eating food without permission

[thecatswhiskrs]

This is a long-running argument in our house and I'd love to get a sense from others of whether I (and my kids) are just being unreasonable....

DH has a habit of mooching around the kitchen looking for food. He feels that anything in the kitchen is (and should be) fair game. He gets very upset when we shout at him for eating something that we feel he shouldn't have or something that we feel he should have checked first.

Examples:

• A child will have cooked some cookies for themselves and others to eat. The leave the tray on the counter to cool anticipating that lovely treat later and then come back to find their father has eaten a third of the tray before they've even offered.
• A child will have made some food for their lunch. There will be leftovers and they will have mentally allocated these for their lunch the next day in school. They leave it in the fridge or somewhere to cool, come back and it's gone.
• I am making dinner. It's nearly time to eat. I've planned the meal so that everyone has (for instance) 3 sausages and two bits of bacon. He comes in and nicks two bits of bacon from the pan right before we are about to eat.

He argues that he has paid for the all of the food in the kitchen and shouldn't have to ask for permission to eat it. If we have plans for some of it and haven't allowed enough to share then it's our fault for not making enough (we should just make lots more of everything to allow for others having some). He feels that we are not being generous and that (in spite of his best efforts to model generosity) we are all just being mean.

Are we being unreasonable (or just plain miserable!) to want him to at least check whose food it is and whether it has a destination before just eating it??

I just want to hear specifics. It’s fine to say “let everyone eat according to their own appetite”, I totally agree with that, but in a world where we don’t produce all-you-can-eat buffets every night, what does this mean in practice in terms of how many sausages you buy and cook?

It's likely they buy and cook the number of sausages their family needs to eat - just like everyone else.

Exactly! So at some point someone is deciding on a limit to the number of sausages available. Which means there is a risk of someone taking more than usual and leaving someone else with less than they want for their appetite - how is this resolved?

Trial and error mostly. You get a feel for how many grams you need of meat or rice or veg to comfortably feed everyone. DH and I usually aim to make enough so there is extra for a leftover lunch if everyone has normal appetite. Usually someone being a tad hungrier will be offset completely or partially by someone being less hungry than usual. If not offset, then there are no leftovers. If it’s a day where everyone is picking at the food and not really hungry, and half the meal is left, I freeze it and it’s a full meal to be defrosted next time we want that dish to which I’d add a extra side of veg.

It’s not setting a limit to my mind, it’s cooking about what I think would be eaten. I don’t think it’s true that you’d be cooking “unlimited” amounts of food, people can only eat so much.

But if you've sometimes eaten all the food - no leftovers - how can you be sure that someone would not have chosen to eat one more (e.g.) sausage, or one more bite of sausage, if there had been more?

You're not doing anything much different to the OP in reality.

Sounds completely normal and sensible. What happens if someone wants so much that it would leave others hungry, or without enough of a particular thing they want to eat?

There is no risk :( there is always enough for everyone.

As a hypothetical example,

We don’t decide how much to cook by thinking it’s 3 sausages & 2 bits bacon each or any similar per person calculations.

We decide how much to cook based on last time we made this meal, a total of 12 sausages were eaten by the family and feedback was more/less/just right number of sausages.

Thats the difference.

But the whole point is that I'm not going to serve him any.

I'm going to scoff it because I'll be hungry and feel like it (two young children and breastfeeding means I could just about eat a whole horse when dinner time comes round!).

After all, food shouldn't be limited, rationed and controlled. I'm sure he can find something else to eat, it doesn't matter that he's been looking forward to it.

That's not really answering the question though. So the first time you made this meal, you either a) controlled what everyone ate or b) one person ate much more than an equal division and some other people potentially got nothing. Which is it?

At some point, a judgement is made about everyone’s appetites collectively, and a limit is placed on how much food is available generally. That’s fine, it’s normal. What isn’t then normal is to extrapolate to judgement about other people making calculations as to how much food to cook for their family, and say they are causing disordered eating.

I do the same - judge how much we normally eat of a type of food, and cook that amount without considering exact portions per person. But if someone took eg 6/12 sausages that had been cooked for the five of us, I would absolutely say something like “hang on, have you checked whether everyone else has enough?”. It’s not shaming or restricting someone’s food in a damaging way, it’s just noting that this is something we are sharing and an element of communication and consideration of other people is appropriate

And if I cooked and ate 12 sausages for my lunch which had been earmarked for supper, without then buying more or figuring out some sort of substitute, my husband would be pretty pissed off about that

And according to many on here, that would be "controlling" of him apparently 😂.

I know!

I think there is a conflation of things - people assuming it’s about judging the appetite/amount of food eaten (which absolutely does happen and I can see it in this thread, but we don’t do that in my house) - and the lack of consideration in terms of not ensuring that planned meals are taken into account in a normal household

Neither happened. Seriously. You are catastrophising. Letting go doesn’t result in someone getting nothing or too little.

I don’t know why you can’t just say that everyone gets as much as they want but ultimately there is a limit to what is available.

Yes, but there needs to be a system in place such that you know a package of sausages are planned as part of dinner. The OP’s home seems to lack such a communication system and instead wants her DH to ask permission before even eating leftovers or cookies that were baked for everyone including him.

So it is ok to earmark food for things/people?

Because I don’t think of it in those terms? The amount of food eaten is set by what people need to eat, what is available isn’t a limiting factor under normal circumstances. If I were back in food insecurity, then yes, first the types of food available would shift to cheap and nutritious pulses, then if experiencing food shortages the amount of food would shift, and then we might consider rationing.

But for most families, we don’t need to ration food due to shortages. OP certainly doesn’t given her portion sizes where she’s detailed them.

That’s a circular argument

Yes, have said that from the start. It’s saying that one of the parents needs to ask permission/check with everyone else first that is daft and a bad way to go about communicating these things. No one should be asking for permission to eat from their partner or children, in my opinion. Nor should a child planning to have leftovers for lunch necessarily trump a hungry adult who would rather like to eat them now.

Even then, in my home if you want to eat something earmarked, you need only to replace it or put on the list for the regular top up shop is that’s happening before the meal the ingredient is needed for.

You can see there is a difference between sharing as equals and requiring your partner to ask permission?

“Even then, in my home if you want to eat something earmarked, you need only to replace it or put on the list for the regular top up shop is that’s happening before the meal the ingredient is needed for. “

same here.

and if that isn’t happening in a person’s home, maybe it’s because someone is selfish and not considering the needs of everyone else they share food with, and needs to be reminded? Or divorced, that works too.

no it’s not. The amount of food eaten is limited by what is needed to be eaten based on appetite and biology. The usual problem our society faces is eating too much, not too little, so what’s available is almost always more than what is needed. People naturally stop eating when they stop feeling hungry. They don’t keep eating until all the food is gone.

Unless you’ve trained them to- which many are guilty of. Controlling portions (to include “teaching” children what a “normal” portion of x, y and z is), plating up individual meals or supervising how much each person puts on their plate, putting all the food in front of them on that plate or on the table, having a clear your plate or no pudding/no leave the table rule,- you’ve trained people from childhood to ignore their body and eat what is available. So of course, if you’ve been trained to eat only limited by what is available then that is how you think and what you do out of habit.

OR because no one is communicating. The OP’s posts seem to include an expectation of mind reading.

If communication were happening, then yes, the person should be reminded about sharing. Sharing should never require asking permission of everyone else in the family before eating something.

I don’t mean you personally…was talking general you.