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The Clean Plate Club
Why Your Family Shouldn't Join
By Kelly Burgess
When my husband was a child, he and his sisters had to sit at the table until they finished their dinner – even if it meant they sat there until bedtime. Today, even my mother-in-law acknowledges that her rule was more cruel than caring and wonders if it contributed to the eating disorders her daughters later developed.
While it may have been cruel, it wasn't particularly unusual back in those days. Julie Matthews, a San Francisco-based certified nutrition consultant and founder of Healthful Living, says the experiences of our elders during the two World Wars and the Great Depression ingrained the idea of the "Clean Plate Club" into the American consciousness. The problem is that even with our current obesity epidemic and new knowledge about how eating patterns are set, some parents still force their kids to join this club.
Hoover took a number of measures to regulate all aspects of the food supply in America, but he also relied heavily on the American sense of volunteerism and patriotism. The idea was to conserve food by eating less, self-rationing scarce foods such as flour and sugar and by focusing on eating what you took, so it didn't go to waste. School children signed pledges that said: "At table I'll not leave a scrap of food upon my plate. And I'll not eat between meals, but for supper time I'll wait."
