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 had 'food peculiarities' as a child in the 70/80s and went through stages of not eating certain foods. I still struggle with egg whites. They have to be heavily disguised. It's the texture. For a few years, I would only eat raw veg, not cooked. boiled to an inch veg certain meats I didn't like. 'slimy' foods. Certain foods touching, etc.
Within reason, I was humoured, raw veg on plate with dinner but ultimately, it was eat or go without until next meal. There were no snacks beyond fruit, and that was rationed. 1 bar of chocolate on a Sunday. I eat most things now except eggs, which I will eat yolks and only boiled eggs with whites.
I was a very active, slim child. I'm active now but slightly overweight, middle aged spread!
I'm coming to the conclusion that some aspects of ND may be at play due to reading so much on here.

Just not true

Oh and on a Saturday night we had a mars bar and a marathon (snickers) between 4 of us. Chocolate spread would have been amazing

Poor you!!

That's brought back memories of school cheesecake from my youth.

It had a horrible cornflake cake type base and then like a really tangy almost organ he taste to it. Absolutely vile!

I'm also baffled by you laughing at the comment upthread.

If you wish you'd lived in the days that life was that shit.....well, it sounds like you'd have enjoyed yourself. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'd have died in infancy so wouldn't have had anything to worry about, guess it comes right in the end.

i had forgotten the horror of school dinners. My parents sent me in with sandwiches, the school didn't like it, so after that I just got through the day on a choc bar.

maybe I should try that again! 😂

I mean I agree with what you are saying

A lot of beige bland food then, which is what a lot of children seem to prefer at some stage. 😅

The Haliborange was fine - the Cod Liver oil 😒

My mother also came up with some concoction, no idea where it came from or why? It involved lemonade, ice cream, and raw egg??!! It was actually quite nice!

My mum only ate bread and jam until she got Ricketts

I am not sure how far back you mean but 50 years ago when I was very small I was hospitalised because I was malnourished. My mum was at her wits end trying to get me to eat. I hated fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, just about everything really. Shepards pie, stew, roasts etc were staples in my house but i wouldn't touch them. I pretty much lived on cereal and bread, but I only ate tiny quantities. Picky eaters aren't a new phenomenon but there is a much bigger choice of stuff to offer them.

I have no doubts that my genetic line is only here because of modern society. Everyone in my household has a medical condition that would have meant death not that long ago.

that some of members also have ARFID isn’t really surprising to me. It just fits the disposition.

so basically, they would have died out.

But actually, that is not true. Plenty died because they could not eat.

It disgusted me.
Liver was dry and just foul, mince had gristle and bone in it, other meats had actual veins and fat and jelly on it.
Stringy bits and odd looking pale lumps.
veg cooked to death, slimy and pale, mushy and tasteless.

Everything cooked in pale sludgy lard.

“complan” mixed in blackcurrant cordial with sludge at the bottom of the cup.

It physically disgusted me and made me heave.

I was very hungry all the time.

Being hit …hard for not eating what I was given. Staring at the cold congealed food for hours after everyone had finished theirs not allowed to leave the table.
High pitched ringing and burning in my ears from being smacked across the head.

I would help my siblings in the same situation by flushing food from their plates down the loo. If caught, we would both be severely punished.

Vegetarian since I was able to control my own menu.Aged 16 when I left that house.

I am in my 60s. As a child meals were plain, hone cooked and often featured home grown veg. There was never a choice and never any snacks.
I wasn't fussy to the extreme but I had some dislikes. I would refuse to eat cabbage for example and my father would insist that I had some. I was made to sit at the dinner table for hours in front of a plate of food .
Oddly it had no ladting effects on me and I ate anything by the time I was an adult. It did colour my attitude to food with my own children though.

Following this thread with interest and will come back to fully read responses but what I've read so far has sent me down a memory lane I'd blocked out.

To be clear, now I eat anything apart from prawns and the like and am grossly overweight. Back then I was a stick and the dinner ladies would call my mum and social services because they thought I was neglected. I'd regularly put food in my pocket, even wet stuff like spaghetti bolognaise because I couldn't eat it. My mum did her best to understand but whenever she said fine you can go hungry was such a relief. The pressure to eat made me feel instantly sick, even if it was something I liked. If I couldn't eat it, I literally couldn't eat it. No idea why. Some of it wasn't even weird food.

I've always liked salad and veg which helped get adults off my case but I could go days. Now I can't even go hours. Sigh.

What happened to them?

Rickets? Scurvy? Failure to thrive?

(Other deficiency diseases are available).

This is such an interesting discussion. Bar the lone voice “modern people are weak” lacking in critical thinking skills poster.

I was fairly fussy as a child and ate a lot of fish fingers and chips. My tastes didn't really broaden until my teens. Now I eat everything.
A close friend of mine would only eat macaroni cheese, cheese sandwiches and crisps. This was in the 80s. One night she'd have macaroni cheese for dinner, the next night she'd have a cheese sandwich - and so it would continue.
There was a boy at school who survived on spaghetti hoops. Every day he'd bring in a flask of spaghetti hoops. He refused to eat anything else.
So fussy eaters existed and had limited diets of whatever was available at the time.

I was a fussy eater as a kid.

I loved porridge, and plain rice, and cheese and pickle sandwiches.

My mum came from the "if you don't eat it I'll put it in front of you until you do" school of parenting.

However what she and I didn't know is was that I was lactose intolerant. So I had really bad bowel problems through most of my childhood and adolescence.

Hunger actually hurt less than eating. Eating caused a lot of pain and bloating and diarrhoea and eventually vomiting,

So... hunger was preferable.
So when she put meals in front of me I didn't like I was happy not to eat for a few days as it actually made the pain better.

We had a few battles of wills but ultimately I was happy not to eat and she started getting worried after a few days.

I was really really thin as a teenager and in my early 20s until I worked out what I was intolerant to.

Even now after a stomach bug I can just stop eating because I know it'll help my bowel to have a break and it doesn't bother me.

Thanks for the responses re. Why you avoided food as a kid

Interesting subject

@Kalevala it can honestly vary. What I/we said about bland foods was mostly a generalisation, but of course there will always be outliers. It's hard to do a catch all or pin point a specific type of fussiness without detail.

That’s the thing though - lots of us really didn’t ‘eat what was in front of us’. You’d think we would in the face of the humiliation and punishment, or the knowledge that our parents were doing their best, or starvation after having the same offending food served up cold for a few meals. All the guilting about starving children

My mum eventually caved in to the inevitable. I remember taking lunches to secondary school - stewed apple sandwiches 🙄and a slice of Victoria sponge!!! I refused to eat breakfast - I'm better now but I don't usually eat breakfast early. She used to force me to have half a Digestive and a cup of tea.

@AcridAndStanLee I think I blocked out it too though I don't tend to think about childhood much

I wonder if any of the "in my day" lot are brave enough to admit they didn't realise that there were, say, 50 years ago, a lot of children hospitalised, and going back further, a lot of childhood illness and infant death because of what they term "fussy eating"?

Or do they know, they don't care....they like to poke the nest or upset people as it amuses them?

My grandmother used to stand over my mum and tell her it was better if she ate everything on her plate and then threw up after, than not to eat at all, so luckily, my parents had a sensible attitude with me.

Also very luckily, I never met my grandmother (or any other grandparents who all sound pretty awful).

I literally couldn't eat what was put in front of me!

I only recently learned about ARFID, and I wouldn't be surprised if that explains my aversions.