“What went wrong?”
Who came up with that business about “Now eat all the food on your plate because there are children starving all over the world”
Kind of a dumb statement to make (probably originated out of some Hollywood movie) but what a way to lay on a guilt complex.
I got that treatment as a small child from my stepmother. She was, unsurprisingly, a Lefty.
At the time, I remember being utterly puzzled what one aspect of that statement had to do with the other. How 'bout if I just eat enough to last me, without complaint, to the next meal?
Hmmmm...
>>Who came up with that business about “Now eat all the food on your plate because there are children starving all over the world”
Actually the origin was Herbert Hoover, who was responsible for food aid to Europe in the aftermath of WWI. The original saying referred to “starving children in Europe”. Hoover generated a lot of publicity for the aid effort. For good or ill, the propaganda stuck in the American consciousness.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9507E5D8103FE432A25751C2A9679C946095D6CF
It was employed again, though perhaps to less melodrmatic effect, after WWII. Western Europe was more or less destroyed. Industry, agriculture, and transport all had been obliterated. There were starving people in Europe, the ancestral home of most Americans, and so there was great concern among Americans, and unprecedented action on the part of the US government, such as the Marshall Plan.
I remember my mom, and other moms, using that in the late 1940s after the war. Eat everything on your plate, children in Europe are starving! So, mom, send this stuff to em and they won’t be hungry any longer, got me punishment more than once but also caused her to stop using it:)
Interestingly enough, it's also a way to lay on the pounds. And teaching kids to overeat leads to grown-ups who consume more than they should. While all that excessive food isn't really being taken from "starving children all over the world"; if it were, it would only lead to more starving children.
We were never told to eat all our food because “there were children starving”. We were told whatever went uneaten would be put in the refrigerator and the next time we were hungry we had to eat THAT first. Oh and there was no dessert unless everything was eaten off the plate.
My mom used a different one: "Now eat all the food on your plate because you won't get any apple pie later if you don't."