What happened to very fussy eaters in the olden days?

[houseydnc]

Inspired by another thread where the DC Would only eat the following:
Chicken nuggets
Chips
Toast
Chocolate spread sandwiches

What happened to children like this before chicken nuggets, chips and Nutella existed?

I know fussy eating is different to conditions like ARFID and other sensory disorders. I'm not passing judgement, I'm just interested to know.

I wonder what their diet was restricted to? Toast? Or were they forced to eat a wider variety of foods?

I used to do that too, throw it on the floor under the table try and scatter it out in bits so it was less noticeable

Oh and if I really,really had no choice I learned to eat without chewing and drinking gallons of water.

The methods of forcing foods down reluctant eaters seem to have been more brutal in past decades

The methods they used for force feeding anorexia patients was barbaric and involved a thick rubber tube with a funnel on the end, God help you if you vomited it back up.

Ah - allergies. In my day they didn't exist (apparently!) So a fellow schoolmate sitting also staring at her plate of fish was coerced into eating it, despite having told the dinner lady she was allergic to it.

The projectile vomiting instantly after swallowing it was truly impressive - she managed to get most of it on the dinner lady.

I was seriously impressed (inwardly). She was never made to sit at stare at food again.

@allmyliesaretrue i had Haliborange too 😂. No cod liver oil though!

Or hide it under a potato skin

My dps never made me eat what I didn't want but I was quite fussy

I don't like milk products and things like rice pudding

I believe this is what psychologists call ‘projection’.

There were lots of skinny kids so they would not stand out.
And you have to eat very little food over a long period of time to die. So for most this would not be an issue.
I remember a few very skinny children at school. We just accepted it.

@rainydaysandwednesdays yeah you totally don't understand eating disorders do you?

My Uncle in his mid 70s, survived on egg and chips as a child. He was pandered to by my DGM and has a limited diet as an adult and I think feels embarrassed by it

DS did have issues with some textures too so maybe it was that. He didn't like potato, including chips, but would eat salt and vinegar crisps or sometimes peri peri chips. He now eats potato, but it took until his teens. He doesn't like sandwich bread in general, would eat a marmite sandwich but no other kind, or cheese on toast with hot sauce. He still won't touch banana as is.

Oof, I guess I picked the wrong day to start a thread about being 'a fussy eater'! :D

Like pp's I'd go hungry rather than eat 'wrong' food. I would feel and sometimes be sick at school (baked beans, beetroot, rice pudding). Food is pretty much fuel to me, it needs to be 'not gross'. Content to eat same stuff day in day out. As a toddler I apparently ate all sorts but suddenly 'went off' stuff I didn't eat again for decades if ever. I just accepted I was weird amd avoided eating out etc.

Wow so many interesting responses. Finding the people who remember being fussy eaters and their thoughts and feelings at the time fascinating.

Can't imagine the abuse some of these children must have been subjected to, especially some of the neurodiverse children.

@houseydnc I have Afrid. When I was a child it was obvious I had eating issues but the doctor diagnosed me with food phobias.

I ate yogurts, crisps, apples, sweets, chocolate, chicken, chips, roast and jacket potatoes, peas, carrots, biscuits, cereal.

I'm nearly 50

@DaisyDaffodil That’s awful. How horrific. How would that heal anyone’s connection to food and nourishment?

Oh hello! 👋🏼
I do hope you get some good advice over on your thread and perhaps some of the insights over on this one will help too.
Wishing you all the best with your little one.

My grandma was a 'fussy eater', born in 1921. She was hospitalised as a child but I don't think it was for dietary reasons.
She told me the nurses used to try to make her eat really thick porridge and she poured it down the backs of the radiators near her bed.
She doesn't seem to have suffered too much from a restricted diet, however as she got older and crap foods were more available she ended up overweight and diabetic.

I am the same and have struggled with food all my life. My DD is 3 and has the same issues. All of us would rather starve than eat something we don't want to eat. My mum used to punish me for not eating and serve the same plate of food for days, so I just didn't eat. I was a very thin child.

