Can this be true

[Fusedog]

I was at baby gym toady and supermarket bills came up and we were all moaning about how much our shopping is ECt I was especially bemoaning the price of fruit and veg and one of the mums who has 4 children said

well I don't buy any fruit and veg so I wouldn't no I said you mean fresh fruit she said no Fresh or frozen I just have ready meal or oven stuff we have a TV dinner on a Sunday I just buy 6 one for every one*one

I went quite when I can home I told. Dh and he said people do eat like this

Can this really be true no fruit and veg AT all won't you get skervey

I no there are people who eat a lot of oven food chicken nuggets ECt but this can't be true surely especially with children in the home

I wasn't suggesting that children with bad diets were taken away from their parents I was suggesting that children who are not fed over the weekend were taken away from their parents, if to starve your child is not reason enough to have them removed from your care something is seriously wrong with our society.

In terms of vegetables and fruit being too expensive for some families I don't believe that, my mum was a single mum in the 80s and we had a very vegetable rich diet and constant access to in season fruit. We didn't eat meat, very little cheese, we didn't have a tv or new clothes/toys, I didn't taste a ready meal until I was at university and we never had take always juice, pop squash.

Meals like lentil soup and pasta with carrot sauce are dirt cheap to cook.

I didn't eat fruit or veg as a kid (though not for lack of my parents trying - although they were very much a 'posh' ready meal family, they had copious amounts of fruit).

I did have daily vitamins though. I was also a vegetarian for 5 years during this (my parents nearly despaired!).

I trained myself to start to eat veggies when I was about 13 (started with spinach!). I now eat all veg and (mostly) enjoy it.

I still eat next to no fruit. It is definitely sensory, not flavour, related. I can only eat fruit that is completely smooth, such as melon, mango and occasionally pear (it is sometimes too grainy).

My DS on the other hand is a fruit addict! His favourite are bananas which even the smell of makes me retch, but I still give them to him.

Summer Rain - your DD sounds just like me at her age. Does she also skin new potatoes and have to have bolognase sieved to removed the hint of a lump?

. We didn't eat meat, very little cheese, we didn't have a tv or new clothes/toys so your mum sacrificed that so you could have a ready source of veg.

Is that what you expect every one else to do?

Each to there own.

A ten of peas or beans has lots of nutrition now are we talking , processed, mushy chip shop style or marrow fat?

*so your mum sacrificed that so you could have a ready source of veg.

Is that what you expect every one else to do?

Each to there own.*

Yes, that is exactly what I expect people to do. If you have choosen to have a child and you don't have much money your priority should be to give your child a safe home, suitable clothing and reasonably healthy food, how can you argue that parents should have meat, cheese, a tv, takeaways whilst their is not enough money to buy their kids apples?

Jenny... if it were sensory with her I think it would be easier but unfortunately it's not. She won't eat a piece of spaghetti which has so much as brushed against the sauce, no chance she'd eat it strained. Bizarrely she likes potato skins and will eat the skins from every one else's baked potato as well as her own [vom]

Unfortunately with dd it's taste related, and more specifically her perception of how she thinks it's going to taste. I was very similar, my diet is much better now but I'm by no means a fan of veg and there's very few fruits I can stand (green veg tastes weedy and bitter to me, and fruit tastes sour). I can tolerate the not eating side orders of veg and only eating limited fruit (aka the occasional apple) but it's the refusal to consume sauces, casseroles, risottos... anything that may have encountered an onion at some stage in its production. You can't even taste the onion fgs

and all the while you judge her for her diet, someone is judging you for your spelling, grammer etc.

No one has mentioned that not everyone has the skills / confidence to cook from scratch.

DD has a friend who eats like this. When she came to our house for tea, and we had jacket potato with tuna, she loved it. She said would I show her mum how to make jacket potatoes because she didn't know how.

I am genuinely appalled at the stats on how many kids go to school without breakfast and some who haven't even had a evening meal the night before. I cannot imagine the finances of the parents that mean this has to happen...so sad.So whilst a diet of crap isn't desirable at least these kids are being fed.I just hope these are the exceptions.

May I suggest you've either not met many people, or you live in a very sheltered circle.

ikea so if your poor - you kids can expect a apple and tangerine in a sock for Christmas then?

ikea so if your poor - you kids can expect a apple and tangerine in a sock for Christmas then?

better to get an apple and a tangerine than a load of toys your parents can't afford and go hungry for weeks after.

My toddler hates all fruit. I coax a bit of banana down him but that's about it. Strawberries are an absolute no no. He does eat veg tho. Tbh I also think fruit is a bit shit!

