Something started me thinking about girls and eating this evening.

Food was always played when I was growing up and we've always done it with our dcs.

I've never really thought of doing it any differently.

Then again we don't really eat the kind of food that comes like that ie meat and 2 veg type meals.

Letting dcs self serve sounds very stressful!

Not sure that filing up on Carbs is very bad for you - too much is bad for you, but that's what 'too much' means.

btw Sugars are Carbohydrates. Carbs = energy. Whatever carbohydrate you consume - other than cellulose, of course, the body has to break it down to the single monosaccharide to enter it into the respiration 'energy' pathways.

That's not the fate of all carbohydrates as there are many structural uses, but essentially if you want a lot of immediate energy in order to carry out heavy work - you're better off getting it straight from consuming carbohydrates. If you have excess carbs, then the body will store it firstly as glycogen (a limited ability) and secondly as fat.

Eating a mars bar a day is fine - if your energy demand requires it.

Yes there is definitely so much in this. I think this is why low-carbing has been so enthusiastically embraced by, and so liberating for, so many women. Not only does it actually work in keeping you slim, but it releases women to eat essential high quality proteins and fats while still "playing by the rules".

filling up on sugars and carbs is very bad for you, it does make you fat (ironically as it is likely that a person with cravings for sweet things has been limiting her intake of actual proper food, whether through guilt or lack of money) and historically, globally, it has been lower status people who have eaten carbs rather than protein.

My mother always tutted over my supposed fatness (nothing at all in this day and age, though I was chunky for the time - I went to school with children who were stick thin and while some of them were just healthy and very wiry, honestly I think some of them didn't get enough to eat). I think this has contributed to my food issues and ultimately my weight issues. I read recently a study showing that people who think they are fat - whether or not they are - are more inclined to over eat. This is emotionally very true to anyone who has experienced this. We must be so careful with our children, it's a minefield.

Food as a teenager, what a minefield that was for me, still feel mighty resentful about it as an adult.

I spent ages 10 to 18 with a foster family, farmers & also very involved with the local sports club.

My days were spent going to school, then afternoons physical labour on the farm, followed by dancing/gymnastics/ trampolining/outdoor athletics in the evenings.

My mother and two older sisters were (& still are) utterly obsessed with mine & their own weight/looks & despite my constant level of activity & healthy appetite was harrangued & shamed endlessly.

Loud pointed comments at dinner 'bibi is getting fat, she'll show us up at the dance show at this rate as the costumes are tight, do NOT let her have seconds or mayonnaise'

Bags of raw carrots left out for me to 'snack' on etc

In total contrast to my brother who was and is grossly overweight - men's eating in general was indulgently encouraged & the women's intake monitored & judged.

This after my nearly dying as a young child due to being starved to skeletal proportions (a history that foster parents were well aware of)

Completely agree with the OP, even now pointed comments are made when i choose to demolish a large sausage & bacon roll in the office on a friday (half a pig in a french stick for the men)

My family always served up at the table, and we ate together every evening and twice at the weekend. Usually my mother served everything, except for roast dinners where my father carved (an essential male skill according to my mother). Everyone got relatively small helpings and there was usually seconds, only served when everyone had finished. There were usually left overs which were kept for future meals.

dh's family ate together only at the weekend and did central serving dishes. Everyone took all they thought they would eat, and often left food on their plates which would be thrown away.

dh and I eat as a family once every day and use a mixture of dishes on the table and self serve in the kitchen. When dd was younger and fussier we pretty much always served buffet style, now we're more likely to do self serve because it's less effort. I do get cross if people take more than they can eat or take more than their share and deprive others.

My family did serve yourself from a central dish, I recall that quite clearly as it would cause arguments if my sister got to table first, as she would pile half the food onto her plate & then would be made to put enough back for the rest of us to have even portions. We were often short of money so someone taking a bigger portion meant everyone else went short. Fruit was also something we would come to blows over.

I don't recall my father ever obviously feeling entitled to more food - we were all brought up as rabid tiny feminists so would have piled into him if he'd suggested it.

So I can recognise elements of what Bertie described in the sense of feeling anxious about food being limited and someone taking more than their share, but without the gendered elements. Though I met plenty of that attitude at school.

I was brought up in a household where we were served plated food but DH 's family used serving dishes. I do serving dishes occasionally. I give them what I know they'll eat so, for example, I leave avocado off the youngest's plate.

Out of curiosity what's the common procedure for serving food in the UK to a child of say 7-10 years old? Is food served to a kids plate then given to them to eat with, more or less, the expectation they finish what is given? Or is food provided for the kids to choose and serve to their own plate, with an expectation being they choose a reasonable mix of foods (ie not 100% peas for dinner)?

This is interesting for me as I am underweight at the moment, partly due to anxiety issues, and it's quite hard to 'train' myself to eat more, rather than just adding junk food.

To go on a bit of a tangent, on the mars bar vs ham sandwich thing, there are also social messages regarding 'treats' and 'junk food' and these terms often seem to mean the same thing. But anecdotally, I only really hear women talking about food as a treat (which is often 'junk food', mainly sweet things). Which is different to say, alcohol, which seems more gender neutral (other than choice of drink, pint for the men, glass of wine for the ladies and all that of course). Does this ring true for anyone else?

Also anecdotally, I've never heard anyone talk about 'growing girls' needing to eat more (unless they're pregnant) - only that a 'growing boy' needs to eat more.

