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.

Chicken nuggets had its equivalent 50 years ago. I didn’t have ‘safe’ foods as a child, but ate a limited diet. At the age of 6, I would hide in the toilets at school, rather than have a school dinner, as I didn’t know what I would be faced with.

At 56, I still have a bit of an issue with textures and certain food, but it took until I was late 30’s for me to extend the type of food I ate.

My nana was one of 9 kids and my grandad one of 11 in the 50s and 60s. All 20 ate whatever their mother cooked because they were genuinely hungry and had been at school with no lunch/out playing all day. Im extremely fussy with food, i hate it but i think its because i was given too much choice as a child. Prepared to be flamed but i truly believe its a modern problem of too much choice and not actually being properly hungry because kids hardly play out and prefer to sit still on ipads.

People really don't understand WHY the "processed crap" thing.

It is, by its nature, very very consistent and predictable. That's why you end up with parents terrified when manufacturers change their recipe, or a particular brand of chicken nugget goes out of stock.

Mum lovingly makes homemade nuggets - one day they're a bit more seasoned, another the batter's not quite the same consistency, one day they're a bit more cooked so crunchier and feel wrong in the mouth. And a fucking huge huge huge part of being autistic is being bothered by tiny little changes the rest of the world can easily shrug off - I feel physically uneasy when one sign in a building is a slightly different size font to the others. Cognitively and with my level of autistic impairment - I'm able to move past it and joke about it, but it does just feel like the cosmic balance of the universe is totally wrong.

Captain Birds Eye - well he makes his nuggets and they will be exactly the same each time, with clear cooking instructions so they're likely to be cooked the same and it means that a child knows when they're told chicken nuggets are happening that they're going to be the same appearance, the same size, the same colour, the same smell, they're going to feel exactly the same in the mouth each time.

As for what we did before that - struggled. A friend would only eat plain pasta with the cheapest supermarket grated cheddar (from one specific supermarket) for years and years. Same sort of "safe food" idea - but without the sneering in that decade. I cracked my mother as a child when she constantly attempted to sneak mushrooms into things - I could find pieces as small as half a CM and would remove every single one - in the end she gave up that battle - I could smell their very malevolent existence (they stink)

My daughter is very prone to being difficult with food choices as a result of her autism combined with teen pushing the boundaries - this is a kid who was weaned on home batch cooked food and I think only discovered the existence of coco pops when she was admitted to hospital at about age 5! She was weaned on curries, chilli, very flavourful food under the oversight of a dietitian as she had food allergies - and she still has very strong food avoidance tendencies.

My older brother (will be 60 this year), has just been diagnosed with autism. I remember our childhood meals were a constant battle between what the rest of the family wanted to eat, and what he would eat. His diet consisted of white bread, bland cheddar cheese sandwiches, very plain meat/potatoes, no vegetables except carrots and toast. He liked sweet stuff and now has type 2 diabetes. As an adult he has added mild curry and pizza to his repertoire but on the whole, his diet has barely changed. Our mum used to despair of getting him to eat anything and yes, he would often starve if he didn’t want to eat what we were having. Autism wasn’t really known about back then so there weren’t any allowances made. I remember him having to sit at the table with his food congealing in front of him while our parents tried to get him to eat something. I also remember finding bits of orange rind on the stairs once when mum tried to get him to eat marmalade on toast… I’ve recently found out that it’s often not the taste that he dislikes, it’s the consistency. Even if he likes the taste of something he won’t eat it if he doesn’t like how it feels in his mouth.

I know plenty of adults older than me with food “quirks” and aversions which were definitely more extreme when they were children, from how they describe it themselves and how the older generation again, remember it.

Chicken nuggets are modern, but autism/food aversions are not.

No some won’t. This is such a biased view point. Remember how people with neuro differences were basically sectioned and kept locked away not that long ago? That’s not because they could’ve just cracked on with life if their parents had been stricter.

