Children of UPF parents

[Horriblebirth]

Just wondering if anyone else grew up being fed absolute shit by their parents and what their relationship with food or their diet is like now?

Growing up I was given ready meals, frozen meals, sugary snacks, probably over 90% of my diet was UPF. Pasta using a jar of sauce was considered a cooked meal.

I used to get embarrassed when I'd go to a friend's house and their parents cooked a lovely meal and I didn't like any of it. I wasn't being rude, I was just so used to beige crap.

It's been so hard to try and get myself to eat real food as an adult. I'm still terrified of trying new things and have a really limited diet. I'm trying my best to ensure my kids never turn out like me because it's depressing and embarrassing.

My DS is like this.

Categorically, it is not my fault. I am not to blame for it in terms of what I have or haven't tried to get him to eat.

I do not see it as a failure of my parenting.

I think tomatoes are a bad choice, because they don’t have crunch. (Mushrooms and bananas are also unpopular with children with a restricted palate)

The thing is - you’re an adult now, and can choose to eat/ not eat /try things as you wish. If you look at weaning books they show the best ways to prepare new foods for people that haven’t ever had them before.

My mum did cook healthy meals but we also had treats and fully stocked cupboards so it was easy to grab unhealthy extra snacks without anyone noticing - I did this a lot. I also went through a phase of going to McDonalds after school with my friend and then had another dinner at home.
I've always been careful to cook healthily for my children but they've still eaten way too much junk food and UPF as teenagers. Fortunately my eldest has now come to the conclusion that this is unhealthy and is very big on eating healthily.
I think that you can turn your diet around at any age and it will have an impact on your health.

I had no choice - it was eat it or go hungry. I learned quickly, there Ould be no alternatives, no cereal, no toast, no alternative meal cooked.
Sometimes there was pizza, fish fingers etc, but this was rare and when it was time to eat the healthy stuff, I had to.

The PP said that blaming your parents wasn’t helping you.

There are stories of people on the thread who ate well as kids but still like UPF now, or those who ate UPF but eat healthily now. So I don’t think you can reasonably say you are this way around food solely because of what your parents did a couple of decades ago.

I hope that therapy helps.

I do think if you ban things like sweets completely you are making them the forbidden fruit and kids go crazy for them later.

I became interested in healthy eating naturally in my late teens. I’d had my fill of sweets etc by then.

I remember the child of a dentist coming to one of DS’s parties- they went absolutely crazy for all the sweet stuff.

I think there's been some confusion. My diet is still very restricted now but I rarely eat beige food as I cook for my family so am conscious of passing on my problem. I eat loads more things than I did as a kid.

It just takes me a lot to try things and there are certain things that are absolute no-go foods still to this day.

I agree and I don't ban any foods in my house. I try not to talk negatively about things or label anything as bad it good.

OP, I sympathise with you, but I'm bemused that you think your parents caused this, rather than it being something inherent to you (and I don't mean anything offensive about that in the very least).

I have two very different children. For my older one yesterday, I made some plain pasta, plain fish and plain vegetables. I also gave the same to the younger one, for convenience. I myself had a fairly spicy fish curry, since I don't enjoy bland food.

My little one came up to me, sat on my lap, demanded to try my food, made a face and declared it "too spicy!" and went back to her own.

My older child would not in a million years have done that.

While all parents should strive to provide their children with a varied, healthy diet, some people (both children and adults) just have more sensitivities around food than others.

That wasn’t really the point I was making… it was that people on the thread have had a range of childhood experiences with food, and no one experience definitively leads to one adult outcome.

Haven't read the whole thread but has anyone said "fed is best" yet?

I have 2 siblings and we've all had to go through the same as adults. One found it very easy and now loves food and eats anything and everything, the other still eats beige food and gallons of fizzy pop.

That is actually ok if you don't want to but the aversion to trying is maybe where your problem lies and needs addressed iyswim, do the kids eat ok do you offer them varied meals?

Yes I think my kids eat a really good balance to be honest. Sweet things are never forbidden but they also can't eat unlimited chocolate and crisps before dinner the way I was allowed.

My problem is going to come when they get a bit older and realise I'm leaving certain things or not putting them on my plate. Not sure how I'm going to overcome that currently.

