AIBU: the half-cup of tea brigade

[Shedbuilder]

My late MIL used to turn every offer of a cup of tea or a biscuit or sandwich into a major performance. Just half a cup/ half a biscuit / a quarter of a sandwich not a drop or crumb more because 'I can't manage any more than half a cup yada yada yada...' Everyone knew she had a small appetite so we automatically gave her tiny portions — but if you were foolish enough to ask her if she'd like something to eat or drink you'd get the full performance. And once you delivered the tea/ biscuit/ sandwich there'd be a cheery telling-off. 'Oooh, this is far too much. Call this half a cup? I could drown in this sea of tea...' So no matter what you did with the intention of being kind and supportive, you were always in the wrong.

It irritated everyone, even though her family all loved her to bits. This evening I offered my DP some leftover apple crumble and got the full MIL treatment. 'Just a tiny bit: think half of what you'd have and then halve that. And don't go drowning it in custard, I know what you're like with custard...' So I served a teaspoonful of apple crumble in an eggcup with a tiny blob of custard and as I set it down in front of DP I said jokingly 'You're turning into your mother!' Cue a huge row about me insulting the sacred memory of MIL and doors slamming.

What's the half-cup-of-tea things really about? I have no problem at all with someone saying they're not very hungry, they'll just have a mouthful of whatever. Or a small cup of tea. But there's a point at which it slips into controlling behaviour. Or AIBU?

PS Perhaps I should add that my DP isn't on a diet or anything.

I used to make my gmil a full cup and then pour away half. I could never make half a cup of tea.
Love the egg cup of crumble and custard

Yes. I had an aunt with "a bird like appetite". The ones that annoy me the most though are those who pick a tiny crumb off a sandwich, rather than just taking a bite. Then go through the motions of chewing it.

"I could drown in that sea of tea!" LOL, my answer, "Well, if you start stripping off to dive in, I'll throw you a life ring! Drink what you want, leave the rest."

The eggcup is inspired op. My great aunt was similar, half a sandwich ‘that would be a meal to me’. See also, I never sleep, 10 minutes on the sofa does me, but when we took her on holiday and there was an almighty thunderstorm one night, she didn’t know a thing about it next morning 😄

My "I don't have an eating disorder" MiL always asks for "just a small bit, an elegant sufficiency, as my mother used to say"

We are currently desperately hoping that her pride in her small appetite hasn't led to her ignoring one of the major symptoms of ovarian cancer.

In our family there is an 'official' measurement for cake, it's called a Grandad slice. He like a very very small slice, almost needed a scalpel, on a circular cake a 10 degree segment would be too much!

I have/had three family members similar to this.

For one it was definitely an issue about weight. She was extremely proud of the fact she'd maintained the same dress/waist size she'd had at 18 all her life (she was a small size 6, a 4 in some clothes). She repeatedly used to quote Wallis Simpson about how you can never be too thin. It was extremely hard to enjoy food around her as she'd pick at teeny tiny portions whilst commenting (only to the other women in the family) that she was shocked they were able to eat so much food (normal portions and not overweight). Definitely a competitive under-eater.

The others were a bit different (one male, the other female) . There is a bit of a concern about weight from the female but tbh I think it's more that she doesn't really like food all that much. She sees it as fuel not a pleasure (I've often wondered if she has limited taste/smell issues). But she's not snide and doesn't comment about what anyone else eats but she is difficult to cater for as she doesn't really eat meals as such.

For the male he just ate a very restricted diet. Similarish in that he only liked very few foods, think very plain (half) sandwiches, poached egg on half a muffin, a few types of soup, a bit of cake.

The main commonality was/is they both just "graze/d" through the day. A bit of fruit here, a tiny sliver of cake there, a baby sized bowl of soup, half a sandwich, a single cracker with cottage cheese, a poached egg or boiled egg there and so on.

It's quite hard annoying as.fuck to host as it's a teeny bit of something every hour or so and then they'd barely touch the meal I'd spent ages making for everyone else plus spending even more time serving them this endless stream of individual "tiny tapas" sized portions of food for them through the day. You'd just sit back down and realise you had 30/40 mins before you'd be back to the kitchen to prep the next microscopic meal.

Yes, the song and dance does have the effect of making you feel like a glutton and putting you down, doesn't it?

This is the problem; it’s a passive aggressive comment on how greedy everyone else is. (And therefore how virtuous the half-cupper is)
Just drink half the frigging cup!

My MIL does this! Half a cup of tea or coffee and whatever you put on her plate gets a shocked laugh and “oh that’s LOADS that is FAR too much, no I couldn’t possibly, I’d be so stuffed I could barely walk, that would feed me for a week, you have that and give me a little one.”

She’s lovely, she really is, but it is irritating as hell. When she’s round for dinner these days I always serve something where you help yourself from a central dish so we can skip the whole palaver.

My mum will always say she will just have a “sup of soup” or a “child’s portion” if we meet for lunch. It’s her way of food shaming me for eating a normal amount, and saying I am greedy/fat (I am a size 10 so not huge).

My DP on the other hand only drinks from those huge Cath Kidston mugs, the ones that are basically half a pint - we have four and they are “his mugs”. He never, ever finishes a whole cup of tea or coffee, so would be as well having a regular mug.

The tiny portion of apple crumble made me laugh out loud! To be fair to your DP/MIL, I sympathise because I can never finish a mug of tea. It’s running joke in my household that there’s always half a mug (or sometimes a full one) of cold tea next to me - maybe I should implement the half cup rule. I also feel sick if I have too much dessert, unless it’s chocolate buttons or creme brûlée and then it’s wolfed down. Anything savoury though, I want a mega portion, all the food!

