Standards, a continuing conversation

I’ve been thinking (a bit more) about standards.

We brought into the home from Trader Joe’s (a new phenomenon for this household) four plastic packages of Organic sprouted mix: ingredients include sprouted organic adzuki beans, organic lentils and organic peas. I love this mix, and consume them plain and by the handful, even though I haven’t the foggiest idea what it means to say they are ‘sprouted,’ (probably something as a vegetarian I shouldn’t admit) or that they have these filaments hanging off of them that look like little tails. I remember this item from the glorious arrays of product on display at the green grocers on the streets of New York City, but the have not been a very hot item in the rural mid-west. Of course, I didn’t really I missed them until they reappeared suddenly in my home.

Thus, while munching cheerfully away today I noted on the package that the serving size was about ½ cup (57g), and that each package contained two servings.

Who sets these standards? Every package in my house has such a declaration: the unchicken nuggets (serving size 5 nuggets per person equals); potato chips (servings per container, 7, serving size 2.2 ounces, 7 chips); Paul Newman cream filled cookies (serving size, 2 cookies). Etc., etc. Every item in my pantry and refrigerator announces rather pointedly how much I ought to consume and how many calories this eating will entail. Who makes these decisions? Why do I only have to eat two cookies, or half a package of organic sprouted mix? Or that my bottle of root beer contains two servings even though the cap won’t go back on to preserve the bubbling for the second serving.

And then someone mentioned something about a dysfunctional family. What does that mean? What isn’t a dysfunctional family? If the standard is Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best or any recent situation comedy where the laughs occur every 11 seconds, then I don’t place much stock in the standard. Yet I suspect too many of us try to measure our own family life to a standard artificially set by someone who doesn’t know very much obviously. Or maybe s/he knows a great deal, and is working out in their standard-setting an unrealized (and unrealizable) wish for a more functional family.

And so, we all walk around eating seven potato chips, and half a container of organic sprouted mix, and two cookies, holding all the while that we derive from and maintain a dysfunctional family. And always wanting more.

Seven potato chips? Seven? And of what size should they be?