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.

FIL:
Breakfast: oj with bits, then muesli with extra sunpat raisins and the top of the milk, wholemeal toast with unsalted butter and lime marmalade, a Braeburn apple, tea, in that absolute order and God forbid if it wasn't sunpat raisins or a Braeburn.

Lunch: a cheddar cheese sandwich, one side buttered only with two pickled onions on the side and the cheese had to go in the bread width ways, not longways. I did it wrong once and it got sent back.

FIL wasn't fussy according to MIL. He didn't eat chicken, pasta, mashed potato, garlic, mushrooms or cruciferous vegetables.

He died in the late noughties and looking back I am persuaded he had ASD, probably what then would have been regarded as Aspergers.

Tell me you’ve never met a child with ARFID without telling me

Not every child's safe food is a UPF. Some just eat toast, or pasta, or drink tons of milk, or just potatoes (cooked exactly one way by one person). My DD ate pasta, one brand of cheese, one variety of apples, and white bread. And in that wasn't available she didn't eat.

Yes, children with ARFID do starve rather than eat non safe foods. And you can expand their repertoire, but it never involves starving the child to make them "hungry enough" because that actually makes it harder to try a new food.

Look at Gaza, a lot of ND children died last year. I saw their parents begging for them to be taken to another country, they were raising funds, as their child only eats special food.

Same for babies with milk allergies who require special milk and whose mum cannot breastfeed due to malnutrition.

I think many years ago there was poverty in this country and these types of children would have died and not gone on to have children of their own.

I don’t think it’s a new thing. Kids would just have different safe foods and lots of food was quite boring and repetitive anyway for lots of families.

I was born in 1980 and went through a long stage of only eating plain pasta, dry cereal (only a couple of types) or pancakes.

Yes this. My partners is 55 and only eats fried chicken, roast chicken chips and recently rice. He will eat a burger at a push but never a vegetable. He is terribly scarred from a terrible childhood where they tried to beat the autism out of him and force fed mashed potato gravy and all the things he can't handle sensory wise. He was a struggling to thrive urchin.

They would still have had food preferences just different ones. Not every neurodivergent person survives on frozen food even now.

They ate different safe foods. Fishfingers have been around for years. Maybe toast, maybe plain pasta. Who knows, and why does it matter? It’s not always chicken nuggets, my daughter has around 4 pasta meals she cooks herself she eats on a rotation, and roast potatoes. Not terribly unhealthy.

Food was a lot blander in past generations, no garlic ,spice and diets weren't as wide and varied as they are today.

meals back then were more plain I think. My grandma said dinner was always meat and veg. And there would typically be bread and butter with dinner too. I suppose they would eat bread, butter and potatoes? Maybe plain meat - don’t think it was seasoned much beyond salt and pepper.

I actually have a theory about kids being picky. I think it’s due to evolutionary reasons, where kids who were not adventurous eaters would be less likely to eat something poisonous. Hence why kids generally all hate mushrooms. The mushroom loving kids might have been accidentally poisoned so that evolutionary pressure selected kids who hated mushrooms. As they got older and they learnt what was safe and not and had to forage for themselves, they because more adventurous eaters out of necessity.

my kids all have been good eaters generally but definitely got way more into unusual foods once they were teenagers.

A very reasoned and sensible reply. Thank you.

You have stopped a potentially goady thread becoming one.

My child lost 3 kilos in a matter of months aged 4… he was a small child to begin with. He was off the bottom of the charts for weight, but an average height. I used to avoid undressing him because it made me so upset. He was constantly unwell and covered in eczema. This is WITH feeding him ‘safe foods’. When you are in that situation, you will feed your child whatever they WILL eat. Children with ARFID do not have that self-preservation mechanism that will make them eat.

100 years ago these children died from minor childhood illnesses. This is why it was unheard of.

They ate what was put in front of them because people were poor and there was little choice in food. You either ate what you were given or you went to bed hungry. Children were seen and not heard and adults had strict rules in place. My great uncle just had to cough and the children behaved themselves. We have chosen to treat our children differently in the modern world to allow them to express themselves and to arrange for situations to adapt to their needs and wants.