I drink two of these every morning. Remote for size
Cat just being cat (I didn't deliberately include him for size)

Ugh my mother does this! Not the tea but the insistence on showing off about her tiny portions or saying how portions are ‘much too much for me of course’ when she talks about what she ate while out. She’s been fixated on food my entire life leading to giving both me and my sibling different EDs

I’m loving these I totally agree with everyone saying it’s the performance aspect that’s annoying - the whole ‘I said a small piece! Just a sliver! I couldn’t possibly eat all that!’ So over the bloody top.

This is the worst bit of it with my (otherwise lovely) MIL - she insists that it is odd and incredibly gluttonous to eat more than breakfast and one other meal a day even at Christmas. I was shocked speechless the first year at their house when on the evening of Christmas day rather than the cheeseboard and Christmas cake that my family had we had - nothing. Because we'd eaten (a normal sized roast, the dinner isn't some huge multi-coursed affair for them either) at 2pm, so that was that until breakfast. We host Christmas now, thank god!

My mother can be like this. On my father’s birthday we’d been for a very early Sunday lunch, as it was the only time we could get into our favourite restaurant. About 7pm, when we were all at their house, she said, ‘Does anyone want me to do something to eat?’ My dad and I had both said we could fancy some nibbles. ‘What?! After that huge meal? You want more food?’

I pointed out that the huuuge meal had been nearly seven hours earlier and that, as filling as it had been, it didn’t mean we shouldn’t ever want to eat again. I did also feel the need to ask why she’d bothered to ask in the first place if she’d already decided we couldn’t possibly want to eat again.

@HeadNorth my auntie is similarly afflicted with osteoporosis. Years of poor eating often comes home to roost

Because DP's main purpose of an evening appears to be keeping me topped up with tea as he knows I just don't have time or the inclination to drink anything during the way at work, I do end up asking for a small cup of ginger tea/elderberry last thing - it's the only cup I have that's actually a 'cup' size instead of a mug. Otherwise, I'd be awake again at 2am, which can never be a good thing.

The rest of the time, I'm more traumatised by the way that the perfect cuppas he makes always seem to have about an inch of dead air between the surface of the drink and the rim and the crap milky ones are always right to the top.

My DM. Oh I dont eat bread, no..no potatoes for me, I could maybe manage just the skin. I really do prefer ryvita with half a wafer thin slice of ham on top.

My MIL. Second helpings? Dont mind if I do…

I know who I prefer to eat with

A syndrome that has been around for a long time, I'm always reminded of C.S. Lewis's description of a mother in The Screwtape Letters when I come across people like this:

"She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast’. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it’. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.”

I have the opposite problem! My MIL eats everything I give her like she hasn't eaten for a week and I'm constantly worried I've under-catered DH and I are famous (with family and friends) for serving massive portions and MIL eats far less than us at home so I'm choosing to take it as a compliment, she does always say how nice everything was. You do wonder whether it's just a way of putting you on the back foot though, making you feel you haven't got things quite right somehow?

I think I understand EXACTLY what you’re describing OP. My mother is like this. She visited me (2 hour drive each way) the other day so naturally I provided lunch. Cue look of feigned shock, ‘Oh, we don’t eat much for lunch, a coffee will suffice… oh, I could only manage a NIBBLE of salad’.
She came to stay after I gave birth, ostensibly to look after me. I was trapped under a cluster feeding newborn so I asked her to make me a sandwich. ‘Oh, goodness, ham AND cheese? Oh no, I won’t have one. I’ll have half a piece of cheese. Any more and I will be STUFFED.’

It is so irritating because the underlying belief is always that she is superior for eating less. She had anorexia as a teenager and clearly still suffers from disordered eating. But it very much plays into her narrative that she is so tough and frugal and the rest of us are wasteful and lazy.

I go and cook a roast for my DM and family from time to time.

Every time without fail she’ll insist that I only dish up a small portion for her any my stepdad. Guaranteed I’ll get the whole performance about how “we barely eat anything these days - we don’t even have dinner some nights”. She regularly tells me how little she eats and also how little she sleeps.

Except when I dish up a smaller but still pretty decent portion, I’ll ask her if she wants a bit more. And she’ll say “just a little bit” and then “just another couple of potatoes”. The “just a small portion” she asks for ends up being big enough to feed a Yeti! And she’ll eat it all but leave one potato making sure to sigh loudly “I told you I only have a small appetite these days…..”. Uh-huh, sure you do…..

Ugh, my parents used to do this and it was really annoying. Dad always used to say "I only wanted half a cup" of tea and mum used to say "a drop". Ridiculous because they both ate and drank normal portions. Idk if it was a wartime hangover - wanting to look undemanding and not greedy at a time of rationing.

Yep, my MIL, bless her, will go on and on about how little she eats. However, if you visit her at home, she'll want to start feeding you from the moment you sit down, and she'll fret if you say you're not hungry/have had enough.

I think that's another hangover from that generation - the sheer terror of being seen as a bad hostess.

Why not just have a starter?

Starters tend not be a balanced nutritious meal. Ditto kids' meals.

I agree that some women make an irritating performance of repeatedly telling everyone how little they eat, but the overserving of food by a lot of restaurants does get annoying. The food waste is pretty disgusting.

I think consuming small amounts is fine. Adults can decide how much they want to eat or drink. Heck, even if it is disordered eating, it's ultimately still their own business.

It's the huge performance around it that's irritating. I think it's attention seeking behaviour, or at least needing everyone to see that you have eaten so little. It's very sad.