Is anyone else just drowning in the food demands of faddy/fussy friends and family members?

[RudsyFarmer]

I don’t think I’ve ever known it as difficult as it is right now to try and feed people. I’ve just had the most painful ten minutes trying to find food to feed my mother. Everything from onions, potatoes, beef, lamb, turmeric!!!!!!…. is off the table. In one conversation 90% of common food stuffs was a no.

My partner is only marginally better. if I put too much on his plate he can’t eat a thing. Anything goes wrong at work - won’t eat his dinner. My youngest child is the same. Generally won’t eat. The school talks to me about their concern regarding him leaving his lunch everyday. Is fussy, pernickity, won’t eat vegetables, doesn’t like spice. Only wants to eat pizza. My older child, the texture has to be right, will eat certain foods, not others. Will act like I’m trying to poison him if I put butter on something. The food is too hot, too cold, too thick, too runny etc etc etc.

I on the other hand will eat anything but am overweight so have to limit my food or else I’m getting bigger and bigger. All I want to do is feed people food and move on. Instead I have to hyper focus on food or else everyone else is just disappearing around me. I feel like a drug addict surrounded by drugs constantly. ITS DOING MY HEAD IN 😡😡

My three DCs all seem to like different things and DD1 is very faddy and fussy. I now batch cook at weekends and then they have a choice of around five or six meals they can have that I can quickly pop in the microwave.

If DH couldn’t be arsed to eat something you cooked for him, then give him that plate for dinner tomorrow, sod his childish excuses. As for the children, just make something you like and helps you a little with weight loss, you’re important too. If they don’t want it they can make a sandwich. You’re not their maid.

My son has autism and sensory processing, doesn’t eat proper meals, changes what he likes all the time, gets bored with food but only eats a handful of foods, has issues with textures and I’d rather make different things knowing he eats something at least.

Sometimes it’s a pain but I’m also fussy and can’t have certain textures so I remember why at a young age I’d tip dinners away, binge eat crap from the shop and started cooking my own meals because my dad was one meal or nothing.

I so get how you are feeling! I'm sorry it affects you so much and I promise that's genuine

Between us we have no nightshades, no meat, no gluten, no garlic or onion, no egg.

On top of that we have people who are paleo, vegetarian & just difficult

It looks like the common denominator is you. Just don't engage with it.

There are children who will simply not eat. I don't know if they feel hunger. I don't know how they go for days (weeks) on end eating enough to keep a sparrow alive.

One of mine lived on dry plain Cheerios and water for eight months. Refused everything else.

I feel it's very much a first world/middle class problem, poor people don't seem to be this fussy with food

What does that even mean?

A child who eats very, very little, who eats a diet that is limited in nutrients and quantity for weeks on end, is going to suffer health consequences of that. It's no different from a child in a poor country eating a limited amount of food or only a certain food out if becessity.

Why do some children not get hungry, or how do they continue to refuse food even though they're hungry? I bet there are lots of people who hate their food and won't eat enough of it in poor countries too. I don't know for sure because I don't have first-hand experience of poor countries, just like you, I suspect. It's easy to see the poor as an amorphous mass.

I share your frustrations. I steered a similar thread last week bread and ham thread. DD (11) has also stopped eating a few things she was pretty reliable in this week too: gnocchi, pesto, tomato soup, grapes and bread! She is currently subsisting largely on Mugshots.

Wouldn’t work for me. I would and have gone several days without food because there was nothing on my safe list in the house.

Hunger is a normal feeling for me

DD was difficult to feed when she was little. She would rather have gone hungry than eat something she didn't like.

I hate feeling hungry.

Are there any tastes that you actually enjoy @Soubriquet? Is it just a texture thing?

Mine either ate what was put in front of them or they went hungry.
They never chose the hunger option strangely.

Mostly a texture thing I think though there is a lot of food I don’t like the taste off.

It’s not even popular food I don’t like. I won’t eat things like pizza, cake, lasagna and stuff like that

Omg I think I start serving soup and bread for every meal

It’s definitely a problem that has emerged in relatively more recent times. No-one I knew growing up among friends or family had issues but now we have people for meals demanding all sorts of different diets. For me it takes away the pleasure of simply sharing one meal together and the pleasure of cooking is exchanged for anxiety about what on earth fits all the criteria. My patience was exhausted after someone ‘plant based’ didn’t want her specially made pud but instead ate the (delicious) caramel cream meringue pud my husband made🤣

This is the bit that does my head in. Food diets that miraculously don't apply when it suits them and you've gone to the trouble of accommodating them.

While this is purely among my acquaintance, I'm still waiting for a gluten intolerant person to actually be so.

I'm petty, but if I'd gone to a lot of effort to accommodate someone's diet I wouldn't let them have the caramel cream pudding. Just "no, there's not enough for you, you told me you needed plant-based so here's the sorbet I had to buy specially". If "a little bit is okay" or "it won't matter just this once" then you should've told me upfront. I'm a coeliac and this kind of piss taking is unhelpful for people with genuine dietary needs who have to stick to them, because it sours people against putting the effort in and it gives the impression special diets are something that doesn't need to be taken seriously.

I kinda love you!

Get the kids cooking. Doesn’t matter the age. A 4 yo can wash and rip lettuce, a 14 yo should hopefully be trusted with knives and an oven. It helps with the picky ness of children when they prepare food (studies done professionally, not just my experience).

husband needs to up his game. Contribute some meals.

and mother in law??? She live with you? Otherwise just invite her over less. Maybe pawn her off on a kids cook night. Or better yet your husband- his family his problem.

No. This is what is for dinner .. Do you want some ?

If they dint want it they can get a takeaway

When I had a houseful would make allowances for actual allergies but what I cooked was eaten or they had cereal or toast.

I have zero tolerance for any of it

I say to the kids, there are three things on that plate, eat one of them

Mil used to be one of the caramel creme pudding people

Intolerant to everything but straight into the quality street

I have experienced living in a poor country.
No child, none whatsoever were picky or fussy. There were some individual dislikes for certain foods but that's all. And we had quite the menu at school - beet, pickles, fishcakes, horseradish, buckwheat, gloopy desserts, sweet black tea... My ASD classmate was eating his plated-up school lunches just as well as everyone else.

The food fussiness is actually quite exclusive to English speaking countries - it's very rare to observe in the rest of the Europe or in the developing world.
Must be a cultural thing.

One of mine would have died in a developing country. They are dependent on elemental formula as their food intolerances are extreme.

Other kid and DH both have ASD and AFRID. Mealtimes at our house can be fun. I just cook what people need and what they will eat. Sucks at times.