to think nesquick whole grain cereal, fat free milk and no added sugar juice is relatively healthy for a fussy eater

[twistedsista]

Hi,

My 7 year old Ds is a very fussy eater, tried everything!

I would love it if he would eat kale with cottage cheese on rice cakes for breakfast but get real no child eats perfectly like that.

Today he had a normal sized bowl of whole grain nesquick cereal with skimmed milk.I know it has some sugar in it but its only about the same as a banana and to counter this he has a glass of sugar free orange squash. Both the cereal and juice have added vitamins. Does everyone else agree this is pretty healthy and realistic breakfast?

Thanks

Marie

Diet coke & mars bars is a tad extreme isn't it.

But if that was literally all they would eat presumably you would be going to the doctors very concerned and to suggest giving them hand milled oats topped with fruit would be pointless wouldn't it?

"Offering healthy food is always, always going to be best. The less processed the better. Prepared from scratch and not out of a jar. I would be surprised if anyone ever criticises that. The criticism here relates to the belief that all children who are fussy eaters are fussy because they are pandered to and their parents are lazy."

Quite. The smuggery on this thread is unbearable, even for Mumsnet standards.

And, whilst I concede that maybe our children will be the first generation to die younger than their parents (due to the obesity epidemic) am I wrong about the fact that life expectancy has risen and continues to rise at the moment, so that now we are living longer than ever before?

10,000 years ago life expectancy was somewhere in the 40s was it not?

Hazey don't get upset, some people just don't understand as they have never been there

I just can't stand it when person A says "this is my experience" and person B says "nonsense. full stop." It is such a deeply unintelligent thing to do.

I'd be delighted if DC would even eat cereal!! They prefer equally processed food (bread, bagels, tortillas, but only British produced, not when abroad). I usually think only of youngest as fussy, raise enough children & eventually one of them will be a fusspot.

I agree mintyy, but surely it goes both ways. The cornichon poster simply said what her dcs had for breakfast and was jumped on.

I notice the OP hasn't been back .

This thread is hilarious. I love competitive breakfast suggestions. I feel like I need to go back through and c&p some of the comments so I'll never forget how ridiculous some people are.

All this healthy eating advice and different ways of eating that cut out whole food groups are really unhelpful. It's a side effect of the digital age I think. People are reading one article/blog/website and deciding that it is fact and that's the 'right' way to eat (I have been guilty of this).

The reality is there's no secret to any of it. Anything is fine in moderation and everyone's body is different in how it responds to sugar or fat.

I don't think it's smug for people to say that protein and fat is the best breakfast, or for people to call cereal what it is. If you have a very fussy eater, then of course what matters is getting calories into them. But the op did say 'is this a good breakfast' and ideally, no it isn't a great breakfast. We have a massive issue of eating far too much sugar. It is extremely bad for you; obesity is just the tip of the iceberg. We eat three times more sugar than we did 50 years ago. We have got into thinking cereal is a healthy breakfast, when it really, really isn't. Lots of people don't know that, so it's worth talking about.

And this isn't a smug middle class issue with people showing off that their Jocasta's eat olives for breakfast. Cereal is fecking expensive. Eggs on toast isn't. And if you are from a low income family, your dc's risks of having health issues later in life are sadly much higher. It is therefore even more important you eat a healthy breakfast each day. This is something we should be discussing.

Can someone please tell me....have you ever heard of a child without an eating disorder or SN that has stopped eating and simply starved?

I'm always confused by this "He won't eat anything else..." thing which so many parents say re their children who have shit diets.....I might come over as a wanker but I subscribe to the "When he's hungry enough he will" school of thought....and I DO have experience of it.

My DD went days on nothing but cucumber and milk....I wouldn't offer her chips every day which I knew she'd eat...because I wanted her to eat rice/pasta/veg/fruit and eventually...surprise surprise she did!

Oh I give up. The smuggery isn't to do with the food, it is to do with the insistence that children will eat what you give them.

My best foodie friend wanted her son to eat porridge for breakfast and she battled with him for months. He didn't like it and she sent him to school hungry hoping to "break" him. He never did. The kid doesn't like porridge. I was disgusted with her for that.

Throughthelongbnight - that is exactly what I was thinking! Janeparker and mrswinnibago clearly put effort in to feeding their kids really well. What on earth is wrong with that?

Everything that goes in the bin is expensive.

why on Earth do you assume the OP is low income?

Some kids won't eat eggs on toast. But they will eat cereal.

Yes, Mrs Winnibago. My friend was hospitalised when she was 4 years old. She has no sn and eats everything now. I've just recently been to her 50th birthday.

Throughthelongbnight - that is exactly what I was thinking! Janeparker and mrswinnibago clearly put effort in to feeding their kids really well. What on earth is wrong with that?

