Читать книгу The Yummy Mummy’s Family Handbook - Liz Fraser - Страница 44

Every family I know has its Not In My House list. For my vegetarian friends this obviously consists of meat, fish, and any dairy if they are being extra vigilant, and for others its Sunny Delight, beef, Ribena, reconstituted cheese, Cheerios, chocolate (eek—not spending much time there!) or whatever else they deem to be Out of Bounds.

There are many reasons why you might want to add something to your Not In My House list, and here are just a few you might encounter:

Allergies. Obviously. If anyone in your household is allergic or intolerant to certain foods then it’s an absolute must to keep the contents of your larder under strict supervision and to make sure everybody sticks to the rules.

Good Health. When you are trying desperately to keep your family healthy and ‘crap-free’, this is where all the ‘no sugared cereals, no chocolate, no sweets, no fizzy drinks, no processed foods, no additives, no salt…’ and so on comes in. The more you can think like this, the easier it will be to avoid obesity, rotten teeth or scurvy. It is possible to go overboard, however. A house with no bad things in it at all is in danger of becoming a house of No Fun, and that’s not where you want your kids to grow up, is it? Remove even seventy per cent of the junk and you are already doing a fantastic job—what harm is the odd processed, sticky cheese string going to do?

You are on a diet. This is a tricky one. If you are trying to shed a few pounds of unwanted, post-holiday love handles and you find that living in a house full of choc-chip cookies and Sugar Pops makes this less than easy, then banning anything with more than 20 calories and 0.1 grams of fat might seem like a good idea. It isn’t. It will just make you crave any food that actually tastes like something, and make the rest of your family grouchy and hungry too. Kids—and husbands, in my experience—need to eat a lot, and clearing the cupboards of all the potentially fat-making stuff is not an option for a family. It is possible to compromise, however, and there’s nothing wrong with giving the whole family a month off sugary cereals and choc-chip cookies but keeping the occasional bowl of nachos. It might be the start of a new, healthier lifestyle for you all.

Keeping up with the very healthy Joneses. This is more of an issue in some areas than in others. Where I live the level of interfamily comparison isn’t as bad as I know it to be elsewhere (West London being one example, where everything is fresh, wild, organic and bloody expensive, as far as I can tell). But just from what I hear when my kids go to a friend’s house for tea I know who has fishfingers on a regular basis and who is more likely to have home-made organic falafel and freshly baked pitta bread. Consequently, when I have other children round to my house for tea I make a concerted effort to cook something much prettier and healthier than I normally would for my kids alone. Yes it’s pathetic, and it means I am just faking it and begging for brownie points, but I share this so that you know the phenomenon of Competitive Healthiness exists, and you don’t panic when everyone else seems to eat better food than your family does. They do—but only when it shows.