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.

Very rude. And it's usually someone who doesn't have any useful input to provide.

1. youre assuming the majority of autistic people like chicken nuggets
2. for many autistic people with ARFID, their safe foods are often still cyclical & once they’ve been eaten for months at a time, they will suddenly stop eating them & create different safe foods.
3. the Eras your mention were times when there was much less social pressure on children. They could play outside for hours and hours - being in nature - which in itself is very calming to a hyper sensitive/hyper vigilant nervous system. For that reason, those children could possibly be more open to more foods because their anxiety potentially wouldnt be as heightened as for children today. Also bear in mind that meals were very basic compared to today’s flavour enhanced everything, so would not have overstimulated the mouth and senses in the same way (possibly).

This. The vast majority of examples on here point to restricted eating as a response to anxiety or other mental health comorbidities. If you sort out anxiety/mental health, I'd put serious money on more normal eating patterns emerging. And this includes disfunctional relationships with food because you were made to clear your plate/given the same thing for breakfast if you didn't eat it at tea.

She didn't 'grow out of it'. She changed overnight when she wanted to go on a date with someone. One day she wouldn't eat any other foods and the next day she was eating anything in front of her. It was literally that quick that she changed. She went from 10 foods for decades to eating everything.

My friend's parents were not pressuring her at all so not an 'as you can see'.

It is interesting how other ED are trauma responses.

I do think the availability of choice now days makes some children seem fussier than they are. Never before would a child have been expected to eat cherry tomatoes, avocado, pepper sticks, salmon.

when I was a child the majority of lunches were sandwiches.

my child would happily eat a sandwhich everyday but I just feel this presumed pressure to provide her with more varied lunches, and it bothers me she won’t eat crudités/ raw veg sticks.

Safe foods usually have two qualities: bland and predictable. Eg two strawberries may not taste the same, two chicken nuggets almost always will.

But as displayed throughout this thread, people have been having safe foods for generations and it actually becomes easier the further back you go - a few generations ago kids weren’t expected to down whatever flavourful spiced quinoa and vegetable creation their parents found on Instagram this week. They could easily eat plain boiled chicken breast and potatoes.

As an autistic child in the 80s, mine was cold meat (sandwich ham) and boiled potatoes or plain pasta. 🤷‍♀️

Usually not even trauma linked to food. It could be any trauma causing it. Sexual assaults etc. I know someone who overate after being raped purposely to change her appearance so it didn't happen again as she was told how she looked was the cause. So she binge ate to 'make herself safe' or so she thought.

Once she had processed her trauma surrounding it, then she lost weight.

From working in poor and remote parts of that world for quite a few years before getting married and having children, my experience is that everyone eats the same meal every day. They might be rice and daal or sorghum flatbread and stew etc. The British equivalent before widespread convenience good would vary regionally, but might be bread and dripping, a heavy pottage soup, potatoes, green veg and stew, sausages and mash, cheesy potato pie. If you are famished from being physically active and you’ve never tried processed foods then what you know will be your safe food. I’ve long suspected that convenience foods re-wire the brain and make other food less palatable.

This is not true

I have just taken part in a study for ARFID for the NHS it will be interesting when it is published.

I think there’s quite a binary assumption here in a few instances, that either ARFID is pandering or children with ARFID would have starved to death in previous generations.

I suspect the truth is rather more shades of grey. It will be the case that SOME children would have starved from not eating or died of malnutrition in previous generations at the most extreme end of the scale. It’s also true that there will be parents today (and in the last, and there will be in the future) who are lazy and pandering and frankly not particularly good parents who let their children eat McDonald’s or pombears or plain bread for every meal because they lack the resources to do better.

the majority will, I suspect fall somewhere in the middle.

@Blueyshift

The selective eating zone. Gagging etc on one pasta shape v another pasta shape. Which made me think it was a control issue - which was reflected in other behaviours. I had to be the one in control - otherwise the behaviour would have been feral/school refusal etc.

I agree that this may not be the case for everyone, but I think we definitely need to consider parenting techniques. Especially with the amount of school exclusions etc at the moment.

In case anyone needs more info about ARFID, pls check out my AMA….
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4756890-parent-of-young-person-with-arfid-avoidant-restrictive-food-intake-disorder-ama?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I have a a very old friend who is a bit older than me (I am in my 70's) who had a phase of only eating semolina. Luckily they saw a very wise GP who told their parents to give them that if it was all they would eat and gradually without pressure, they widened their food choice to a "normal" selection. They still don't enjoy highly flavoured foods and even a minor illness can take away their appetite completely. So yes whatever you call it, having a massively selective diet has been around for a long time.

in the 20s working class people would eat pretty plain and unvaried food anyway. There would have been a lot less cous cous and asparagus.

