To not understand adult food vs kids food?

It's really normal for little kids to like simple flavours, or to like their food separated out rather than mixed (my 4yo loves bolognese but has one bowl with the pasta and another with the sauce and mixes herself or eats them separately).

I think it's mostly important not to make an issue out of food, so ours often get a simpler take on what we're eating.

I don't mind simple kids menus. They're not healthy but eating out is a treat and you can always order an extra portion of veg. I eat most things, but if a menu has scallops for starter and duck for the main then that's what I'll be having and I don't think that's morally superior to my 4yo always wanting sausages dipped in ketchup.

I'm in my 40s. When I was a kid, I used to hate being given the children's menu when out for a meal, I'd ignore it and order off the adult menu. I thought the kid's menu options were boring. Mind you, when I was a toddler one of my fave meals was apparently Chinese curry from the takeaway!

the usual processed shite on a kid's menu I doubt it.

I don't agree, but in the 1970s and 80s, when I grew up, we had a much more varied diet than most today. We used to live between Ireland, the UK, and Saudi Arabia, with many different food opportunities.

But even in the UK, there were lots of options even then...

Too many just make excuses for shit parenting,

But I've also lost count of the amount of Cubs/ Scouts I've had on camp who according to their parents won't eat x or y - but happily consume it on camp - in one extreme case we had a child who only ate tomato sauce sandwiches for every meal - was sent with own bread and sauce - but all weekend he just ate everything. and afterwards we handed back the bread and sauce..

A friend who has more money than me, feeds her toddler top quality steak when they are having some. He loves the steak.
I saw someone on MN once ridiculing the idea that kids would eat curry. It is true they might not if they have never eaten it. But lots of young children eat curry every day.

I recall being with our, then, two year old granddaughter, she was having some pasta, we were sharing a seafood grazing platter and she was devouring the whitebait like there was no tomorrow!

Quite! Faux naïveté combined with with smugness and judgy mcjudge pants

This is turning into a bit of a smugfest. It is not a British cultural thing. It's also common in many other European countries. Just look on Google for a typical Dutch kids' menu: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=967cb4d33a83a1c2&sxsrf=ADLYWILpjxXO6pFd2HkapwdmokS-eDkMeg:1732283591148&q=kindermenu&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0Aa4sjWe7Rqy32pFwRj0UkWd8nbOJfsBGGB5IQQO6L3JzWreY9LW7LdGrLDAFqYDH2woUsp5q8yOe1Ezp2_yrNmbL8vaQQdNDUdhJu8jl00iZyd1tIjZH2k6Aeul7fB2C_ZQdIzWelN8xbCQF02kyuSMLzVg2JuP23Ftr8eQ-tkOjUrRHiV9XVPebcl7O1pcE9yrI85&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLzeagi_CJAxWrRPEDHaVJGmAQtKgLegQIIhAB&biw=1901&bih=935&dpr=1

My kids love having the occasional pizza slice/chicken nuggets/chips in a restaurant because they wouldn't usually have that at home. Less food waste, happy kids, and if they want something of the adult menu, that's cool, too.

I cared if it was a children's item or not - why would I pay for an adult sized portion which is too big for a young child?

It is a British thing IME to have a completely separate and usually lower quality menu for children instead of the option of half portions for children. I was even told at times "no you can't buy one adult portion and have two plates" and was pointed instead at the "chips and beans" menu for children.

This isn't about the virtue or otherwise of any particular style of eating - its the weirdness of restaurants offering a range of adult dishes and then only offering children a couple of chips and beans options.

Could it be that the kids menu has less salt in the food? I guess this could be one of the reasons perhaps.

Food is food and our DDs always ate what we ate from a young age......

It pisses me off when a parent goes "oh johnny won't like that"

at one of our kid's parties, they made pizzas - they chose what they put on it, one mum was feeding her other child in our lounge - and her DS walked in all excited by what he'd made to be met with looks loverly but you won't like that... never even tried it...

Parents are the worst at putting their own offspring off food.....

I also think the "when I was young you ate what you were given" crew are missing the huge variation in diet now that just wasn't there when I was growing up (80s). Most people ate some sort of meat and two veg meals, with the occasional pasta bake or really mild curry (bright yellow with raisins in!). Mince and onions was another one that we used to get loads and I don't think anyone eats now. A lot of it was bland, unthreatening food that today's "fussy eaters" will often eat.

I suspect that if the 70s and 80s had involved expectations that small children will get involved in sushi, Thai noodle salads, moussaka, risottos, curries, Korean hotpot at home and eat at restaurants with food from around the globe, we may have found there were more "fussy eaters" back then too. (And yes, yes I know that your little Tabitha simply loves sushi and often begs to go out for a spinach curry, she's evidently not a fussy eater and you know what? That is exclusively down to your good parenting, you superior being, you.)

Remember Indian restaurants that offered omelette and chips to the adult fussy eaters back then who couldn't bring themselves to try a curry? That's the equivalent of a children's menu - unobjectionable beige food to allow the fussy to eat alongside the grown-ups. Because at the end of the day, eating out is meant to be a pleasant experience, not a chore. If a children's menu facilitates that for some families, all power to the children's menu.

