When my husband, Gregg, and I first met, our polar-opposite eating habits were cute. "He still likes Cocoa Puffs!" I'd say, gently ribbing him at dinner with another couple. We'd tease each other in the grocery aisles, and when we got home, everything pulled from the bag would repulse someone. In it for him: American cheese. For me: flaxseed oil. For him: bottles of Yoo-hoo, SpaghettiOs. For me: spelt rice cakes, almond butter, whole-wheat pasta.
It was only when, in our first year of marriage, I made him a birthday cake from scratch—complete with Valrhona chocolate ganache—that I saw how serious he was about his food. He peeked into the kitchen during my baking extravaganza, only to look disappointed. "I told you what I like," he said sheepishly. "Duncan Hines. Brown on brown." Little did I know then that this moment would turn out to be a microcosm of our marriage.
After we had kids—Eddie, now 4, and Jane, 2—our tender dichotomy turned into a clash of ideologies. To me, his eating habits seemed juvenile, out of date, and leached of all nourishment; he called my whole-wheat-washing of the pantry "hostile." While our respective preferences could coexist peacefully without children, they couldn't, in my mind, before impressionable eyes and palates. All it took was Gregg leaning over the high chair once to share a spoonful of Cocoa Puffs for Eddie to start begging for them every morning—and for me to ban them from the house. When SpaghettiOs became the go-to quick-and-dirty dinner on nights I was out, I took the reins of the family diet, and Gregg responded like a bucking bronco.
It got to the point where I felt Gregg and I might never fight if not for food. Every once in a while—usually when Gregg was feeling exhausted and oppressed, or after I'd just done a shop my way—he would lash out at the refrigerator: "All I want is a goddamned slice of American cheese! What's so awful about that?" For emphasis, he'd wave around a block of goat's-milk Camembert I'd bought at the farmers' market. That farmers' market was another sticking point. He treated trips there with the kids as if shopping for food were something I was doing for myself, like a spa day.
Next Page: Processed Versus Unprocessed Foods