'Have the men had enough?' By Margaret Forster. It resonated with my mum, how the men in the family were always saved first and best, and told to eat up, while the women and girls made do with what's left and always, always, kept an eye on their own and each other's weight / appearance. I remember a friends mother telling her 'you're spreading that straight onto your hips, you know' as she buttered some bread...I couldn't imagine her saying that to a son.

I have two boys, both of whom have always been tall, big and well developed for their ages. The oldest is (i hope) due to shoot up again as he looks like he has put on a little weigh recently. I've reduced his snacks and sugar intake, and keeping an eye on it, while not making a big deal of it, as I hope I would for a girl.

Bertie- see I find the idea of a fridge full of leftovers would make me anxious.

If I make a meal I expect it all to be eaten when I make it.

It really pusses me off when do cooks and serves, say chips and then when I'm finished what's on my plate he'll say ' oh do you want more? There's more still on the baking tray in the kitchen' aaa! If there's good, bleedin serve it ffs! It really gets me.

When I was a teen I got the biggest portion in the house. My calorie requirements were high than my parents so that makes sense.

I can't even imagine growing up in the kind of sexist environments described above. It sounds like the dark ages. We're women on their periods banished too?!

Children always got the same serving but my dad usually got a bigger serving than my mum.*

It's a different story at my dp's house. Mil always gives me a smaller portion of things while dp gets a 'mansize' amount. I Wonder if it was the same for dp's sister growing up, I suspect so but I doubt my dp would have noticed. I will ask though.

Growing up I think me and my brothers had an equally huge appetite and, to my knowledge, my mum never treated us differently in respect to how much she served us or comments about our weight.

I remember my dad (who left when I was 11) did comment on my mum's weight a lot, and I think he would have done the same to me as I'd entered puberty if he'd been around. That's just a guess though based on how he treated my mum.

I do remember being small and being indignant that he always got served the biggest steak. I always asked fo some of his to make it fair, and he did always give me some! Children always got the san

bert my mum still does that with chicken legs. Suits me because I prefer the breast anyway, every weeks we all go to my mums for Sunday dinner, and she always always makes my brother a loaf tin pudding, while everyone gets normal ones. It's become brothers "thing"

I know how childish this is going to sound, I love my Yorkshire puddings (esp my mum's) and have sometimes slipped in conversation how for once, my brother could do a swap and he have a small ones and give me the loaf tin, he laughingly said it's first come first served, (mum lays it all out buffet style) so the following week I made sure I got that fucking loaf tin. You would think I stole his kidney the looks he was giving me. Everyone thought it funny apart from my brother, ended up giving him it back as I felt bad (my fault, I know)

I loved having Sunday dinner at my grans when I was a child, even though the women ate last, I looked forward to listening to conversations between my aunts and my Gran, they told some fascinating stories and it's then I learnt the most about my grans childhood, they always seemed to relax more once the men had gone for a pint, I dunno, I could be remembering it wrong but it always felt like a less strained atmosphere when it was just my gran and aunts.

Thoughts? Well, reducing it to a stereotypical 'average' household: The idea that a growing lad needs his food allows him to escape the family and societal stigma of being judged on how much he eats. The price he pays for that freedom is the greater chance of being overweight/obese compared to his sister. As adults the sister looks in the mirror and sees someone fatter than she actually is. The brother looks in the mirror and either sees someone thinner or, seeing the fat, does not care about it.

INicked - it was a very common attitude in working class families where the men did very hard manual work - there wasn't enough food to go around so the men who needed to be able to have the strength to do heavy work got the food, then when food became more plentiful and the work became less physical, the habit of giving the best/majority to the men didn't end. My dad's family did stuff like that. My mum sneered at it and food was never limited or rationed for me more than my DB although he went to a private school and I went to a state school, which I think it the middle class version of the same thing

@ Inickedanames family! Boys 'deserve' food because they are valued more by society.

"Frankly you have an uphill struggle on your hands if you can't even apply its tenets in your own kitchen when there is no one watching you or telling you what to do."

It is clear that the OP is talking about a response she FELT she may have in that situation. I have no doubt that, as a feminist, she WOULD have moderated what she said. The point is to discuss why she felt it in the first place. We are all subject to societal pressure.

Parents of overweight children are judged, and the mothers much more than the fathers. Boys are less likely to get fat from gluttonous eating if they are exercising more as well as burning off more if they are still growing - it's seen more that they 'need' the extra food, so it's ok, whereas girls getting fat don't 'need' that extra food.

That said, I don't think I ever was lead to feel I couldn't snack, and did do as a teen. I do remember always having 'supper' before bed, which was often as much as another meal. If you feel that your DD wanting additional food was something to comment on, but your DS doing the same wasn't, that is somethingyou need to address yourself, but it's an universal experience (and my mother was a looonnnngggg way from being a feminist, so lack of comments wasn't from a concious decision to give me a positive relationship with food).

Bertrand radical feminism is apparently about a wholesale restructuring of society.

Frankly you have an uphill struggle on your hands if you can't even apply its tenets in your own kitchen when there is no one watching you or telling you what to do.

I'm sure you've thought about all this ( I've been told often enough how much feminists think about their choices).

It's practice what you preach , and not even a terribly difficult case. Or is it just easier to blame societal pressure for everything and not actually do anything?

Well I've only read the OP but say aged 10 girls and boys on average are similar heights. Aged 18, the average boy will be several inches taller than the average girl so more growing to be done in the case of the boy?
Also iirc the growth curves for girls and boys are different. There is a section in the boys where it is vv steep.

By the time I was 14 I was the height I am now. This is v common in girls. Less so in boys.