This is only ever the view point people hold until a person hits a point of neurological disability that it becomes visibly “obvious” that they have a disability. When people can’t ‘see’ someone’s neurological disability, that person is treated as though they’re a ‘typical’ person who is just a fusspot.

put it this way, if you have shin sprints and it’s painful to run and someone said “come on lazy fucker run for the bus or you’ll miss it” and you tried but you cried and refused, would it be ok for that person to grab you and physically force you to run? Or to tell you you’re just being fussy and to crack on with running? No.

but if they can’t see your pain visibly then all they have is your word to go on. And maybe they choose to ignore your cries for help and shout at you. And you cry. And eventually you think, maybe I am crazy? Maybe my legs don’t really hurt, after all everyone around me is saying I’m making it up - that this feeling isn’t real.

so despite it being a very real reaction in your body, you are told it doesn’t exist. This is what wrecks your self esteem.

now imagine there is a person who has their legs in braces. Or they walk with crutches. You look at them and automatically think, “well I can’t ask them to run for the bus can I? That would be out of order as they clearly have difficulties that could make running hard. Running could cause their body to react badly.”

the difference here is your perception of what a person who will get a bad reaction from running ‘looks’ like.

and some people, are neurodivergent, have negative reactions to food, but as they grow are able to overcome some of that discomfort to force themselves to eat a healthy diet. But it will usually still be limited, they’ll also just hide their eating behaviours from other ‘typical’ adults so as to not appear strange or childish. This is masking. But some people can’t, even if they don’t ‘look’ the way you think someone who has these problems should.

people up and down the country, of all ends of the spectrum, have problems with eating. Taste, smell, texture, swallowing, eating in public, binging, starving, disordered eating of all types. Many literally can’t swallow foods they’ve made negative associations with. And there are lots of reasons people might get these negative association - maybe a child choked at 2 and now is scared of food, maybe a parent has disordered eating, maybe the kids has allergies and is scared to eat so their brain searches to reduce anxiety by rejecting anything they don’t trust, contamination ocd, a traumatic experience such as witnessing abused, bullying or family death (anxiety control).

So it amazes me that people find it so hard to believe this is a real issue when disordered eating is everywhere!

the reason you hear about the chicken nuggets is because parents of kids like this have been told it’s safe to express the difficulties they have. That people are more understanding now. But people who are lucky enough to not have these problems are not tolerant.

The other trouble is that these foods are very readily available and oft consumed nowadays and many have the added bonus of being addictive to the body.

So basically many parents will have introduced chicken nuggets before they recognised their child had an issue m. Maybe the kids went to Mac Donalds on a long trip or a special occasion. and if babies came with manuals and the parents had known in advance their child would start refusing to eat anything but chicken nuggets, many would have only introduced healthy foods to them so their safe foods would’ve been cucumber and lentils. It’s not like they went out of their way to feed their kid chicken nuggets the first time they refused food.

And to judge a parent because they don’t starve their kid and worry they’ll go hungry (when some kids will literally just not eat for days) is just not cool. It’s so distressing as a parent to not be able to do the thing you’re biologically programmed to do - feed your child.

The boy in question was severely underweight and had to have a feeding tube whenever he went to hospital.

He, like many of the others, had rotten or no teeth.

No where have I said to not feed them what you know they’d eat and let them starve.

No one is saying don’t let them eat.
But too many parents don’t offer them other foods to try and therefore their diet is even more restrictive.

In 10+ years of working with restrictive eaters, I have never met one child who doesn’t eat something other than what their parents claim they’ll only eat.

Yes they can be restrictive eaters and always will be but there are many kids who aren’t given the opportunity to try other foods because of this new narrative that they’ll only ever eat this one food.

😂 no. My daughter has a feeding tube. She has never eaten a single thing even when she was chronically malnourished. And she is not an isolated case.

Pre tube feeding she'd either have been traumatised by forced feeding or dead.

My daughter struggles a lot with "new" foods. We were referred to a nutritionist at age 2 because she was severely underweight - i was meticulous in offering a varied diet of mostly healthy (but I'd argue tasty!) Foods. She would eat plain chicken, cheese, bread (without butter), yoghurt and some fried fruits. Once she stopped breastfeeding her weight started to drop and her height stalled, her hair stopped growing..... the person we were referred to said to make sure she got the right number of calories and not to worry - as long as she had calories, vitamins and fibre she would be fine. She's 8 now, and has been able to gradually increase what she will eat. I doubt she'll ever eat a vegetable with enjoyment, but she's healthy enough.

For what it's worth, my other 3 children aren't at all picky (well, one of them perhaps a little but within normal range I'd say. He'll eat if he's hungry, he won't starve himself although he's got strong favourites).

My sister was 10 when we moved to America. The food tasted different, as did the water. She stopped eating and drastically lost weight - she was nearly hospitalised. For 3 months she ate only liquid shakes that she had been prescribed, no solid food. Should my parents have let her starve? I genuinely believe she would have.

