixty years from now) you will be thanking your family for "forever."

:) :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2017 11:56PM by Tevai.

Most Mormons are terrified of coffee. That's just a cultural phobia. Right now there is a major soda shop boom along the Wasatch Front. I have noticed that even some of the little drive thru coffee shacks are becoming dual coffee/soda shacks.

I find this ironic in that current nutritional research is indicating that sugar intake is more than just empty calories ( though that is quite bad enough). It can contribute to number of non-infectious diseases like heart disease, diabetes, etc. So while the rest of the nation is starting to back away from sugars, Utah is going apes*** over soda shops.

I live near the COB. Men coming out of there lugging around a 64 oz soft drink "cup" has been a thing for years.

So yes, some Mormons are neurotically health conscious. So are some nonmormons. I don't see it as a defining characteristic of the culture. Plenty of soda joints, burger joints and chili-cheese fries in Utah.

I would take it further. I would say that the Mormon culture in general is bifurcated. There is extreme avoidance of tobacco (good) and extreme avoidance of alcohol (mixed since moderate amounts in wine etc. could be beneficial). There is extreme avoidance of coffee and tea (benefits of abstinence unproven), and almost a total ignoring of the Word of wisdom's admonition against too much meat.

Whether you believe in it or not, it's strange how selectively it is followed. Also, back in the day, "strong drink" meant hard liquor and not beer and wine. But that changed during prohibition.

She lived with me for 3 months this winter and the food she ate, which she didn't like, and kept in the refrig was boring and she hated it. She's very thin and thinks that she isn't.

I can't fault her, though, because I'm overweight and don't eat a very healthy diet. She's probably trying to not end up like her mother!?!?

BUT that isn't the case with most of the mormons around me. There are a lot of overweight mormons and my daughter talks about it a lot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2017 09:21AM by cl2.

Some of the most obese people I ever met were mormons. No joke. and if anyone knew some of the Bishops in the romford stake 80' - 90's, I am sure they would agree.

You have never been to a ward BBQ Like I have - way back when there used to be a budget for that sort of thing.

the people who obsessed about the WoW would double down on the alcohol and coffee restrictions (banning vanilla essence from their cooking, if it contained alcohol, and really, really obsessing about coca cola and other soft drinks)
but I never recall anyone really bothering about the parts which mention grains, fruit and veg in season and meat only in times of famine

IMO,only a small minority of mormons are health freaks. In Utah, there are fast food places and restaurants on practically every corner of every intersection, and as someone else had said, soda shops seem to be a big trend here now. I had heard that Utah is the # 1 state in the Union in ice cream consumption. So while they may be going along with the WOW in some areas, they are going overboard with other things that are just as unhealthy, if not more so.

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/orthorexia-nervosa

It's not recognized right now as an official diagnosis, but I think it will be eventually.

I don't see a problem with eating a lot of vegetables though, as long as you get enough of the other stuff.

yeah, I want to eat healthy, but I just also want the food to be appetizing too.

When you are an adult and living on your own, you can eat whatever you please. But for right now, you could do worse than eating whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

I have been making changes to my diet lately. Many days I switch out soda at lunch for milk. I eat more salads and vegetables for snacks. I eat fewer chips.

You will experiment with different ways of eating throughout your life to find what works best for you.

However, she was not that way when I was growing up in the 1990s. Back then, we ate healthier than most of my friends, but nothing to any extreme. We were a middle-class family with one income, so we grew a garden and canned a lot of the produce. We ate whole wheat bread, but I'm sure it wasn't organic or anything fancy. Not a lot of packaged foods in our house, but they certainly weren't banned. We sat down to a home cooked meal most nights, but so did most of my friends, so I don't think that was out of the ordinary.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s. When all of the children moved out of the house, my TBM mom turned into one of those crazy health freaks. Everything had to be organic. Dairy products were banned. Pork was banned. Grains were banned. She even bought organic cotton sheets for her bed because she was worried about chemicals. My dad keeps a secret stash of "regular" food at work so that he doesn't starve to death. When I visited last spring, my mom spent the whole time obsessing about what we were eating. She took healthy eating to an unhealthy level.

I think my mom's obsession with controlling the kind of food she eats comes from being TBM. Not because it's a cultural thing -- I didn't know Jello was considered a salad until I was in YW. I think the church controls so much of her life that food is the one thing she feels like she can control, so she controls it to the extreme. I suspect other TBMs do it for the control, rather than for the love of exploring new foods.

