Does anybody else experience thin privilege issues around cooking and meals?

Baking is my hobby, and thin privilege is thinking the best way to compliment someone’s food offering is by shaming them for it. My family has no other way to talk about food. "Oh, it’s so bad, you can’t bring this again. I don’t need this, I don’t want this, this is so mean.“ It’s actually hard for me to remember exactly what they say because it’s so nonsensical.

Although it’s far from the most directly harmful form of thin privilege, nothing encapsulates the thin privilege mindset for me better than simultaneously expressing how much you enjoy food by talking about how much you hate it, while complimenting someone by heaping insults on them.

I had been baking for years before I tried sharing with my family and at first I tried bringing different things after they "complained,” but if I bring cookies instead of a cake - for example - they just complain about those and then ask why they don’t rate a cake this time. If I don’t bring anything, or press the question of why I would want to keep bringing people things they say they don’t want, then they say they know I enjoy baking so they “eat it for me.” Only with the help of thin privilege can eating something you enjoy be an act of selfless self-sacrifice.

I finally had it out with my mother over this when she decided to tell me how cruel I was being to my boyfriend by making him a cake on his birthday. This only lead to more logical crazy-straws. "I’m sorry you thought I was saying you’re a bad cook (I didn’t); you’re a good cook, that’s why it’s so bad.“ Also, I’m apparently being childish for insisting that people should just tell me if they like something or not.

As far as I can tell the problem isn’t just that I bring food, it’s that I don’t portion police. The appearance of plenty tempts them to overeat, but whether to the point of illness or just guilt isn’t always clear. Also, this applies to basically all food: A cake is too big and they feel socially pressured to eat it and/or fooled into taking a large portion because there’s more. Cookies are smaller, so it’s easier to "trick yourself” into eating too many by eating one at a time. Once again, only with the help of thin privilege can bringing enough for everyone to have as much as they want be seen as encouraging overeating.

Maybe if they ate when they were hungry, they wouldn’t overeat when they were starving just because there’s food around? I’d rather be fat (and I am) than live a life where accidentally eating until I felt sick was the daily hazard my family makes it out to be.

The choices on the table are: eat the food, or don’t. I really don’t mind if they don’t want to eat it. I’ve cooked and dined with people who kept kosher, halal, vegan and gluten free and if they can’t eat something, they just say “no thank you” and eat something else! Nobody spends as much time complaining about what they “can’t” eat - and then eating it anyway - as people whose food lives are organized around fatphobia.

As you can probably guess, since my story is about my family, I have plenty of other thin privilege experiences many of which intersect with the facts that I’m gay and disabled. Many are more direct and more violent, and I’ll probably eventually share some. Complaining about cooking might seem trivial or even tangential compared to many of the stories shared here, but I think these kinds of stories are examples of how privilege insists on bringing attention back to itself. I don’t have a hobby, I make people fat. I’m not sharing with people, I’m tempting them.

I’m really curious about people’s experiences in this regard. For example, is it more socially acceptable to bring “bad” foods if you’re “healthy” yourself? Do you get less shame for different types of food, like things that aren’t dessert or food that’s traditional to the occasion? How do you respond to this, and have you had any success?