I feel sorry for children who are not properly fed,I was made to eat cabbage as a child ( else no pudding) it used to make me gag,so I forced it down. Hence we eat very healthy lots of veg fruit,we can afford to,but in my previous marriage we were not well off,but I always made sure veg was eaten.I think you either follow on from the way you were brought up.or you go the other way and don't make your kids eat veg etc.i think you can tell a persons diet by looking at them(generally).

A ten of peas or beans has lots of nutrition hmm now are we talking , processed, mushy chip shop style or marrow fat?

Of course peas and beans have nutrients in, what an odd comment! nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2887/2

If the OP met this woman at the baby gym I guess the woman in question can't be completely hard up, as baby gym costs money (doesn't it . . . or are there some free ones out there?). I think it's interesting that the majority of the posts are along the lines of 'don't be judgy' . . . . whereas other forms of neglect, or parenting behaviours that are highly likely to cause harm to a child are absolutely flamed on here. A fruit and veg free diet, and existing almost entirely on highly processed food, is absolutely going to cause harm to a child. I think that it's neglect. Perhaps it's a neglect born of poverty - certainly the price of healthy food is incredibly depressing, and many people are suffering food poverty (just look at the rising use of foodbanks). However there are ways to eat healthily and cheaply, if the woman in question buys 6 ready meals (one for each member of her family as I understand), the very cheapest she could do that for would be at a £1 per person. It would not be hard to cook up a delicious sausage casserole (carrots, beans of some sort, tinned tomatoes etc) for example for well below £6 for 6 people. I certainly feel guilty sometimes about what I feed my children, I'm sure that most parent struggle with this, but the above diet seems fairly extreme.

My son hates fruit. He will eat veg of many varieties so I don't worry.

ikea is your first name Katie ?

Ah, Summer, that must make things very difficult if she has to avoid anything with onion in!

Wings:
'A fruit and veg free diet, and existing almost entirely on highly processed food, is absolutely going to cause harm to a child. I think that it's neglect.'

That was my childhood and I definitely don't feel I was neglected. It isn't just people in poverty who live on ready meals. My parents' entire freezer is stacked with Tesco Finest and M&S meals. Last time I spent a week there, I couldn't find any actual 'food' to rustle up: all pop and ping. They're very comfortable middle class and don't have any excuses, apart from they enjoy the convenience of it, particularly when we were all in at different times. We also had most meals on trays in front of the telly!

I was always the picture of health as a child and rarely ill (still the case today). However, I do prefer eating 'real' food now and will ensure that DS eats better than I did. DS's favourite foods at the moment are peas, carrots and as much fruit as possible!

You can bet your bottom dollar she had a smartphone and Internet access tho lol. Poor poor people

ikea is your first name Katie

No, it's not. I'm talking from personal experience. I'm surprised that it is seen as an unusual opinion that healthy food ( or any food at all) should be the family budgets priority.

It's fucking miserable growing up dirt poor, I don't think any child should have to be brought up in a home where the parent has to make the choice between buying food or lightbulbs ( we often had no lightbulbs in some rooms as there wasn't enough money to buy lightbulbs, we never had a lightbulb in the hall) we did have presents in our stockings at Christmas but it was stuff we needed, pens for school, nickers, about 4 oranges to bulk it out, second hand hat and scarf and a cheap often secondhand toy or bubbles/cheap plastic ball.

The food was not very tasty, we were not allowed cheese on pasta if there was a protein ( often a grain and bean which mum tells me creates a protein) there was an awful lot of lentils and dried beans but we were not hungry and I respect my mum for making those decisions for us.

We never, I mean never, ate any fruit or veg as a child. Parents were not rich, not poor. They just had and still have no clue about nutrition. They think my strange insistence that my children have fresh fruit and veg, and limited biscuits and crisps, is some kind of strange quirk of mine. No matter what information you present them with, they don't believe it. When we visited them, I asked what vegetables they had in - none.

They were also of the "they won't eat it" school of thought. So I think I had fishfingers, oven chips and baked beans every single night until I hit my teens, and like a previous poster, introduced myself to fruit and veg and forced myself to learn to like them. I do love them now, although end up saving them, for the children because they're so expensive. As a teenager I got embarrassed at what our friends' parents were saying about our diet. So I trained myself to eat like them.

So many children I know won't eat fruit and veg - yes, my children love them, but then they haven't known an alternative. And they would eat a lot of crap if they had unlimited access.

ive seen a lady buy a trolley full of instant meals for herself and her kids the closest thing to an uncooked meal was a frozen bag of sausages! i admit before i had children buying ready meals but i was working 2/3 jobs then

In Morrisons atm some fruit and veg are 3 for £2. In bags of 6 there are apples, satsumas, tomatoes and pears so for £2 six people could have 3 portions each.

What does ECt mean?