Did some ND children starve before chicken nuggets were invented?

[BusWankers]

I'm not being horrible, genuinely curious.

You read on here how a child who has autism or some other issue, will only eat safe foods. Usually a lot of things like chicken nuggets, a particular brand of cheese and onion crisps, Nutella, supermarket pizzas (UPF mostly)

Do we think children in the 1920s just went hungry? Or perhaps they were forced to eat foods they didn't like. After all you do hear stories,of adults even now being made to sit at the table and choke down food etc.

I have wondered about this a lot! And I think the answer is that my grandparents (neurotypical) ate tons of porridge and potatoes and bread with cheese and not much else.

None of that garlic and spices and ethnic and flavours.

I’m not sure, would be interesting to hear from those who had siblings or children in previous generations that would now be diagnosed Neurodiverse ASC/ADHD.

I think some will be offended by this thread but it’s an interesting question.

I work with ND children quite frequently in my role and previous roles, and many ARFID diagnosed children and I wonder whether they would have been many of the ‘failure to thrive’ cases from past generations or if parents were less accommodating/made do somehow?

Oh come on. Surely you can figure this out. They just had some other safe food. or they were brutally forced and developed deep mental health problems.

Because parents panic and think that’s all they’ll eat and so pander to it. Understandably, they don’t want their child to go hungry.
It would be very rare for a child to starve themselves to death. They WILL eventually eat what it is put infront of them when they are hungry enough.

@crisppackets rude

I grew up in the 80’s and mum never bought UPF, I lived off pasta and butter, chips, bread and butter and that’s pretty much it!

@Pricelessadvice they won't always you know 🙄

Yes.

It used to be called faliure to thrive and parents went to enormous lengths to keep their child alive, often force feeding every meal or breast feeding well into later childhood. Children didn’t eat enough to live and wasted away.

In most cultures there is a plain carb - rice, potatoes etc - and some children ate just those. And then died later on of scurvy or malnutrition.

Even nowadays more than 50% of cases of scurvy in modern day western society are caused by arfid.

Yes this is an interesting question

A friends son 35 years ago would only eat ketchup on bread and a specific cereal.

@Pricelessadvice you are wrong on so many levels.

I also think, when they say things like "they'll only eat/drink x" ... they're 15 months old, they wouldn't known it existed if you hadn't given it to them...

No, this situation with foods is modern, even 20 years ago it wasn’t common. My dd is autistic, was at a specialist nursery and a nutritionist worked with every family to prevent this from happening, it was really hard because dd only basically wanted milk and chicken nugget happy meals, she was refuse everything but perseverance paid off, gradually foods got added in - took until teen years before i could just dish food up without major planning.

My brother (who is 46 now) would only eat fish fingers and potato’s waffles as a child in the 80’s. He would also only drink one specific brand of organge squash. I assume each generation of neurodivergent children find their own safe foods.

I’d have lived on potatoes

It was just a different safe food. If they’ve never had chicken nuggets then they never know that’s a safe food, but a child then may have had bread or something similar as a safe food.

My friend lived on ribena. white bread and ham. Every day. He was skinny but fine! A chicken nugget would have been a challenge too far!

For a large chunk of the 80s, dh would only eat Heinz tomato soup. Their favourite hotel abroad would buy it in especially for him when they went on holiday.

One of my uncles lived on sago for a while. My Gran would get it in bulk and keep it in boxes under the spare bed even when I was small.

By the way I have lost weeks of my life sat at the table persuading dd to eat, I have the scars from her anger often food related too, I get why people take the path of less resistance because it’s really hard but it’s definitely worth it because what you do age 2-5 is the pattern for later. Longest she held out was 4 days as a toddler, I admit I gave in when my now exh returned from a business trip and sent him to McDonald’s, I do wish she had never had McDonald’s but we lived in the USA and they were convenient on road trips as had play areas.

My dad’s grandma basically lived on plain chicken and bread.

This is such ignorant nonsense. Autistic children can end up being PEG fed, you know!

Don't post without thinking carefully. And perhaps look a thing up before you go all confident and knowledgeable.

Yes, exactly.

And of course some of them would've starved or wasted away. The infant mortality rates in most societies until fairly recently were horrifying.

If you google there’s that description of the working class urban British diet in the early years of the century - bread and fat with tea every meal was the standard. There was the Sunday lunch which would include meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Most ARFID diets that I’ve read on here would encompass that many foods. And yes, lots of kids died. Funeral insurance for your children was considered an absolute essential expenditure.

Yes, for most of our ancestors one doesn't have to go very far back to reach a point where they just wouldn't have had access to a wide variety of foods.

I remember sitting at the table for flipping hours staring at a plate of food, my dad wouldn't let me get up until it was eaten. Regardless of the fact it was now cold and congealed.

I never had a 'safe food', but do only eat a few things.