Dandelion by Gabbie Hanna

Author:Gabbie Hanna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2020-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Second Hot Dog

I remember the exact moment I started hating my body. It was the catalyst of a lifelong battle with low self-esteem, self-loathing, and an array of eating disorders. Funny, what a second hot dog can do.

My mom was always on a diet when I was growing up. No-carb. No-fat. Tofu with sugar-free chocolate powder. Diet pop. Sweetener packets dumped into plain low-fat yogurt. Late-night bingeing followed by 5 a.m. workout tapes. When it came to us kids, though, our food intake wasn’t what I would call regulated, or really even monitored. Granted, the ’90s were a very different time when it came to health education and information. It was a time where SunnyD was the equivalent to orange juice, and orange juice was considered a healthy alternative to pop. Sugar wasn’t a concern, artificial sweeteners and chemicals were science fiction. Calories were king, nothing else mattered… and kids didn’t count calories.

Being poor definitely didn’t help my relationship with eating. One of the greatest tragedies of the modern world is how accessible nutritionally empty, high-calorie foods are and how unattainable organic, nutrient-rich foods are for most middle-to-lower-class citizens. If you have a family of four to feed, you’re not going to grab a cut of quality meat from the butcher and fresh produce to feed them for the night; you’re going to buy the case of ramen to feed them for a month. You could splurge and buy some hamburger meat, buns, cheese, and ketchup, but you’re more likely going to stop at McDonald’s and get a burger for 99 cents instead. Like most of America, I was raised on generic, processed, frozen, and boxed options. Sometimes, we relied on food banks or government assistance. Other times, we relied on the kindness of family and friends. The worst of times, we got food from the trash (until we got caught).

My parents made sure we got to school early enough to eat the free breakfast—some type of dessert or breakfast pizza. We qualified for free lunch, so we didn’t waste any money on packing one. The way our lunch was set up, you either paid or you didn’t when you reached the end of the line. That means that if you got free lunch, anyone around would know it. The first half of my school career was spent doing everything I could to not be seen. I patiently waited until every other student got their meal, insisting that I wasn’t hungry when my classmates asked me if I was getting in line with them. Or, I lingered in the hallway, mindlessly shuffling through papers in hopes of appearing to be busy. When everyone was seated and eating, I would say something along the lines of, “Eh, I guess I’d better eat—I don’t want to be hungry later.” When the coast was clear, I would slip into the cafeteria and swiftly grab a tray without the prying eyes of my classmates.

It only took one kid, one time, to yell, “Oh my God, you get free lunch?” for me to never allow myself to eat a tray lunch again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.