Some home health care people's perspectives on food.

So, the other month I took a class through my one home health care position, and as part of a unit on nutrition, we had to talk a lot about personal relationships to food, since all choices about better food happen within the context of someone's life.

The class was like 65% women, and I was the only (white) person there, and it was just a blast to hear everyone.

1) One (older middle-aged) ) (black) guy on advice to cut off fat from food like pork chops before you eat it:

"But I like the fat part."

2) One (Latina) said her husband's (Mexican) but his dad as a kid held a belt over them and made them finish everything on their plate, so to this day her husband doesn't like a lot of stereotypically Mexican foods like rice.

3) Another (Latina) said she met her husband at 11, had her first baby at 14, and since he's (Mexican) from Mexico but she's (Mexican) from Texas, she had to learn a lot of stereotypically (Mexican) foods like tacos the way he likes them, and now her kids are used to having home-cooked meals like that every night.

"And that's why I'm a big girl," she was like, too.

4) This one (young middle-aged) (black) guy with a nicely-trimmed beard who seemed suave but kind of out of it says that he tries to be "purposeful" with his eating, and is getting into salmon.

5) One (middle-aged) (black) woman was also into that type of eating, and she said she eats carbs for energies, protein for builders, vitamins for protection, and fiber as, and she said something understated and innocuous, but we all knew what she meant.

"And sometimes, I eat the fiber, and it comes up on me, where I'm going to throw it up," she was like.

6) One (younger middle-aged) (black) woman said her grandmother came from Mississippi and had twelve kids, boy girl boy girl boy girl all the way down like that, and she taught all of them to cook, even the boys, since they might not marry and so would need it.

"But I couldn't stand a lot of that," she was like.  "Those pig's feet, and the chicken feet, UGH."

She then said that the first time when she was a kid, she saw the chicken feet boiling in a pot, and she got all freaked out because they were all curled up and she thought they were cooking babies' hands.

At that, one (Latina) woman said that in Mexico, they would sell chicken feet with hot sauce at schools, for kids who forgot their lunch, since it was a cheap snack.

"But is there even much meat on them?", the (black) woman was like, shuddering.  "UGH."

She also said that her grandmother was very particular, and if you tried to touch anything while she was cooking, "she'd take your arm off."