Eat your greens!

@sheoaouhra No I also think you've been quite patronising. Why are you so concerned? Will there be an enormous dripfeed where your DIL isn't feeding your DGC enough veg?

Why are British kids so opposed to eating vegetables? I've lived in continental Europe and it is (very rarely) an issue there. I don't understand it. Is it embedded in the nations DNA? I loved all vegetables as a kid and considered them as nice as everything else on my plate. I gave my son fresh pureed veg from a young age and he loves his veg too. Ditto everyone else in my family.

This is Mumsnet where everyone will have either a child that eats 2044 of their 5 a day every day or won't eat a single bit of it and no inbetween.

My ds eats broccoli most days...if not, peas or carrots.

DD is less keen on cooked veg. She loves salad though so at least has some form of lettuce every day with grated carrot, cucumber etc.

I wanted my kids to have a very varied diet and made lots of vegetables the norm since the DC were weaned: the evening meal will typically include at least two portions, sometimes more: broccoli, spinach, cabagge, kale, rocket, sweet potatoes, peas, edamame, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots are staples. They have their favourites and some like some things more than others, naturally, but they get served and eaten.

But most of my DC's friends do not countenance most vegetables and a couple even claim to dislike all fruit. We have recently hosted a vegetarian exchange student who disliked most vegetables and only wanted pasta with pesto. No greens seems a fairly common approach amongst the kids I know, sadly. I should add that the particular kids I am thinking of do not have SEN or allergies and come from families in (very) substantially better financial situation to our own.

No, not obviously. Many people don’t know the difference. Kids at school have asked my DS if he’s eaten too many sweets. It’s infuriating.

The other motto to put alongside this is 'pick your battles'.

The first green veg my dd would eat was samphire.

She grew up fit and healthy.

Yes, but fibre comes not just from carb-heavy sources like brown rice, wholemeal flour, pulses and potatoes, but also the less calorific fruits and vegetables like spinach, celery and watermelon.

Mine both eat a ton of green and other vegetables. Dc2 loves them, and will eat raw cabbage given the chance. I am very lucky though, as I know other families who's children refuse vegetables and I literally don't know how you're meant to deal with it without force feeding them. My eldest is vegetarian by choice, and I'd never force feed her a steak, despite worrying about the things she may be lacking from abstaining from meat, just make sure she takes a daily supplement and sometimes we do have to have talks around making sure she's getting enough protein elsewhere in her diet, if she's to not eat meat, although she loves beans and lentils so I try not to worry too much. Never done anything special to make them like greens, they just always have, and will often ask for green veggies when I give them the choice on what they want with dinner.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I suppose all diets have their downsides. My own is way too carb heavy as I get older, so now I have modified it to some extent, keeping the veggies but reducing the carbs.

I am also the mother of a child on the autistic spectrum but oddly enough in our house she was the non-picky eater and her brother (not ND) was the one who wouldn't touch many of the the things the rest of us were eating. His father was apparently the same growing up. Both of them eat a good varied diet now, including plenty of vegetables, because they know about the health benefits. I understand that for parents of children with eating issues (and adults who were/are similar) this is a very emotive issue. But as several of us have already said this is not an issue for most of the world or even for the majority of the UK population. Eating real food is always going to be better than getting nutrients from supplements, not least because of the fibre content. I'm not a scientist or HCP but if I had to hazard a guess at why rates of bowel cancer are going up in younger people across the rich countries of the world, I'd pick low fibre diets as a good place to start.

My autistic child saw a consultant dietician just last week, who reassured me that a heavy, daily reliance on veg & fruit is massively outdated and was based on times when barely any food was enriched. She said it would be very, very difficult for a child to become malnourished in today's times, provided they're eating something each day as even bread & cereal is fortified. She even went on to describe one fellow student at med school who had ARFID and ate nothing but jam sandwiches- every single day for years. He's now 6ft 2, goes to the gym and is a very successful doctor who eats anything & everything and plays rugby.

Obviously I still get whatever veg into my DC that I can, most days but fruit & veg wise, she will only eat carrots and apples because she has ASD and ARFID. Autistic children WILL play the long game and WILL starve themselves before eating something that they don't want!!!!

Wow
So much judgement.

