(no subject)

Spent all weekend arguing with my mother-in-law because 1) she likes to argue 2) she doesn’t believe that certain foods are more likely to make you fat than other foods.  She is very thin and has never dieted in her life.  She lives almost entirely on pure sugar, and gets very defensive every time someone tries to say that sugar/ soda/ juice/ processed foods are less healthy than other foods.  Her argument: she could drink a cup of juice and be totally full, so the idea that for most people, juice and soda are a way to drink a lot of calories without really noticing makes no sense to her.

I shouldn’t even engage.  She likes arguing and I don’t, and obviously a diet of very sweet coffee and various tasty snacks is not giving her diabetes or heart disease (though, at 61, she should probably be getting more exercise).  But I feel like she is making an implicit argument that Americans just lack self-control (because if the food environment is not putting people at risk, it must be their behavior) even though she has always ascribed the tiny amount she eats to her own preference and not to self-control.

Ugh. Mother-in-law-splaining.