Aibu - cooking healthy at home is a "wife's/mom's" responsibility?

[namechangedbcos]

I was at a funeral yesterday. Distant cousin dead at 41, obese all his life, had related health issues and a sudden coronary attack claimed his life. My culture is one which does NOT maintain silence or dignity in a funeral and I happen to be near when the sisters of the dead man, in a different part of the house, had the following conversation.

Sister 1 (crying): I told him so many times he needed to stop eating all that food, go on a diet, exercise more. I even offered to pay for a detox retreat! Did he listen? No. Now his wife and two young kids are going to suffer for his inability to take care of his own health.

Sister 2 (wailing): He ate at home every day (Note: It was a system where the lady cooked, and the man ate breakfast at home, packed lunch to work, dinner at home). It was his wife’s responsibility to give him the right food, not all those rich curries and three-times-day carbs. She knew he had obesity issues, we all were telling her constantly that he was a heart attack waiting to happen, so why did she not help him in the way she could have easily done? Look at his kids too, they too are obese. She failed in her duty! I am going to say this to her face, funeral etiquette be damned.

AIBU in thinking that Sister 2, while technically a moron (food cannot be the ONLY reason for his obesity and who tries to really blame a widow on the day of the funeral?) might have a point? I can understand where she is coming from. My husband and I both were overweight at the time of our wedding, but after getting a bad health scare we lost a lot of inches by switching to a low carb diet - mostly because I took charge of our meals and took the initiative to throw away all junk food from the kitchen, and fill it with healthier stuff.

Thought I'd get the collective wisdom from MN...

P.S.: Sister 1, I and a few others stopped Sister 2 from talking about this to the widow yday. Not sure what will happen today or tomm though. S2 is the kind of person who will bulldoze others just so that she gets to speak her mind... hoping she keeps her mouth shut.

It doesn’t matter who cooks or what is cooked. It matters what he puts in is mouth.

He was responsible for his own health and his own diet. He could presumably requested changes of his wife, or eaten less, or exercised more.

And confronting a widow at a funeral is unforgivable in any culture surely?

YABVU. His diet was entirely his responsibility and his choice, as it should be. Unless she tied him to a chair and force fed him you're being ridiculous. He was an an adult not a child.

I think individuals have the primary responsibility to ensure they eat as best as they can, themselves. However, other members of the family can be supportive or unsupportive. If someone is always cooking another person tempting food, that is bad for them, it is not terribly supportive. Equally if someone is continually eating tempting food, that is bad for another person, in front of them, it is not terribly supportive.

Responsibility does not automatically fall to the adult woman in every family, though. Any member of the family can be guilty of being unsupportive. Their is variation between families over who takes which role.

NonGray, that's what I thought too, that obviously we cannot be responsible for our spouse's or any other person's choices in life... but if my husband has a big problem with sugar or alcohol and is not much disciplined around that stuff? I wouldn't serve alcohol at home... eating three huge meals of rich, oily food is also a kind of addiction, isn't it... and we need to treat that as such?

And oh, in my culture, anything goes on the day of funeral. It's a free pass to take a swing at everyone, because it is all forgotten by Day 3 citing "people allowed talk rubbish while suffering from the loss of their kin." I once overheard the widow (in another funeral) yelling at her husband's parents for raising an alcoholic and getting him married to her (it was an arranged marriage, which is the norm in my culture.)

Not in any universe of which I form part is it the responsibility of the spouse with the vagina to do (a) do all household cooking and (b)police what the spouse without puts into his mouth.

Are you for real?! The poor woman is burying her husband and you think she is to blame for his death?!

This is to slightly miss the point perhaps but.....It’s hardly a question of ‘funeral etiquette’. It’s a question of compassion. Why and how could anyone think telling a grieving widow, at her husband’s funeral, that his death was caused by her, is appropriate or reasonable? He was an adult.

Of course it's his fault, not hers, but the fact that he was always obese suggests that's he's had food issues that predate his wife's cooking by half his lifetime at the very least?

I don't think the widow here is to blame for her husband's death. I think he brought that all on himself. NO QUESTION ABOUT IT AT ALL.

Perhaps I should ask my AIBU in this way - if your husband is very obese and has been warned by his doctor to eat healthy or else, and you are the person responsible for the food choices for the entire family, would you keep cooking him traditional (insert name of cuisine) dishes dripping with fat and oil, or would you cook healthier stuff?

I am sorry I am assuming this is what she has been doing - it's all hearsay of course, but I have visited this cousin's home on and off through the years and tend to agree that they eat the traditional "hearty" way. This is a conservative family dynamic where the woman cooked meals at home and the man (and kids) ate it. It's just what it is - no matter how much I wish the woman had a career and a life outside the home.

And anyway, it's rare for people to become unhealthy and obese from eating home cooked food, unless they're eating ridiculous portions, lots of chips etc or drinking a lot of calories too, so I'd be asking what ekse he was eating outside the house that was not made by his DW.

@BarbaraofSevillle Bingo! That's what I think too. My cousin liked his alcohol and junk fried chicken :(

Personally my opinion is that Sis 2 wants to blame some one, and the only one right now fitting the "bill is the wife, for the death of her brother, though I feel bad to think this way too - Sis 2 is is obviously grieving too, she is nearly 20 years older than him and helped their mother raise him.

I feel very sad when I think of all this, his wife with just school education, his kids and their crying, they looked so lost :(

My mum and dad bicker constantly about the amount of food she puts on his plate. He's a little bit of it overweight and she's a feeder.

She'd be a mixture of furious and devastated if he were to take full responsibilty for his own food, so I can kind of see a situation where he might not be in full control of what he eats, but evenso it's his responsibility to deal with that.

@Bestseller that's interesting to know. A lot of women in my family, including my mother, is like this. It's like they express their love and care through their cooking - unfortunately they also end up thinking the more we eat, the more we love them. So if we refuse their food and try to instead of establish boundaries ("I don't want another helping" or "I don't drink milk, thanks") it's like refusing their love and they take it very very personally, and this translates as disrespect and indifference too, in some cases.

I have always associated this with my culture, but now I wonder.

Your cousin was responsible for his own health. He could always have cooked for himself! Blaming the widow is ridiculous of his sister. I’m british Asian and have seen wives blamed for so much of their husbands issues! It’s still sadly a culture of blame the female.

Low carb high fat diets aren't all-that for heart health.

I actually asked someone this once.
I asked her, knowing your husband has had multiple heart attacks why do you still give him fried food, oily food etc, why don't you tell him it's bad for him. Tell him if he wants to kill himself that's up to him but you don't need to help him do it.
She said it's not the food it's the smoking and drinking and got quite angry.

Not unless your culture is Yorkshire name changed.

BIL has given up refined sugar. It's done him the world of good in all kinds of ways but mum is very offended that he no longer eats her cakes

@nailak "I asked her, knowing your husband has had multiple heart attacks why do you still give him fried food, oily food etc, why don't you tell him it's bad for him. Tell him if he wants to kill himself that's up to him but you don't need to help him do it."

Exactly this. That's why I feel Sis 2 had a point.

I'd never ever ever put it that way to anybody, though. I don't think I have the guts to :( I might say, in a neutral ambience, hey cook this not that, it's more healthy... but again, the ball is on the other person's court, isn't it...

@Bestseller ha ha. Well I have learned a new word today - a feeder. New word, but old memories!

Just a small point- you don’t get obese on three meals a day. I used to cook healthy food and then eat a sharing bag of dairy milk while OH was at football.

While I agree to a certain extent that I would enforce healthy food if I was cooking for an overweight person, you do not get that size from dinner alone.