Food
On average, kids these days drink twice as much soda as milk. We only had soda in our house for our birthday. Even now I don't really like soda that much. But we did drink a lot of milk. My father is barely six feet and my mother's 5'9''. But I'm 5'11'' and all of my brothers are taller than me. Does the fact that we went through a gallon of milk a day have something to do with it?
Growing up with four brothers, even if we did have something sugary in the house, it would be gone within hours. Mom would only buy one box of sugar cereal a month. Since I liked to sleep in, it would all be gone by the time I came downstairs. Fruit would also disappear in a manner of seconds. But it was never possible to really pig out on a bag of chips or something because if my brothers saw me eating, they'd join me. And when I got a box of chocolates from them for my birthday I'd always split it with them. It just made sense, because then they'd share their birthday candy with me.
Most families eat out at least once a week, and rarely if ever eat together. Brian once had a speech assignment to order things from McDonald's one year, so then we got to go there. But we never had much money, plus the prospect of coralling five wriggly children put the kibosh on restaurants for us.
We did not have an "open cabinet" system in our house. The only thing we could snack on was fruit, crackers, and cookies if we made them ourselves.
I didn't learn all good lessons growing up. We were so desperate for sugar growing up my brothers would just eat sugar sometimes (brown and powdered are the best). I also learned that if I didn't eat it right now, it would be gone. When I went to college, I was so excited to see that I could eat as much as I wanted, and even have dessert at every meal. And I still have a big sweet tooth and always like to have candy around. But I'm still living in a big "family" so some of these rules still apply.