My brother is autistic and eats most things. I’m NT and it’s me who was the fussy one growing up.

I think standards of parenting are rightly a lot higher now. In the past, beating and spanking for compliance was common.

I have a close family member with ASD, teenage now, learning disabilities etc, he wouldn’t eat anything with his dad other than McDonalds. Twice a day most days. This had gone on for 8/9 years. The answer to your question came during lockdown when he quickly accepted McDonald’s was no longer an option (it was closed) and moved onto other safe foods.

This really misses the entire point of ND/ARGID restricted eating. The children aren’t holding out for something they think is yummy. They’re holding out for the only food they find tolerable. The texture and often the blandness is what they’re attached to, it feels safe to them. If you look at all the examples people are giving in this thread, they’re all bland and very boring textures.

So yes, if they’d never had a chicken nugget they wouldn’t hold out for a chicken nugget. But instead, they’d have latched on to some other food. Just one that judgemental fools consider more acceptable than a chicken nugget, despite nutritionally being no better (mashed potato, bread and butter etc).

I suspect I have ARFID to a lesser degree. I didn’t starve myself to death because my parents didn’t let me, they stood over me and watched me weep and gag every single time they served the food I couldn’t tolerate. I was forced to stay at the table until I finished it, and given the silent treatment for days if I dared refuse. Pretty sure that’s not better parenting than letting them eat foods that feel safe to them.

My restrictions are too outing to share, but mainly was about texture and appearance. I now cope much better, primarily through controlling what we eat and what I specifically eat and a bigger thing for me has always been what I drink. This is terribly limited and can make eating out or being on holiday very tricky.

In most households when I was growing up in the 70s there was usually a pile of bread and butter in the middle of the table. Mashed potatoes were a staple of evening meals.

Yes, definitely the assumption that we should have a varied diet makes people notice more those who don't.

Also the fact that we now expect almost all children to survive into adulthood. It isn't a norm that a significant minority of kids just die. Whereas if you lived in a society where, say, 20% didn't make it to their 10th birthday, the concept of some of them wasting away or not having enough meat on their bones to withstand periods of poor nourishment due to illness would be sadly familiar.

Ds has autism but won't eat foods like chicken nuggets or chips. His diet largely consists of mashed potatoes and sausages, ham sandwiches and cereal. These are his safe foods and would have been pretty easily available in the past.
As for not starving themselves, they will. Ds nearly did when he was 3. He lost 10% of his body weight in less than 2 weeks, became grey, weak and painful thin. This was after only eating a small bowl of plain porridge a day for months. I only managed to keep him alive because he'd drink pedisure drinks which built him back up and he eventually started eating more. It took 2 years to get him eating a good amount again.

I have a nephew that only lives on ready brek and he is apparently a giant now (18). So it hasn't done him any harm.

I remember Mum cooking me a boil in the bag meal,when she and my SD had something I didnt like,The list was long .Curry ,Boiled bacon and pease pudding ,Faggots! Even now I prefer plain foods.My DD doesnt like much either .or will go on or off foods .Are parents supposed to sit by and not help DC to have something they like?

No that's anecdotal based on one person you know .

Before processed foods I recall some of my picky eating siblings who may or may not be ND as it wasn’t really flagged back then. They would mostly eat potato. Cooked in whatever texture they liked but it made a difference (didn’t like jackets the potato had to be either firm or crispy)

I never said it was only UPF, just noticeable that a lot of safe foods are UPF.

It matters in the fact that if the UPF foods didn't exist, would more children struggle to eat? We all know how easy a cheap nugget (for example) is to eat, how the combo of fat/salt/sugar makes it incredibly palatable for most people. It makes sense that more children eat them and are alive to tell the story than did perhaps 80 years ago.
I was just curious as to how many kids died perhaps from starvation/malnutrition etc when these foods weren't available.