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?

My mum’s sibling had a milk allergy when he was young. They were a regular working class household in the 1950s in England. They were prescribed special milk formula not made from cows milk. He had a milk free diet.

I was surprised when she told me this when my baby also had a milk allergy- silly really, but I hadn’t considered free from foods went back that far!

Not the olden days, but in the eighties I used to vomit in the school dinner queue every day when they tried to put food on my plate that wasn't plain chips. A kind boy in my class used to sneak me his chips.
Looking back I had arfid. If my parents had been stricter or I'd been at boarding school or something I'd just have starved, I wouldn't have eaten it, whatever 'it' was.

This is like me, I don't eat school dinner veg now but I love peppers and butter beans and the sort of thing they didn't serve.

My dc and me are 'fussy' as in have sensory and routine issues over food.

But we dont eat junk like nuggets & Nutella.

Lots of bread, potatoes, plain fruit, butter, cheese.

Food was better for fussy eaters in the past. Nice plain and simple meat & 2 veg meals. Nothing touching. Nothing mixed together. No spices.

I was super picky 40+ years ago. Didn't eat meat, drink milk or eat bread. I ate Granny Smith apples and strained soup. Stew was carrot and potato mashed. I never missed a day, did v well in school and had/have an awful sweet tooth. I didn't get substitutes either. By my late teens I had two decent dinners I would eat.

I changed completely in my 20s and eat everything now and love healthy food.

I'm not the age that suffered school milk but I hear an awful lot of it was poured away as children didn't want it?

I get very nostalgic for various time periods - probably pre internet and yes I'm aware of the irony - but those times sound absolutely awful.

Looking back, I'm amazed that I actually quite enjoyed school, but strangely I did. Now I think everything about it would be awful.

I think I would have been OK because food was quite plain and predictable. Pretty sure I had arfid.
Eg I first tried toast at 15 or 16. Pizza too. I only ate jam sandwiches on plain white bread until 13 or 14 when I tried ham. Any meat is fine. Veg no way until 25 plus. Even now I'd never eat brocoli, lettuce is overpowering and rank, sweetcorn is awful, peppers should be banned. Carrots are ok. Green beans ok but have to be cooked right.

I'm 62 and I vividly remember being served Brussel Sprouts with my dinner. I must have been about 4 or possibly 5. I didn't want to eat them but had to sit at the table until the meal was over and I had to eat 1 sprout. I vomited on my plate after urging. I didn't get served up sprouts again but instead it was cabbage which I could just about keep down. There were no benefit top ups. All money had to be earned and food was not thrown away. Everyone I knew had to eat and finish their meal. There were no chicken nuggets. The closest was probably fish fingers in breadcrumbs.

I’m early 50s and was a ridiculously fussy eater until I left home at 18. Now I’ll eat almost anything and love to cook.

I grew up on ham sandwiches, jam sandwiches, bananas, cheese and eggs and I could tolerate roast chicken or sausages if I really had to. I just refused to eat anything else.

A lot of traditional British food is very plain without spices as these were expensive which suits a fussy diet. But being a fussy eater myself, when I was very hungry I was able to overcome some of the dislike through sheer will, and some if I tried it in small quantities.

I can't stand sesame flavour though, so I would have been screwed if I was in China and is part of the reason I have never been. I did manage Ramen in Tokyo but had to be very hungry to eat it though.

@coxesorangepippin

Honestly, I think because my parents didn't have basic cooking skills, and never improved. My mum went to boarding school and my dad didn't learn because he was a man and was sent out the house to work. I was labeled a fussy eater and then once that stuck, I had incredible anxiety around food.

I have a genuine dislike of a lot of common food; chips, mushrooms, ketchup, crisps, sesame, peanuts, Brazil nuts, shellfish (or anything strongly fishy), anything fried gives my stomachache and the social death knell of them all is tea- can't even stand the smell of it especially with milk.

Having said that now I have lived on my own and learned some basic cooking skills and have had the opportunity to try food without the shame I now like a wide variety of food that I didn't before; eggs, strawberries, alot of vegetables, curries in all shapes and sizes, some nuts and now I am working on citrus fruit which is just due to its intensity.

Just absolute skin crawling revulsion at some foods because of the texture/taste/smell.

There are things I don't love that I can eat but also things that are so disgusting I dry heaves even thinking about them. I absolutely cannot stomach broccoli, I can't bear the taste or the texture or the smell and it makes me heave. I can also tell if I but has snuck into something I'm eating - like a chopped salad or a soup, without even seeing it. To me it's like finding a shit in your food.

Texture wise - I hate anything boiled. I have an unfair reputation with my parents for hating vegetables, but I actually hate boiled vegetables. I could eat a plate of roast carrots but can barely gag down a boiled one.

It's not just healthy things, I also absolutely HATE sponge cake, cheese cake, custard and cream. If I'm given cake I have to grit my teeth and pick the icing off and then delicately leave the rest. Birthdays are hard. I also can't stand vanilla as a flavour.

Actually, you did. Remember children "choking" on peanuts? Milk allergy and coeliac were well-known, too.

There was a lot of spanking, being left sitting at the table until you ate what was on your plate. Failing that, being presented with cold dinner the next morning. This is how my dad's family dealt with fussy eating anyway.

I'm not the age that suffered school milk but I hear an awful lot of it was poured away as children didn't want it?

I’m of that age. I don’t remember anybody not wanting it. I certainly did. One person in my class used to put their bottle on the radiator at the start of the day because they like it warm, which I could never quite understand.

@Oakbeam, we used to put our milk bottles on the radiator when they were frozen in winter! It used to separate when defrosted that way and was pretty unpleasant. Still drank it, though.

The milk was popular with most children. I hated it.

Me and my mum have always swapped whites and yolks. White for me, yolk for her. For some reason we always do it at the table... Sat down, everything looks perfect... Right, get swapping 🤣

They ate, there were no fussy eaters. Funny how you don't get fussy eaters in poor countries don't you think?

I wish I could remember where I saw this but I once read some sort of report/survey about what the average poor family ate in 1905 and it was shocking. Every single meal was bread and tea. Potatos and maybe one vegetable a day. And a little meat at the weekend. Just bread, tea, bread, tea, bread, tea. I suspect in that context it didn't matter if you actually liked it or not because that's all there was.

I'm not the age that suffered school milk but I hear an awful lot of it was poured away as children didn't want it?

I always drank it because it was never presented as a choice but I LOATHED milk as a child. I could only drink it holding my nose or I'd be sick. Also couldn't bear the smell of eggs. I'm a vegan now lol

I'm 42 and it was the same when I was little.

So many stories here resonate

• won't in vegetables - just can't eat boiled ones the texture makes me heave now I eat lots of wok fried ones
• won't eat fruit, yep fair play still make me gag. I can recall every piece of fruit I've eaten because it's been eaten under duress. There are 11 including my first serious boyfriend's mother's apple pie that nearly made me throw up all over the family table. I cried as soon as I could excuse myself to the toilet.
• food separation or no sauce - because it makes it soggy again texture of things. I recall at a friends house being happy with my Yorkshire pudding and beef until they poured gravy all over it making it practically inedible for me.

Loved becoming old enough to eat what I wanted to eat and finding out that there's a huge variety of stuff out there I will love as opposed to being dismissed as 'fussy'

Nah, if you were poor there was only beige food! Bread and dripping or potatoes. Perfect for your child who won’t eat non-beige food and wants the same thing every day.