"That weird diet food you eat"--healthy eating stigma?

Like in most households, my mother is responsible for stocking the kitchen.  However, my mother is a nutritionist.  Everything in the house is low fat, fat free, sugar free, extra fiber, diet, with added calcium, etc, etc, etc.  There are lots of fruits, vegetables, and very lean meats.  We drink skim milk and fortified juices. 

This is the kind of food I’ve grown up on.  So when I stopped growing and started needing less calories, I didn’t have to make any changes to my diet as far as food goes.  I was already eating healthy. 

 This is the bizarre thing.  When people visit my house, or ask what I’ve brought for lunch, they seem to act as if my food is not as good as theirs, or that I’m somehow living in deprivation.  I’ve drunk regular Coke and eaten full-fat sour cream, etc, and know the difference, but I don’t feel like I’m particularly deprived.  I have no rules against eating junk food and I eat it sometimes.  

 Has anyone else here had similar experiences, with either growing up with a nutrition-conscious family or this stigma against “that weird diet food you eat”?  ("These are peas.  They're just vegetables....")

 (Thanks for reading the long post and for sharing your thoughts.  This post isn’t meant to be offensive and I apologize if it tripped your wire.)  

Yes, this happens.  People ask me why I am eating tuna salad out of a green pepper "do you have something against carbs??" No, I just think green peppers are tasty! Other people want to know why I would go to the trouble of making oatmeal from oats, nuts, and honey when they obviously have prepackaged envelopes for that.  I think packaged oatmeal is WAY too sweet and even the "low sugar" kinds only have less sugar because it was replaced with some sugar tasting chemical.  I just want it a little less SWEET! Even my husband will get upset from time to time because I will make a delicious dinner, albeit heavy on the veggies, and he will just stare at it "How can you eat this?  Where is the meat?"

I can't really relate, exactly... but I can say that I wish I had grown up more health conscious. I was a slightly overweight kid. I didn't know about calories, or how full of them soda and juice is... I loved orange soda. I just think your perception of food growing up is a big contributing factor to how you deal with it in adult life, and it's awesome that you got it straight from the beginning.

For me, now that I'm trying to eat healthy, I do find it an issue in social situations. Like if I go to a friend's, and they want to make quesadillas with chips and salsa for dinner and drink beer... I mean, I want to eat the quesadillas and drink the beer, but I feel embarrassed explaining that I'm trying to lose weight and partaking in these delights would be counterproductive. It's not fair that these skinny boys I'm friends with can just chow down and it never shows up... At any rate. Yeah, it's a little awkward at times to be the only healthy eater in your circle. :/

my problem growing up is that there wasnt really a set time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.. other then lunch at school.. it was more like, eat when you are hungry not at a set time. and so ive grown up eating small frequent meals thruout the day, like sandwiches and salads, fruits etc.. i cant ever finish a full plate of food at any of my friends house, to be honest i look at the food and think tot myself " what a huge mountain of food..F***" now i dont have a problem when i eat out with friends.. cus i just tell them i dont want arteriosclerosis.. but i have a BIG problem when im at my boyfriends house, and his mom is trying to feed me WHEN IM NOT HUNGRY.. its like i have to force myself to make her happy.. it sucks.. and i dont know how to work my way around that, the only plan i have thats working right now, is to come over after they finished dinner

Original Post by penkwin:

I can't really relate, exactly... but I can say that I wish I had grown up more health conscious. I was a slightly overweight kid. I didn't know about calories, or how full of them soda and juice is... I loved orange soda. I just think your perception of food growing up is a big contributing factor to how you deal with it in adult life, and it's awesome that you got it straight from the beginning.

For me, now that I'm trying to eat healthy, I do find it an issue in social situations. Like if I go to a friend's, and they want to make quesadillas with chips and salsa for dinner and drink beer... I mean, I want to eat the quesadillas and drink the beer, but I feel embarrassed explaining that I'm trying to lose weight and partaking in these delights would be counterproductive. It's not fair that these skinny boys I'm friends with can just chow down and it never shows up... At any rate. Yeah, it's a little awkward at times to be the only healthy eater in your circle. :/

 If it helps, it mostly likely will hit those skinny boy's you're friends with.  I used to be one of them, and once you hit the backside of 30 and sit in front of a desk all day, it will haunt them.