There is nothing wrong with that. It is wrong though to say this is what I did therefore you can and should all do it too. It's deeply narrow minded to believe this.

Cereal is much much cheaper than egg on toast. (Don't know how to quote but from a previous post). A weetabix is 7p, porridge even cheaper. Eggs are 20p each.

I wouldn't leave my child for days on nothing but cucumber and milk. Surely chips wasn't the only other option?

My DC don't like chips but I do. You could have done something like a sweet potato chip.

Sorry not buying it was cucumber or chips with nothing else.

If he is a little overweight, perhaps he is fussy because he can be (i.e. there's always plenty of food around, so he's never actually hungry enough to eat things he doesn't love). I would do full fat milk and use a smaller bowl so the overall portion is smaller. Plus ditch the artificial sweeteners and chop some fruit into the cereal to add more fibre/bulk without calories.

No child will willingly starve themselves!

I have two who would, if there was nothing they would eat in the house.

JaneParker if food is so important to you, why didnt you leave strict instructions for your 'various nannies' about what to feed your dd?
Also I don't believe totally banning foods will get you anywhere, the minute your dd is old enough surely she will be buying stuff with her own money because she is curious to try it??

And by the way I have two other dds who eat ANYTHING so my dds fussiness is not down to anything I have done. It's just the way she is. And no, she isn't a 'poor spoilt darling' who would search your house for crisps and coke, she'd just sit and not eat for hours, which would be fine with her. I hope you aren't as judgmental to CHILDREN in real life as you are coming across on this thread, it's very sad actually

Harold it was at the time....she had a few chips and wouldn't eat anything else...but daily had cucumbers and milk to drink....I refused to keep getting her chips (she only liked the greasy ones from the shop and wouldn't eat for eg a potato wedge made in the oven. She wasn't in any danger...well hydrated etc...then she said "I'm STARVING!" and chowed into her lunch like her sister and that was that.

She won't eat certain things and I'd never make her if she doesn't like them...for instance she can't stand very wet things like curry or stew...that's fine...she's only 6....so I offer her just the rice and a a bit of chicken and salad...with no sauce...it's not about "breaking" them as someone suggested.

But I won't offer her only the favourite things either...I'd love to eat nothing but chips...and maybe a crisp and chocolate or two...but I can't...so I eat real food and save the crap treats for occasionally.

Gherkins, that well known health food:
www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/opies-cocktail-gherkins-227g

Ingredients

Gherkins,
Water,
Distilled Malt Vinegar,
Salt,
Sugar,
Acetic Acid,
Flavourings,
Preservative E220

And the picture is especially for Jane.

Does he like fish fingers OP? They are pretty easy to do in the morning. Beans on toast? I even do pizza some mornings (healthy kind, but no, not homemade at that time of the day!) - anything to avoid sugary breakfasts every day.

There have been cases where children with autism have become dangerously underweight because of food aversion

Cereal can be cheap (porridge made with water for example), but the example of a single weetabix for 7p used to make a 20p egg look expensive is invalid because almost no-one will have a single dry weetabix for breakfast.

I buy free range eggs from Aldi which cost 2.19 for 15, so 14.6 pence each. Two eggs with a couple of slices of toast (wholemeal if poss) will cost about 40 pence, so not massively more expensive than two weetabix with half a pint of milk.

That Nesquik cereal the OP mentions is 2 for 375g in Asda if you buy 3 boxes at a time. The suggested portion size is much smaller than what people will realistically eat - the box will probably only serve 5 or 6 portions when considering how much people actually eat, so at least as expensive as eggs on toast when you add the milk. The breakfast suggested in the OP is full of sugar and additives, so you would have to be a bit delusional to think it was healthy. Lots of other cereals cost even more expensive than that suggested by the OP. Would the OPs DS drink a glass of full fat milk as part of his breakfast.

Skimmed milk is unnecessary for almost everyone as well. Even full fat milk is only about 4% fat and there are lots of vitamins in the fat. Skimmed milk is sold because they can do lots of other things with the fat skimmed off. Selling skimmed milk at the same price as the other kinds is scamming the consumer.

I've always thought cereal to be crap, before I was on mumsnet - it really is one of the biggest cons of modern times. I don't generally eat it.

If I have cereal for breakfast, I am hungry again before I even get to work - to me that is not food. I can make an omelette in about 2 minutes so its not like a decent breakfast has to be time consuming.

Ok ouryve now that we have established that I allow my children to choose unhealthy food and enamel dissolving drinks for breakfast can people stop the sniping please?

My original post wasn't intended as a smug example of healthy eating, it was a 'look at the weird shit my kids choose to eat for breakfast' but unless I sprinkle 20g of sugar on their upwardly mobile gherkins then their fussy eating can be mocked rather than sympathized with.

Never mind, I'll cheer myself up with a vulgarian late breakfast of chocolate Alphabites.