Who gives a 16 month old chocolate every day?

It's like the pouch debacle all over again.

The NHS weaning guidance, freely and easily available to all parents with babies and physically given to me as a leaflet on multiple occasions from health visitors states that babies under two.uears.old.shoulf not be given any food with added salt or sugar. Yet people are giving them chocolate, biscuits, cake etc. in my die date group they talk about how much their babies love McDonald's chicken nuggets!! How they haven't salt poisoned the poor buggers is beyond me!!! When the pouch debacle happened a few months ago many parents were genuinely upset because they thought they had been doing a good job by weaning their babies on processed puree mush because there was a picture of a vegetable on the front.

It's really sad how inadequate parenting is in the UK, it's why child outcomes are generally poor across the country apart from wealthy areas. It's like feeding a toddler real vegetables is an alien concept, the bar is.so.low.no.womder they grow up overweight and with a shit relationship with food which traps them in poor health for life. Children are being failed by their parents and it's so normal they don't even get judged for it. It really upsets me.

Most young toddlers go to nursery and will get given a (hopefully homemade) pudding there so I imagine that’s the most likely explanation. I don’t get the issue really.

Is that definitely correct? The study seems to say 38% of toddlers ate treat foods (not just chocolate, could include home-made cake with no icing for eg.) 2 - 4 times per week.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/eating-habits-of-children-aged-16-to-18-months/eating-habits-of-children-aged-16-to-18-months-report

I don’t really think this is true tbh. There doesn’t seem to be a link between what children eat as babies and their lifelong palates. Lots of children get fussy much older, 7,8,9 etc.

it’s like when people bang on about how sophisticated their baby is for loving humus when every baby loves humus 😂

**palate, d’oh

My child’s nursery does, unfortunately…

Loads of people do!
Early years settings recently had new nutrition guidance and lots of childminders got stricter on lunch box policies as a result.
The number of childminders I've heard from who have had parents complaining that they are requesting no sweets or chocolate in toddler's lunch boxes, or asking parents to restrict themselves to crisps OR cake but not both 😂

I didn’t give my daughter any chocolate, cake or crisps until she was 3 and had seen other children eating them in playgroup. I don’t understand why anyone would give sweets to a small child. They don’t miss what they’ve never had and it gives them a chance to develop a palette for actual food.

I’m sure I’ll be called a sanctimonious cow for that, but my child has never had a tooth cavity and has always eaten proper food. I admit I might have been lucky, but I would like to claim one parenting win because god knows I made mistakes elsewhere!

Considering how many adults eat a treat daily, that figure doesn’t surprise me.

My kids first ate daily chocolate when they were potty training but obviously not at age 16 to 18 months and it was obviously a temporary thing.

Between 16 and 18 months is an utterly.l bizarre stat to collect!!?

sounds like the routine of a French goûter? Chocolate and baguette every day 😋 not sure if it makes much difference if they’re younger really as long as the portions are appropriate?