Luckily my DS (2yrs) eats anything and shows no sign of fussy eating.

Toast, cornflakes, rice crispies, porridge, homemade veg soup, mince, haddock or chicken. Only potatoes (while not mashed), carrots, peas, cabbage. On a Sunday ice cream and jelly. Rinse and repeat!

70s child here. I ate what I was given or I went without. We sat at a table together and all ate the same. We didn’t have snacks so to be fair we were usually hungry. I am sure there were fussy kids in the 70s but there was far less tolerance towards it. Rationing memories from the 40s and early 50s was still in the public consciousness

Fascinated by this - and feel less weird! Only child, always been fussy, definitely not down to my parents because they eat/ate everything, and they were keen on me trying new things although not forceful and always made sure I had food I liked too, so never went hungry.

Even as an adult there are quite a few things which I physically cannot eat - I have a full body physical NO reaction, if it goes in my mouth I heave and if I try to swallow it it will come back up again. I don't love this and it is definitely not a choice, but also haven't ever been able to control it so just avoid the foods that cause it.

And as an adult I can just tell people / sort my own food out and it doesn't impact my life, but it made all sorts of things a nightmare when I was younger. Took till my early 30s to be confident about telling people I'm complicated to cater for.

I just wish it hadn't caused my parents stress, and also wish that as a child when I said it wasn't that I was being difficult it was that I physically couldn't make myself eat certain things, that other adults in my life had listened. School, extended family, well meaning parents of friends.

But it is absolutely not a choice! (Though I love food and eat plenty of what I do like, fortunately)

Although nowhere near as bad as some other experiences as a child of the 80's I do remember dinner ladies being terrifying and forcing us to eat food. I didn't eat cheesecake until well into my 30's after being forced to eat it in school when I was about 7. The dinner lady wouldn't believe me when i said I'd tried it and didn't like it and forced me to eat the whole portion. As soon as I finished and she said I could go I turned and vomited it all over the floor. It was awful and she completely humiliated me. I can still remember it all so clearly.

Refused to eat cheesecake for the rest of my life until a few years ago when I tried my other half's dessert without realising what it was. It was delicious!! But I still felt sick as soon as he said it was cheesecake because of the memory it triggered. It took a long time but I did eventually learn to just enjoy it without associating it with the cheesecake from school.

I had a bit of this as a kid and my parents were terrifying so I literally used to have a glass of water and would swallow down huge chunks of food without even chewing them. God knows how I didn't choke.

Also , it's important to mention especially for the smug "back in my day" crowd.

I'm from an ex communist country. For the first 5 years of my life we were on rations. Yes the WW2 style rationing with queuing up from 5 am for a loaf of bread ,some eggs and a bottle of milk. We weren't poor, but we didn't have a lot because there was fuck all to buy. I was still fussy as fuck.

I spent weeks at my grandparents who were farmers and only had a small shop in the village that would sell stuff like sugar,oil,bread etc mostly stuff they couldn't produce. We had meat every now and then when they'd cut up an animal but mostly what was available were soups, stews,potatoes, fresh fruit and veg,cheese(actual cheese not the yellow stuff),polenta bread etc. I had certain things I would eat,and no one had time to cater for me,which is fair enough.I was still fussy as fuck.

I had my first Mcdonalds at 14. I never liked and still don't like chicken nuggets . I never saw a fish finger(and other things) until I moved to the UK. I was still fussy as fuck.

I never ate breakfast and where I'm from there was no such thing as school dinners. If lucky , parents would pack like a croissant,or some biscuits or something like that. The only proper meal I'd get would be after school/dinner. I was still fussy as fuck.

I think it's clear that this issue arouses visceral feelings, as evidenced by the couple of weirdly hostile and derisive responses to my earlier post. Some people are very wedded to the idea that "we all ate what was put in front of us, and autism didn't exist", even in the face of a huge amount of evidence to the contrary. It's interesting.