The people you describe are self centered and preachy. I don't care what they eat. It isn't my business unless they expect me to worship them for their eating habits. Nope, if I wanted advice, I'd ask.

I never knew any Mormons who worried or obsessed about healthy eating. It was always heavy on the meat, soda pop, chips, cookies, anything prepackaged, loads of government cheese. Vegetables were almost non-existent. It was no surprise then when they ended up with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. The Mormon families I hung out with did tend to have bland food, not much in the way of herbs or spices, and usually hamburger something. I think ketchup was the favorite condiment.

If you have any opportunity to make the family dinner, you could try out a new recipe and see if they like it. Certainly, if you are old enough you should be allowed to contribute a meal now and then. My nephew, who is fifteen, loves to make a divine vegetarian Indian dish. I'm drooling just thinking about it. Honestly, your family's eating habits sound out of the norm. But their lack of zest in meal prep does not.

That's also been my experience, that the Mormons I've known including my ex-husband and his mom weren't worried about eating healthy. In fact, my former MIL was obese, and it wasn't just from her rheumatoid arthritis, she loved high fat or sugary foods. She could drink a 6 pack of soda in a day if given the chance, my ex was the same way as well, as they preferred that over water. His idea of seasoning was to use garlic salt instead of actual garlic or other herbs or spices. They also loved huge portions of food, and my ex even complained when some of us went to a tapas restaurant because he didn't get the concept of having lots of small dishes.

Other TBM's I know tend to use things like instant pudding mixes for desserts, and for cooking, they tend to use things like packets of dry salad dressing mixes, also not using as much real seasonings, so their food is often pretty bland or salty. They also drink a lot of soda as well, and one even had a soda "bar" at her wedding reception in Utah.

Yes, IME there is a strain of nutty eaters among mormons who believe they are trying to eat healthy, though most of the ones I've known seem to me to really just be eating weird. I think the oral intake obsession may have something to do w/ the WOW in that these people may be trying to prove themselves holier than others for being extra careful in this area (oral consumption) of their lives.

Also, there is a lot of naïveté among mormons,which I believe leads those already obsessed w/ their own health to fall for some pretty ridiculous food and diet fads. Most of these crazes are utterly illogical when examined. Not to mention that many mormons are real tightwads, or maybe, to be fair, just genuinely poor, after paying their tbm dues; I think many of them think they can save a lot of $ by going on the all home grown veggie diet or the strictly canned lima bean purge, or whatever.

When I was young, and even recently when I was talked into attending some event at the local lds church because the speaker had a historically significant personal experience to share, I am always struck by the remarkable Mormon penchant for nearly flavorless casseroles, often of downright nasty texture, very skimpy on protein and heavy on starches and canned cream soups. It's cheap, but far from healthy; and flavor is clearly the last of their concerns.

She could just be gullible and fell into believing someone's diet book about how meat and non-organically grown vegetables are the devil's food (I thought it was cake!?) etc. Yeah that stuff is generally better for you (wash it carefully because organic fertilizer can leave behind bad bacteria like e coli) but I don't think you can live on that alone.

I think the OP must have accidentally hit some extra letters on their keyboard because the words "health freaks" appear in the title.

:-)

tbms are almost always over weight. Think about who makes up the demographic... middle class, middle management, pencil pusher, office workers, pasty nerds. Then they all get together and come up with their new fad diets, this month it's the all red meat diet, next month the bacon diet, then it's the salad and chicken diet three times a day, and all the while they ignore the real reason they are fat, which is a sedentary lifestyle.

FWI Growing up in the church I have always been skinny just btw!!! lol

Health? No. That's an anomaly. Consider yourself lucky though. AT LEAST you can make something of it. Beats canned and frozen and dried garbage, with no fresh spices, fruits or veggies. Beats boxes of poison, chemicals, trash food.

> ... having barely anything to eat... whole TBM family are... health freaks! ... grandma barely has raisins, nuts, [vegetable]s... starving!

Barely anything to eat and eating healthy aren't the same. You'll be happier and healthier (and not as fat) as most morons. You'll only truly be happy outside Mormonism, and away from that unhealthy environment. Again, or beats how most morons grew up, eating garbage.