Are my dinners rubbish?

OP said she was working, so her kid was at school that day. Personally, I count any nutrients from school lunch as a bonus at this age, because the amount eaten and nutrient quality is an unknown. So if you have 0.5 portion with dinner plus say 1 fruit, then you're expecting the breakfast to carry 3.5 fruit/veg as well as 80% of the fibre and 99% of the protein for the day. Maybe it did, we weren't asked to look at breakfast too, but it seems unlikely. Fine as a one-off to top up on other days. It doesn't make sense though to explicitly call the meal "quality nutrients" when it isn't.

Exactly. Provided it’s adding some quality nutrients to the diet, not every meal has to be heavy-lifting.

Things like crisps, naan and donuts I have an issue with.

The OP says Dc suddenly decided they didn’t like peas. Asparagus spears and roquette would both be lovely.

That’s nice for the occasional meal but all three of naan, rice and potatoes at most meals isn’t healthy. There’s very little to commend naan from a health perspective.

But individual meals don't need to contain all necessary nutrients, as long as they're in the overall diet, it's fine.

Fresh peas, chopped asparagus spears and/or roquette are also yummy with pesto op.

Add extra cheese and nuts by grating over the top.

But provided it’s just one meal of the day that’s perfectly ok op.

Not rubbish - but not what I'd call 'hearty' either. Other than the chilli, they seem more like lunches than dinners.

Also, takeaway once a week is probably a bit much.

PS I quite often make a curry that includes potatoes, and serve it with rice and sometimes – hang on to your hats! – naan AS WELL.
The food police haven't been round yet.

The most important point is, who is telling you that your meals are rubbish? If it's an adult, they can jolly well cook instead.
But anyway, I think these meals sound fine. You could add baby spinach to the pasta and pesto; just stir it in so it wilts.

FFS. Quantities of basil and pine nuts are not enough in a normal pesto to count as one veg serving even combined, and the sprinkling of cheese is insufficient to count as a full protein. A whole wheat pasta serving will not meet 20% of your daily fibre needs.

It's tasty, it's fine, eat it if you like it! If you want to call it healthy though then you need to add some vegetables and protein.

I think the pesto debate is a bit redundant because pesto can be lots of different things.

It can be homemade ( or a good brand) with olive oil, pine nuts, even cashew nuts which are reasonable quality proteins, quite rich in pecorino or Parmesan, and can have ingredients like spinach or roquette blitzed in. If it’s that kind of pesto it’s got a reasonable range of nutrients.

It can also be jars made with canola oil, very little or no cheese or nuts and preservatives and fillers like potato starch. That’s a different type of food.

That’s four plants!

I don't know how else to say that it doesn't have enough protein nor fibre, and is a limited set of nutrients. It's a snack or a side dish, not a balanced diet.

If you ate carrots dipped in cream cheese, that also wouldn't be a healthy meal because it's limited nutrients and not enough fibre. It's a snack.

I’ve had my own muesli ( not the added sugar/salt kind) of rolled oats, spelt flakes and corn flakes with added dried apricot and almonds and hazelnuts. So I’ve counted 6 plants by Monday morning. I reckon the 30 a week is doable.

@spoonbillstretford - given that you are adding veg, I'm sure yours is perfectly healthy.

They would always eat veg sticks - carrots and cucumber, even at their fussiest stages.
Ha! As I said, this is where kids vary, because DS very specifically won't touch either. We visited friends recently where he tucked into the veggie curry, spicy lamb, tomato salad and fruity couscous served for the adults... but is "fussy" that he wouldn't eat the 2 veg specially selected for the kids (served up with a crustless ham sandwich, which he did eat).

But that is unhealthy about it? Is it because it doesn’t contain meat? Multiple vegetables? Cheese?

Because there is absolutely nothing inherently bad about pasta, basil, oil and pine nuts.

I can also remember a swimming through treacle phase of child rearing where I likely had mild depression as well, and the sheer effort it seemed to take to make dinner, making just jacket potatoes with baked beans and cheese.

We still have that as a regular dinner (or with tuna, salad, prawns etc). It's bloody cheap, filling and certainly from the Nutracheck readings, pretty good nutritionally as there is lots of fibre. I'm sure making your own baked beans etc is vastly better, but even being a good cook and having an excellent recipe, I haven't got round to that yet.

No - I genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong with it as a quick, one-off meal.

What exactly is wrong with pasta pesto? I thought it was a pretty posh dinner when I first had it 30 years ago. Vegetables + pasta is one of my standard meals and sometimes we have pesto sauce, sometimes a cheesy sauce and sometimes tomatoey. I do make the sauce usually but wouldn't always if I had a jar of pesto in.

But other than that I agree. Mine were always talked of as "good eaters" when they went round to friends for dinner and I would do something like pizza, fish fingers etc when friends came round but a lot would hardly touch that even and hardly any would eat the veg, whereas my two always liked it. Probably genetic rather than anything we'd actually done - DH and I were the same as kids, good eaters, always liked veg. They would always eat veg sticks - carrots and cucumber, even at their fussiest stages.

One of my friend's daughters only ate pretty much Weetabix or sausages for a few years when she was little. She is 17 now and looks pretty healthy to me!

@faerietalesare you being deliberately obtuse?

If OP said "I threw in a handful of cashews, handful of cherry tomatoes, handful of peppers / spring onions, handful of olives and some leftover chicken / ham" - THEN it has broad enough range to be healthy.

The OP asked about "healthy". Pesto has pine nuts and basil. It doesn't have enough protein, fibre, nor a range of nutrients. Any meal at all is fine as a one-off, but that particular meal is carb+fat, so it just is not an aspirationally healthy meal.

What’s unhealthy about pasta pesto? @GRex

I think so much of it is eating preferences. 7yo DS would eat broad beans and pretty much everything else mixed up in a pasta sauce. Meat, fish, nuts seeds, beans, radish, onion, peppers, olives, tomatoes, aubergine, blah blah blah, he eats a ton of veg. Show him plain cucumber and carrot though and it's a different story, he can't stand either. Leaves - only iceberg. Big hunks of steamed broccoli - also no, though he'll happily help chop it for a mixed veg dish.

What I've observed from all the little friends is that they are all picky, but about different things. Some recoil in horror at pepper and garlic, some don't eat crusts, one only eats plain pasta and plain veg, one doesn't like different food items to touch each other, they all have certain veg they "hate". Then all these parents on a forum saying "oh just serve X" make out that whichever child doesn't eat it is not being fed properly.

I do think it's nice to chuck some easy fruit, veg, nuts or seeds into every dish so that kids gets nutrients. I also think an occasional nutrient-free meal is fine. I still wouldn't say just pasta-pesto is a "healthy" meal though, because it isn't, not for any age.

What do you eat?