Doesn't help you much now, but you can giggle quietly to yourself when you see them chugging beers and scarfing down pizza.  Picture them about 40 pounds heavier...

Clint

Growing up, I experienced that a lot. I never drank Kool-Aid at home. I remember I went to a friends birthday party, poured myself a cup thinking it was orange juice and nearly spit out. My friend's parents thought I was weird because I never drank juice or soda and always had small or half-slices of cake. It's the way I was raised - sweets in moderation.

Also - a friend came over one day. We made sandwiches and as she looked in our fridge she said to me "Where's the white bread?". I said to her "We don't have any." SHe loked at me, totally horrified and said "What do you mean, you don't have any?" I replied back with  "We have rye and wheat." She had never eaten rye or wheat bread before. We were about 15 at the time. o.0 Talk about deprivation.

Apparently I'm known for the weird 'health' foods I eat at work...

I eat baby carrots on my breaks and once I brought in a baked sweet potato for lunch.

I can kinda relate I suppose. My parents were all for smaller portions when I was littler so it doesn't take me a lot to get full.  It's just hard when I have a room mate that would much rather go out to eat than sit at home and eat a nice cooked dinner. "your dinner has too many vegetables" she also won't eat the bread i make because it's "not processed enough" I kid you not..it doesn't have enough "fake" ingredients in it for her! It's ridiculous. I just sit back and laugh that I'm doing something good for my body when she and everyone else around me is not.

I just buy and eat fresh food, as close to natural as possible.  Since I don't buy many packaged foods, I don't get "sugar free" or added anything.  I don't like expensive packaged diet foods.

I ate very healthy foods as a kid - no soft drinks, no white bread, hardly and packaged food. But I wouldn't call them diet foods.

To the OP - I'm suprised that your mother, as a nutritionist, is a fan of low-fat, fat-free, sugar-free and diet products. Fine if sugar-free really means no sugar; but if the sweetness has been substituted with artificial sweeteners, I'd much rather have the real thing than a bunch of chemicals.

I'm also not a fan of low-fat products. Fat gives satiety and flavour; it gives tenderness to meat; it contains the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K; and it helps us to absorb calcium. There is nothing wrong with lean meat, but you can eat fattier cuts of meat and still be healthy. I also drink whole milk for the same reasons. It's not just about whether you feel deprived or not, it's about whether you are getting enough of both kinds of fat in your diet.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses everyone. 

#9 I don't call them "diet foods", just many people around me have.  Because of unrelated health problems my mother has, my family never eats meals together.  So I think my mother's logic was that she would stock the kitchen with healthier alternatives, even if they were artificial, so that whatever my brother and I got our hands on would be alright.  (I didn't mean for the thread to turn into another discussion of processed vs. natural, sorry.)

#8  My mother is pretty frugal and gets pretty annoyed when food has way more packaging than necessary. "WHY do I have to unwrap this TWICE??"  It's kind of funny lol. 

#7 Who would turn down homemade bread for the packaged stuff?  Not me lol. 

#6 I love baby carrots and sweet potatoes, haha. 

#5 Ouch.  o-O

#2 I feel your pain.  I was ambushed by donut-bearing coworkers today.  XD

Yeah, my friends like to check out my cupboard and fridge items for entertainment. They think it's amusing that I eat plantains, wheat germ, low sodium and sodium free soups, spike seasoning, pumpkin puree, so many vegetables and fruit, etc. They also think it's bizarre that I freeze fruit (grapes, blueberries) and sweeten everything with stevia. I've been given "looks" because I turn down wine for hot tea and when I do drink alcohol, it's usually whiskey with root beer instead of coke or 7-up.

Okay, maybe that last part is a bit weird.

My parents give me that. They're all 'your food this', 'your weird food that'

My mother is from an area where much of the economy is centered on fishing - so we eat and have always eaten a lot of fish. I actually get teased by other people because I eat fish more than once a week. I mean, what? So, what if I eat fish, it's actually much better for you than that big juicy steak you're eating right now.

I swear, some people.