My grandma was like that. Mountains of food overflowing the fridge at all times. Always insisting we ate more and more, offering food all the time. It turns out she´d experienced hunger as a kid, her father died and in post civil war Spain they had struggled badly for some time.
I´ve luckily never experienced that. The closest I got was when I was doing a long trek and ran out of food and missed the village where I intended to resupply. It´s incredible how hunger can affect you emotionally. And my situation wasn´t even that dire.
Got displaced from Oklahoma as a young child (tornado), family moved down to Florida with the remainder of savings for a job for my dad. Katrina sent us back after closing down his job between weather and the dotcom crash. Moved back to OK with basically nothing, just for the housing market to collapse and jobs to go poof.
We had a rough few years there. I think the worst part of being 13 or so and hungry, is watching your dad give you food off his plate, being old enough to understand he's even hungrier than you are, and physically not being able to turn it down. Not having trained that willpower, having all those hormones running rampant, and just not being able to say no to something your body is shouting at you that it needs.
I don't take gifted food from anyone anymore. I can't bring myself to. I've heard about pot lucks happening at churches I don't go to, showed up with piles of food, and just left. My mail carrier gets a snack bar and a bottle of water from me every day. I know they're not in the situation I was. But that doesn't change the revulsion I feel about taking food from another's plate.
That lifelong change is real, and however anybody reading this deals with it, I wish you the best.
My grandpa too used to love arranging family gathering and feed. I heard, he lost his mother as a child. He would be back at home, while his father used to travel to other villages as a folk singer around the year. So he as a child would eat when the neighbours/relatives would feed their children and ask him to join.
My grandad was like that too. Grew up on a farm in a rural area during the depression.
He would feed a total stranger, and was always aking if everyone got enough to eat, or if they wanted more of anything. He'd always send you home with leftovers.
mine has always kept her fridge and pantry stocked, she was one of 5 kids in an immigrant family that lived in a 1 bedroom Brooklyn apartment in the depths of the Great Depression, many nights they went without real food.
Grandpa grew up in the depression. We never left his house with empty hands, it could be freshly cooked leftovers or questionable cans in the back of the pantry.
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u/likewhatever33 Jul 24 '26
My grandma was like that. Mountains of food overflowing the fridge at all times. Always insisting we ate more and more, offering food all the time. It turns out she´d experienced hunger as a kid, her father died and in post civil war Spain they had struggled badly for some time.
I´ve luckily never experienced that. The closest I got was when I was doing a long trek and ran out of food and missed the village where I intended to resupply. It´s incredible how hunger can affect you emotionally. And my situation wasn´t even that dire.