Eat what's on your plate. That's what I was told. It was not to waste food. It was even a bigger problem for a picker eater, which I was. Now we have abundance of food, that I understand the thinking needs to be shifted to "may I be excused (from table)?" even if the food are not finished. It's hard, from time to time my fridge will be filled with leftovers that no one wants to eat and a painful great purge would have to happen. If there is never shortage of food and/or money to buy food, I found it difficult to instill "not wasting" with my kids. Like there is no ants or cockroaches roaming on the ground in the house, it was more difficult to ask kids to eat over the plates when the mere consequence is for parents to clean up afterwards. Once my kids saw tiny ants roaming around their aunt's kitchen in Taiwan, they knew. Yes, they knew it's imperative to keep places with no crumbs. Is it still "eat what's on your plate" or is
We often hear of cultures from the east and west. What if we are force from one to the other? Is there such as thing as a perfect balance?