If my children feel that they have been treated unfairly, they start their sentences with: Everyone else has. A dog, an X-Box, a Netflix subscription. I'm not feeling any better there. Everyone else – friends: colleagues, parents' council members – have acquired special eating habits over the years. Vegan, low carb, clean, green smoothies. Real and felt intolerances are cared for like koi carp. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there is now a suitable lid for every metabolic potty. I just ask myself: How do they do that, very practically? Don't they have children – or just not mine? I am a family breadwinner and thus chair of a four-member group. The intersection is damn small. Everything in there is either nasty greasy (chicken nuggets), nasty expensive (prawns) or both (lamb chops).
Instead of lentil stew, prefer white flour toast
Sure, I can do what various advisors recommend: "Always bring new groceries to the family table." After that, lentil and tomato stews freeze in the five-star compartment from ages to ages, while my children satisfy their calorie needs with white flour toast and licorice cats. Rating on the nutritional scale: just half a star. Rating on the mom-is-the-best scale: four stars.
So our food pyramid stands on a foundation of pancakes, dumplings and sliced meat. My children think that it looks good. My husband loves his canteen. For special requests from individuals, I mumble my mother's mantra: "I'm not a restaurant." There are no extra sausages. Not for me either. At most the small side salad.
The children are getting older – but they still don't like vegetables
It all started so well. As a toddler, my daughter seamlessly switched from breast milk to tangerines, my son loved bananas so much at the same age that he always wanted two at a time. But as soon as they could speak, the wave of fruit and vegetables was over: "Not so bad." For a while I found consolation in the books of a pediatrician from the Allgäu who said: It is quite normal for children around the age of three to be more choosy. He didn't tell how long the phobic phase lasted. Once I thought it was time: When my daughter came to the daycare, she claimed that she had eaten carrots. I dreamed of breakthrough and tried to cook the miracle again. She didn't even take a spoon: "They're flatter in kindergarten."
In the meantime, two puberty animals are sitting at the table, who are also concerned about sustainability and global food issues. That's right. But every time they threaten a vegetarian week, I get sick: that means seven times pasta with cheese and cream sauce. My son, after all, now likes green beans. With lots of butter and pieces of bacon. Intuitive food, it is currently read everywhere, is the healthiest form of nutrition. Because the body knows best what it really needs. Only I'm not so sure about my children's bodies.
Dirty eating also has advantages
Sometimes, at the eighth meatball of the week, I have a comforting daydream: everyone else – i.e. friends, colleagues and members of the parents' council – have to secretly go to a steak house or the chip shop for meat-heavy moments. Maybe in a city where nobody knows: What happens in Bad Bevensen stays in Bad Bevensen. Afterwards they are completely intoxicated by their own sinfulness.
And me? If I want to go crazy, I cook a vegan soup with turnip and beetroot just for myself. Vitamins! Purity! The purest orgy. But, please: it stays between us.
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