My sister only ate sausages and roast chicken when she grew up (before chicken nuggets were a common thing.

ignoring that this is a goady thread to undermine ND people and those with ARFID

My dad (born in the 40’s) had egg and chips for dinner every night. He would have a cheese and pickle sandwich and an apple for lunch. Roast beef on Sundays. No breakfast ever.

Mercifully he was extremely clever. He was a scientist, director of ICI and academic. Socially inept… literally a ‘mad scientist.’

If he had been autistic without being so clever his life would have been a misery. He would not have been indulged. Some of his behaviour was horrendous.

Quite, we took kids away for camp and they would comment that our porridge was so much more delicious than the "awful" stuff they had at home and they didn't like porridge usually. But they would try some because there was others eating it (those who had been at camp before!) and then they would try it and claim to love it!

It was just value oats, made with half milk, half water and a squeeze of syrup if they wanted. 🤷‍♀️

We would have a "2 course" breakfast and kids could eat whatever they wanted, no pressure

First course was porridge or cereal with it without milk.
Second was sausage, beans and eggy bread.
All through breakfast there was also fruit and plain bread and butter available.

Newbies on day 1, would have a teeny bowl of cereal and might eat 1 sausage.
A lot never knew what eggy bread was. They would try a little bit maybe on day 1, and definitely by day 2- because the kids on cooks patrol would have a competition/ ranking of who made the best eggy bread each day.

But on day two 99% of the kids were having a massive bowl of porridge, sausages, eggy bread, beans and fruit and "fight" for the spare eggy bread 😁

But then again, there's something different about having food that's been prepped outside, after a day of full activities - everything tastes amazing 😂

I was SA as a young child, and have always been a binge and restrict then binge again to the point of being in pain at times. I never consciously chose to be fat , but I've often wondered if that had something to do with it . There were other kinds of abuse in the home I grew up in also. I'm about 25 stone at 5ft8.

This.

I remember my sister being very difficult about food in the 80s. She wouldn’t try anything new. My father would make her sit at the table until she ate her vegetables. My mother worked a compromise whereby she’d have one carrot and one bean on her plate. It wasn’t much, but she would still find it hard to eat. She wouldn’t try exotic foods we now consider child-friendly like pizza. She’s not fussy now, in that she eats vegetables and fish and food once considered foreign very happily, but she still doesn’t like mushrooms.

I know. I wasn't commenting on AFRID at all.

I was responding to someone who did make the comments the some parents perpetuate a situation and give an example of that.

I have taught many kids with AFRID. But I have also taught many kids whose parents have perpetuated a situation of very limited eating and drinking. Both things can be true. My commenting on one was not me denying the existence of the other.

They WILL eventually eat what it is put infront of them when they are hungry enough.

No they won’t. My DS simply won’t eat - I don’t know how long he wouldn’t eat for because I’m no so cruel as to wait him out but if it’s something he can’t eat I could put it down to him 3 times a day and it wouldn’t be eaten.

I also think parents simply don’t have spare money kicking about to provide 2/3 different option eg if he won’t eat cottage pie, I don’t have money to keep wasting food so I’ll make him something I know will be eaten. He does have a reasonably wide selection of foods, but will become very stuck if it’s something he can’t eat.

I worked in a SEN school where 2/3s of the kids had restricted eating.

One boy every day would have no breakfast, then for lunch have a 4 pack of chocolate bars like mars bars and 2 packets of crisps and then for tea have 20 chicken nuggets. It was the same everyday. He would only drink coke.

We had lots of kids who were similar. Who had lunches that were all prepackaged and nothing healthy, and tea was always a McDonald’s.

As part of the curriculum, we would cook and try different foods to eat.
Every single child found something else that they enjoyed eating.

Restrictive eating absolutely exists but it’s not as niche as people think.
Most of the time it is poor parenting either through laziness, lack of education or MH issues.

What experience do you have in this? Have you got a child that refused all good for 3 days and then they "gave in" and then ate all foods?

One of her selected foods was tuna butties so she tried Subway with plain tuna on plain bread and she was happy with that.

I have no idea what went on. We joke about it now when I go around and say how many different foods she will eat and her kids have a great diet - very balanced and freshly cooked and have never had juice or fizz so drink water or milk. She still thinks it is mental how little she ate. She has travelled the world now and eats all kinds of cuisine - even things I would turn my nose up at. It is the complete opposite to what she was before.

Her parents weren't arseholes either so she wasn't forced to eat things the next day if she hadn't eaten it - that kind of thing. She was very sporty too so did so much exercise but still wouldn't eat anything unless it was X or Y so was as thin as a rake and I remember her going to the Drs at 17 as she still hadn't started her periods yet.