SINGAPORE: A young Singaporean took to social media on Sunday (May 25) to share her frustration with her parents’ lack of concern for her health, revealing that she had been fed unhealthy food for years and was dismissed when she raised concerns about her medical condition.
In a post on r/askSingapore, the local recounted how her parents would regularly serve dishes such as Hokkien mee, char kway teow, and mee goreng “three times a day for multiple days in a row” or even “the same pizza for all meals across three days.”
“When I was young, of course, I had no idea what was good and what was bad, so I had no choice but to go with it,” she wrote.
“But now that I’m older and also diagnosed with very high cholesterol (around three times what’s considered high for average people), I’ve requested my parents to stop,” she added.
However, instead of taking her condition seriously, she said her parents brushed off the diagnosis as an exaggeration, insisting there was “nothing to worry about.”
She has since taken matters into her own hands. “I decided to learn how to cook and have been cooking my own meals. I’ve told them to stop getting food for me as I’ll handle all of my meals on my own,” she said.
Despite this, she said her parents continue to buy food for her, especially on weekends when she wakes up late, and get upset when she refuses to eat it. “When I refuse to eat what they bought because it’s worsening my health problems that have already been officially diagnosed, they get mad about how I’m ungrateful and that I should eat whatever they spend their money on.”
She added that it has become a choice between “sacrificing [her] physical or mental health.” She expressed how demoralising it feels to work out consistently at the gym only to be forced into eating what she called “the greasiest hawker food you can find.”
“I’m gonna move out as soon as I can because I really do see my lifespan shortening before my eyes. Just needed to rant a little.”
At the end of her post, she asked the online forum, “Does anyone else have a similar problem?”
“Same here. My parents only love unhealthy food.”
In the comments, several users said they could totally relate to the original post, sharing that they also grew up eating hawker food almost every day because their parents were often too busy or tired to cook proper meals at home.
One said, “Yes, same. I can relate to you. Grew up with HKM every day for supper and had mee goreng/fried food for meals because they always buy from outside after work.”
Another wrote, “Same here. My parents only love unhealthy food, and it’s always carbs and unhealthy food. Dessert has more carbs. I was fed on a diet of unhealthy food and grew up really skinny.”
A third added, “My mother doesn’t allow me to cook and only lets me buy food from outside. She stocks up on a lot of instant noodles and eats them frequently. She hasn’t provided me with breakfast for years either.”
A few others, however, had a very different experience. Instead of being fed greasy food, they grew up with parents who were overly strict about eating “healthy.”
One shared, “My parents are the opposite, forced me to eat the healthiest food they can think, every morning during my primary school I was forced to finish either whole pot of old female chicken soup with whatever those Chinese medicine called or the lotus root soup, or mix of random vegetables & fruit juice.”
In other news, a Singaporean mum recently shared a raw and honest post on social media, saying that even though she has everything she once wished for—a family, a house, a car, and a stable job—she still feels like something is missing deep down. “My heart and mind still feel unsatisfied,” she admitted.
In a post titled “Drowning in the Depths: What to Do?”, she opened up about the emotional challenges of being a working parent and how this has greatly affected her marriage.
Featured image by Depositphotos (for illustration purposes only)