My grandmother also had a very restrictive diet. When she couldn't get something she wanted she didn't eat. She was dreadfully skinny her whole life and would just smoke instead of eating.

It's not a new thing. I think it's probably more widely known about. It's probably also more common - some cases are extreme, but there are also mild/marginal cases. Perhaps some would consider it "pandering" to allow children to have a limited diet, but perhaps people just prioritise the well being of their child? Why force feed if they are healthy? I have a varied diet and eat lots of different foods, I like some variety and love vegetables. But there are things I don't like - very spicy chilli, green vegetables that have been overcooked. I would be much less happy if these foods were being forced on me on a daily basis "for my own good" or because I "need to learn to like them".

Yes... Children starved.

I grew up in the 90s with food intolerance and 'starved' often (although to be honest you adapt quickly, the less you eat, the more you lose appetite and so stop feeling hungry most the time).

My mam wasn't the problem but the rest of the world refused to bend and break to a 'picky eater'. I was force fed stuff I can't eat too as a child at school and was violently ill as a result.

I was under hospital care all childhood for being severely underweight (they weren't interested in the cause, my medical issues weren't discovered until adulthood. They just said I was 'stubborn' and 'failing to thrive' properly, by my teens they claimed I was mentally ill with anorexia.

I was underweight but not due to 'mental issues' with food just simple physical ones. I'm now normal weight now that the world takes these things seriously, cross contamination is much rarer, people don't refuse basic requests and its safer to eat most places.

My DB is early 80’s are peas, tinned sausages and bread. Undiagnosed as a child- eats everything as an adult but if nuggets were served / utilised he’d have had them on repeat.

2 of my ND kids had beige food phases. The one with more serious AFRID really would have starved or needed sugary porridge or something for a couple of years if there were no nuggets. When you ask them about it now, it’s due to texture, familiarity, predictability and that they were definitely cooked through.

It would have been potatoes and or/white bread which i’m sure no one would have batted an eyelid at because buttered white bread made up a huge part of most people’s diet 100 years ago.

How many families (especially working class families) had a bland diet with limited variety because it was all they could afford anyway?

Now I have a craving for chicken nuggets 😆

I would assume that they just have their own version of ‘safe food’ or starved. I grew up in the 90s/2000s in a house without any awareness of ND and remember crying/feeling sick at the thought of eating meals which lead to hours of being forced to sit at the table whilst being screamed at to eat and then having the meal put in the fridge and kept until the next meal were it would be brought back out and the process would repeat. Until I was very underweight then my parents tried force feeding and eventually my parents gave in and just let me eat canned plum tomatoes on toast every day.

My grandad (born 1894 and poor) was given the choice of bread and butter or bread and jam (not both) for lunch every day to take to school. They might have had something like that as their safe food. I'm not autistic but I'd only eat bread and marmite as a toddler

I often think this-and children in countries where beige UPF is not available- there must be autistic kids in China, India, Africa etcetera who have no choice but to eat with their families!

Wouldn't the safe foods just have been different and what they liked out of what was available?

The thing about chicken nuggets etc is that theyre pretty bland and dont require too much chewing so are easy on the senses. That could easily apply to other foods, but since kids these days have access to and have been introduced to these food items, that's what they choose.

What about people in other parts of the world that might not have access to chicken nuggets? I'm sure there are still ND people amongst them and im sure they have safe food too, theyre just different.

Not true. Many children with SEN would starve. The notion that hungry children will eventually ‘give in ‘ and eat shows huge misunderstanding of SEN and implies that they are choosing their behaviour. This is a disappointing and ignorant stance.

They'll just eat something like a plain carb only though. They wont be tucking into the full range of foods. Or if they arent given that option they'll fail to thrive.

Well going off my neice who wasn't born in the 1940s but whose mother wouldn't have had a chicken nugget cross her threshold let alone be consumed by her kids they lived off brown bread and butter !

I know someone who only ate beans on toast for a large portion of childhood. They are almost 60 now

Some people on this thread are determined to make out that autistic behaviour is just their parents not being strict enough. 🙄

My son is severely autistic he likes burnt toast he prefers it with butter but will eat it without too
I like burnt toast too but with butter.

I just know as soon as someone uses the word 'pander' its going to be a shit opinion.
And if you think 'all' children will eat if they are hungry, you're lucky enough never to have met an anorexic...