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.

I was fed only cows milk till the age of five. Not UPF I know but would that be considered as neglect? I am told I loved milk but not sure why I wasn't weaned.

You mean you never ate any food, only drank milk? That's unbelievable and I'm amazed you weren't malnourished!

My cousin had only milk until she was about 5yo.
My uncle and aunt tried all sorts of ways to try to persuade her to eat, but she totally refused. Even adding a flavour to milk to try and get her used to having different flavours didn't work. First thing she would eat was Smash, found at a friend's house.

She was totally healthy, because she had regular check ups because of her diet.
I think they used to sneak vitamin drops in the milk.

By the time she was 7 she ate fine, even pretty adventurously.

Have you got a severely underdeveloped jaw/mouth muscles?

Yep, just milk no solids. Have never been given an exact reason why but it was seen as a good thing. I have been anemic most of my adult life, but not sure if that's got anything to do with it.

I have an unhealthy relationship with food in the sense that I overeat and don't have an off button.

Sorry misposted!

No, thankfully I don't.

This is a guilt inducing thread.

My dad worked in a very demanding job, I understand what you're saying but my mum was a SAHM, and in the 80s and 90s that meant she did the shopping and cooked the dinner.
I'm not saying my mum made me obese, but she instilled some very questionable eating habits in us, and all of us kids ended up overweight, she tried to feed my children and my siblings children similar crap and her love language is to give them sweets and treats, on a magnitude you can't imagine. She ignores her and my dads diabetes (continues to buy things he finds hard to resist) and they have takeaway at least 3 times a week and I fear they're in borrowed time.
For those saying 80s and 90s were some kind of whole food utopia, lucky you because it wasn't for me, I was always gobsmacked that my friend's mum made food from scratch instead of just buying it from Iceland. It was for my DH who was quite a bit poorer than us growing up, his mum cooked everything from scratch.

Cooking for other people day after day is a huge commitment and it's too hard for some people to be that giving. My mother had a lot of issues, and from having therapy, I now understand her a bit better. She wasn't cared for emotionally by her own mother and she couldn't give us what she never got.

And cooking for us was just something she couldn't easily do. I remember all our meals being fraught. She would give my brother and me a meal and then disappear into the kitchen while we ate it. She made it clear to us how much she hated cooking and had me doing some of it as soon as I could. By the time smy dad retired he was doing all the cooking.

Anyway, she embraced processed meals in the early 70s because it meant she didn't have to cook for us.

I definitely didn't have a home life with delicious food, with people coming round for meals, where mum and i cooked together, did baking.

And i can't separate out any issues I have around food and the processed stuff in particular from the emotional stuff I grew up with.

Processed food was calming in our house. It stopped my mum being so angry for a bit at least. It was tasty, and I didn't enjoy bland soft food.

I think it's all much more complicated than being used to it. Why did our mothers go there in the first place?

Cooking for other people day after day is a huge commitment and it's too hard for some people to be that giving.

I bloody hate cooking and I used to love it. Years of thinking what to cook, people with allergies and preferences. I am however that giving, I was made to eat what was in front of me as a child as it was all we had, I can be a bit fussy now, but I've never made my kids eat what they didn't like.
I hate meal planning with a passion, sometimes I get home and don't want the food that is planned.
I have no words for how much I utterly despise cooking.
So yes, I can really understand 80s mums being totally taken with processed ready meals.

Oh my god I have the EXACT same thing with grapes and tomatoes!! I can just about eat grapes (but have to psych myself up for them) but the only way I can eat raw tomatoes is blended or grated (with lots of salt and pepper and extra virgin olive oil). It’s the way they explode in your mouth. Makes me retch.

OP I too grew up on a diet of UPF that horrifies me now! My packed lunch every single day was:
crisps
a cheesy roll with a processed cheese filling
a squeezy yoghurt
tinned peaches as my one portion of fruit (which I never ate so they’d ferment and the Tupperware would eventually explode in my lunch box)
… and a crunchie bar

This was EVERY DAY for 7 YEARS!

I became vegetarian aged 11 and my mum understandably didn’t want to cook 2 meals so I had a ready meal almost every evening. Sugary cereal for breakfast. I was a skinny kid but in a scrawny, unhealthy sort of way.

But I would say (apart from the tomatoes and grapes thing…) I’ve got a pretty good relationship with food now. I eat adventurously, I cook from scratch every day, I provide healthy food for my kids even if they don’t always eat it.

My mum disapproves of this, calls me the “sugar police” and showers my kids with sweets, chocolate and UPF at every opportunity. It baffles me because she’s actually an amazing cook! My kids love going to granny’s because they know it’ll be a sugar fest, and I guess that’s ok.

I relate to this. I also have autism so have a fair predisposition to sticking to safe, beige food anyway!

The game changer for me was going to work as a waitress in a nice restaurant aged 16. It opened my eyes to all the different ways to prepare and cook food and made me realise that I might not like boiled or microwaved veg and fish, but there was lots of different options. I ended up working in some really high end places where trying and recommending different dishes is basically compulsory!

From there I taught myself to cook, everything from scratch. I realised that many jarred or UPF sauces are crammed full of sugar and it was the slightly slimey texture that I didn’t like- when I made things myself it was completely different.

I now love cooking and eating out, particularly in really high end places as you can trust that they have paid real attention to the textures and flavours and are often really delicate, so if you don’t love something, it won’t be overpowering.

I still can’t really do shellfish, beyond a scallop however!

Mmmm cheesey pasta heaven 🥰 😋. I never got to try that as a child because my mum cooked from scratch all the time but now it is a guilty pleasure of mine now and again.