I was a fussy eater as a child. I only liked homemade food with the exact same ingredients (lots of cooked veg though). My mum got so annoyed when I identified that it was "different" but admitted it was. (Even changing the brand of tinned tomatoes caused problems). I disliked almost all junk food except chocolate.

However, SHE was a fussy eater in the 50s! Her "Sunday roast" was chips and eggs.

By the time I came along she was very into salads and vegetables and fruit. But because of her experience she didnt force me.

Now I have 2 fussy eaters. Because of my experience, I don't force them. They eat a wide variety of food and vegetables BUT they need to be cooked in sauces (no need to hide them). The only veg they accept on the side are peas.

My eldest has made leaps and bounds and now tries lots of new things. My youngest is slower but is gradually getting better.

And fussy old me? Well, I now eat lots of vegetables although Im still not a huge fan of fruit.

Absolutely agree with this. Glad to see OP has been appointed Green Champion of Mumsnet.

How fucking dare you??? I expect you don't have kids! The ignorance of children and how the work, is astounding.

I feel irritated by the faintly sanctimonious tone of the OP. And I say that as a mum of kids who happily eat veg and ‘greens’. Judgement disguised as faux-concern always makes me cringe.

Some of those parents have explained their reasoning though. I'd certainly not be forcing a child with ASD to eat food that would upset them.

My exBIL was forced to sit and eat his mother's awful cooking regularly and it's caused him to have a really limited diet as an adult.

Yes, exactly, in some cultures, the idea that kids dislike veggies and struggle with them does not exist. It would be like saying " I dislike food".

Veggies were supposed to be a treat, not something to be grimly endured. Greens as well. My mum wasn't trying to torture me. We all ate the same food.

What do people mean when they say they had no option? I didn't have the option not to eat veg because mouth was prised open, the food forced in, and then my mouth was held shut until I swallowed it.

Well I just mean that food was often mainly made up of vegetables ( chick pea dishes with spinach, rice with vegetables cooked in it, baked aubergines, tomato salads etc) and that is what was for tea and there were no options given. I don’t think it would have occurred to my mum that this type of food was meant to be endured or used as a means of control, it was generally considered to be tasty!
I do wonder if the lack of cooking skills in a lot of British families contributes to the idea that vegetables are a penance?
I do think the garbage that passes for kid food in the uk is criminal. Most countries don’t have “kid food”.

I openly admit that of 3 kids, two of mine wouldn’t entertain the idea of greens. One has extreme selective eating and the other vomits if any texture disagrees with him. Oddly it’s my child who’s high needs/will need a lifetime of support that’s the easiest to feed.

A lot of ‘but you’d have just got on with it years ago’ thrown out here. I grew up with a very ‘picky’ mother who by all accounts didn’t eat what was put in front of her either as a child. Sunday dinners at my grandparents as a child included tinned sliced carrots just for her palate - this was the 90s and she was well into her 30s. In fact I was the family joke for ‘being a human dustbin’ simply for being the only one who’d eat whatever was placed in front of me. It did happen years and years ago, people just didn’t talk about it because they were from the ration generation and to refuse now plentiful food was seen as embarrassing.

most kids struggle with vegetables in their early years and gradually enjoy them more as they age.

You may be right about many children growing up in the UK, but from what I can make out it isn't the case in most of the rest of the world. I don't understand why but I think the poster who said it's key for children to see adults eating vegetables is probably on the money - that, and deep-seated issues around food in the parents and the culture which the children pick up on. I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in a family where eating vegetables was just a given. I totally agree that it's counter-productive to make food into a big emotional issue, but most humans don't have sensory issues around fruit and vegetables and are perfectly capable of eating a wide range of foods.

Still trying over here, we had various coloured peppers, peas, tomatoes and cucumber on the table. DD will only eat tomatoes.

We do have fruit, veg, and salads every day, but not necessarily "greens" if that basically means brassicas (cabbage/sprouts/broccoli).
Mainly because we don't eat many traditional meat and veg dinners.
We eat lots of peppers, courgettes, peas, pulses, carrots, salad veg, tomatoes, baked beans, and stir-frys (which would probably have broccoli)
If I do a roast or cottage pie or a stew, we would likely have more traditional vegetables with that.