There seems to be an assumption that those of us that cook/have cooked 2 meals are doing it because we've never tried giving kids the same food as adults...?

I literally followed the weaning guidelines to the letter as a FTM but my daughter hadn't read the books and wasn't have any of it.she is just really fussy

IMO a lot of it is luck rather than superior parenting

It's a British cultural thing, but it's not universal for every family in the UK. Many British families manage not to go down this route

Only in the UK will you find the "childrens' menu" of beige breaded items with chips alongside an adult menu when eating out. It normalises the concept. But we also have a lot of chain restaurants in the UK that infantilize adult eating out, and it's quite possible that these are linked phenomenon.

I don't get this either, but my parents always just gave us whatever they were having so I didn't grow up with the kid food/adult food distinction.

My brother and I were actually reminiscing the other day about how, on the rare occasions we ate out when we were kids in the 1980s, our dad always told us we didn't have to have things off the kids' menu because the kids' menu always sounded shit to him and not like a treat. So other kids would be sitting there with their plain beefburger, chips and beans and me and my brother would be tucking into a rare steak with peppercorn sauce or something.

It really does seem to be a British thing, I just find it to be a cultural quirk. My son never had beige food/chicken nuggets/chips until he started school. He’s 10 now and eat much of it now. It never occurred to me to cook a separate meal for him, I was raised eating whatever my parents were eating, and my son ate whatever I ate, and I don’t do ‘beige’ food because it was simply not a thing growing up.

He’ll happily eat sauerkraut, buckwheat, fish, other fermented foods, loads of veg, cause that’s what he was raised eating. And that’s cultural too!

We always had the same problem with menus eating out. It does seem that kids menus are tailored solely for those that feed their kids exclusively on pizza, fish fingers and nuggets.
Why don’t restaurants just do smaller versions of the adults food?? Like a “lighter bites” offering?

Three year olds being served puréed food from a jar? Do the parents not understand the importance of solid food at that age (and younger) to develop healthy teeth, and jaws? They’ll be complaining of speech problems next 🙄 I’d ignore them, OP, no point engaging with that level of stupid!

People assume their children won't like things that are controversial with adults- e.g. seafood, olives, certain cheeses, tomatoes, things with unusual textures like tofu or calamari. But children don't know what they like, and aren't always conditioned to not like controversial flavours like fish or blue cheese.

I understand not giving your child a risky new food if you can't afford/bear to waste it- especially something like calamari. But that doesn't make it unsuitable for a child!

I can't stand fish and cheese but my kids love them! Purely because I'm not the type of parent to care about money being wasted on experiencing new things, and I don't share my negative opinions on things like food- that can be so toxic

These smug mums posting about their gourmet kids eating everything are extremely irritating. I cooked from scratch for my kids whenever I could and tried to feed them the same diet as us but it doesn't always work out that way. Out of three children one eats everything, one is extremely fussy and one is somewhere in between.

When people say it's a British thing, they are not claiming that all parents in Britain are like this, obviously. Just that it's a pattern which can be observed in Britain more so than many other countries.

My son is a picky eater.

I tried the whole, they just eat what you eat etc and he wasn't having it.

Having said that, when we last went out for a pub meal, he had the boeuf bourgninon with mash rather than a burger or nuggets etc. He doesn't like burgers or breaded food but likes mash, veg and soft meat.

I don't care whether it's a kids menu item or not, nor do I do the faux confusion over kids vs adult meals. Some kids are fussy, some aren't. I'm just happy when we get him a meal he likes!

It's definitely a British thing. I say that as a Brit who was raised this way. Thankfully, I lived abroad during my teens and learned to love food. My 4 were all weaned on small, mashed up portions of whatever we were eating. We always eat together at the table and meal times are adventurous and varied. They have all gone through fussy stages of refusing to eat certain things, but I haven't changed the way I cook as a result. The only adjustments would be a big spoon of plain yoghurt if I make a meal too spicy (they actually all love spicy food thank god!). Eating out here is difficult - the younger ones can't eat an adult sized meal, but often don't want the crap offerings on the kids menu. We tend to stick to Chinese, Indian, Japanese for that reason. Of course there are kids with allergies and sensory needs and they should be catered for, but many fussy kids are just that way because their parents weaned them on junk.

Always fed my children the same as us. They eat spicy food, and everything else.
kiddie food is just a marketing con and usually is beige and has little nutritional benefit

Some kids like different foods, have different tastes just like adults do. I thought my older dd would never eat properly during weaning, she just hated it, only wanted to drink milk for ages. Now she’s 8 she’s really adventurous, will eat a wide variety of ‘adult’ food. You just deal with what you’re dealt with at the time, as with most things with kids some things are easier with some of them compared to others, there’s no point in judging.
I agree kids menus are generally pretty rubbish and cater only to the pickier eaters, i suspect they’re cheaper to make?