Alimentación salud y cultura - SANHISO C. International health and ...

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Diversos autores
Feeling uncomfortable at commensual occasions:
a gender problem
Elisa told the group that when she usually visits her younger sister
there is no way of having control over the schedule of eating – «They
will not make the lunch before 4 p.m.!» –, and it is impossible to have
something to eat because she never find food ready cooked – «I never
find something to eat!». She presented the situation as really difficult for
her (Field notes).
Elisa’s report refers to an uncomfortable condition in the family encounter:
nobody takes care of her. She does not also feel autonomy to
establish their practices of care of herself at those moments in which
she «returns» to the family.
On the same occasion mentioned above, Ester exemplified with
her own experience 7 the idea that only the mother is capable of taking
care of the other. She concluded that, with the exception of the
mother, nobody else in the family would assume the care with the
diabetic relative.
Being with the family is felt as something incompatible with the
eating practices required by diabetes. That becomes evident with the
example by which Elisa showed to the group how she averted the
problem of eating in a walk to the beach, when she was vacationing
with her son’s family:
She also used to spend long periods at the beach in the company
of relatives , but her advantage was that the house was very close to the
beach, and so, she could escape from the group and come back quickly:
«I go, have something to eat, and then I come back». As I understood from
the gestures that accompanied her comment, the attitude of going out
for a fast meal and coming back soon, expressed especially its advantage
of passing unnoticed (Field notes).
7 She reported that her son had suffered for a long time with a disease that forced
him to eat every 3 hours, and only cooked vegetables. She emphasized the enormous
care that she had leaving the portions prepared beforehand. She concluded by saying:
«I did that because I was a mother, nobody else would do the same thing» (Field notes).