You can say you don't like x y z, but i think If you are eating with them that's all that matters. I wouldn't know where you could get help to overcome this so you are comfortable, maybe.the gp at first ?

@Coffeeishot I genuinely think I'd be laughed out of the GP if I walked in and said I'm here because I don't like vegetables.

But you wouldn’t say that, you would explain you had a severe food aversion

I was raised on food that was basic but healthy. We were poor, so free school meals in the day (at a time when that was a meal, not a snackbar) and food that was cheap and cooked from scratch in the evening. No snacks. No cake, biscuits etc. On Fridays we got a tube of smarties.

My mum was a working single parent so from a fairly young age we all had to take a turn planning, shopping and preparing a meal once a week.

The result? My brothers are healthy, active and wonderful cooks. I, on the other hand have had a fucked up relationship with food my entire life, swinging between anorexia and compulsive overeating. I hate cooking and do it only when I have to. So I think... its complicated.

My mother embraced processed food in the 70s. She hated cooking and I hated the food she cooked, which was so very bland (west of Scotland so lots of mince and potato, white fish, that sort of thing). So she was delighted to find tasty food i liked which she could pop in the oven or heat on the hob. We lived off vesta boxes, fish in sauce in plastic pouches, crispy pancakes, fish fingers, that sort of thing.

I have a real aversion to soft bland food, and she was trying her best.

I have worked out now how to eat food with a 'bite' to it. I still can't eat plain white fish or shepherd's pie!

I was a 'fussy eater' and remember being forced fed literally by my mum.
I remember the smells of certain foods that made me feel sick, textures that were gross in my mouth.
My mum gave me different foods but as I said, I was the 'fussy eater'. I'd pick the peppers off the pizza she would buy. By the time I'd finished, I'd have a cold pizza with hardly any topping.
I didn't like what I was served and refused to eat it.
Mum made me a jam sandwich. I didn't like jam because I didn't like the bits.
I ate it crying.

I've had a shitty relationship with food for most of my life.
Whilst I try new things now and enjoy doing so, the issues from my childhood ran deep and last year after my ADHD diagnosis, I explored the Pandora's Box that opened up and one day I decided to cook some fish that I'd bought for mine and DP dinner.
Well the smell hit me and I got in a right two and eight! Took me right back to the table of my childhood. It was a bit awful.
I got over it by not eating it and telling myself it's ok, I don't have to have it. I can choose now. I have control.

Only I don't.
I starved and binged when I was 16.
I've lived on the same dinner for weeks at a time.
Nowadays I eat dinner but the rest of the day my food choices are shit.
I'd be surprised if I don't end up with diabetes because of my sweet tooth.

Having said this, I do enjoy a proper decent meal. That's why I home cook most dinners.

My son. Beige by choice and I don't force him to eat anything that he doesn't want to because I cannot have him feeling like I did, my the one who is supposed to love and protect him the most. He eats a lot of fruit/veg though.

My daughter will try anything, especially spicy food but fruit/veg not so much.

Absolutely this. I pity the parents of some Mumsnetters and I hate to tell them but they will be doing things that their own children will criticise when they are grown. It was always thus.

Yep! My prediction is that in 30 years time mumsnet, or the equivalent, will be full of posters horrified about being allowed to have too much screen time, and smartphones, as a child in 2025. Also horror that people’s parents uploaded photos online of them as a child, without their consent.

I think if you said food aversions rather than don't like vegetables then im sure they wouldn't laugh at you,

It'll be some scientific discovery that broccoli is carcinogenic and our DC will be on forums complaining about our awful toxic parenting that required broccoli consumption.

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

We can look back and moan or look back and reflect, change and/or accept aspects of the past. You are an adult now, how you go forward with your diet, health, resentment, life in general, is completely in your hands.

I hope you find a way to move on from blame and learn how to nourish yourself, literally and metaphorically.

I said it because I'm already there. My DS's complaint was our houses were always shit holes and he didn't feel he could have friends round. But in our eyes we were working our way up the property ladder by renovating, so they'd have a nice home in the end, we worked bloody hard at this. None of the other kids minded, in fact some of their friends were happy to wield a paintbrush.
Sometimes you just can't win.