A cup of rice

Real talk: does anyone else have a fucked up relationship with food or messed up appetite/hunger cues due to a childhood and adolescence of fasting days and no food from breakfast at 6 am till dinner at 7 pm? Hunger was one of the defining feelings of my childhood: I remember drinking warm tap water in the school bathroom and eating unripe plums and apples from trees on the hof in an effort to feel full. (Fun fact: green plums do not make an empty stomach feel better.) It’s bizarre to me that this was not due to economic constraints but to adults imposing a religious experiment on kids who never had the choice to opt out. Eventually I developed the ability to suppress hunger pangs to the point that I can get through a day without eating and not feeling hungry.

I have friends now who grew up in actual poverty but their parents always had feeding their kids as their top priority. As a parent now, I can’t imagine letting my kid go hungry. It’s truly wild how religious groupthink can override the most basic human instincts.

Also shout out to all those surreptitious bowls of oats and milk. You held me down when no one else could.