To believe we've forgotten how to eat healthily

[Yoruba]

I'm so completely fed up of the school serving up so much rubbish, with seemingly no understanding that its unhealthy. It is really really hard to find good evidenced advice about healthy eating for children. There seem to be contradictory reports coming out all the time, and I say that as someone who is really interested in this subject so it must be harder if you don't.

The school meals are utter rubbish. They have a sugary rubbishy pudding every day, sweets at every possible occasion and now they have seen fit to start selling ice creams after school to raise money.
Im not even THAT strict I don't think, I'm happy for her to have these foods but evidence shows that eating them regularly alters your taste buds and makes you crave them more. I think they should be occasional foods we eat as PART of a healthy diet, not every day.

But at the moment I'm feeling like a lone voice and I hate dd feeling like she's missing out in not having what her friends are. I don't want these things to be "forbidden" objects of desire.

It just seems as though there is very little knowledge now of what is actually healthy for children.

Yes yes bragmatic Of course there are good foods and bad foods whoever said not hasn't visited most of the central aisles of most supermarkets (which are full of shxx).

Exactly Delphinumsblue

I know a few posts have said we're not talking about extremes, but do want to remind people that the extremes exist. There are kids, like the boy in Bog's sad story, who'd literally starve rather than eat unappealing food. They don't all have some sort of disorder and, even if they do, they need to be kept alive pending diagnosis.

There are genetic conditions that turn off the appetite 'switch', meaning individuals either never feel hungry or never feel full. Other genetic conditions interfere with fruit & veg digestion - I knew a man with this: he's only ever eaten carbs, cheese & meat; fruit & veg will give him liver failure, but he's instinctively avoided them since childhood. Of course, we know about genetic disorders that interfere with wheat digestion (coeliac) but did you know there's a rice version, which occurs widely in Asia? Some food allergies, are real; what we don't always acknowledge is that people can develop allergies or intolerance to any food, at any age.

I accept that a lot of kids are too fussy, and can be cajoled into broadening their diet. But it's also true that children can instinctively know which foods are bad for them; this can be interpreted as fussiness, with deleterious effects if made to eat foods that are wrong for them. The bottom line is that humans need calories more than anything except air & water. I'm all for a varied, healthy diet - just pointing out that healthy really does mean different things for different people.

Thats a pretty good way of eating more healthily actually ppeatfruit-avoiding the central aisles!
And, no delphiniums, you can't "rigidly control" what children eat when they are out, but I know too many people who follow the "no bad foods" mantra, and also give their children utter shite at home.
And by utter shite I include Frubes, Frozen Pizza, Cheese strings, Petit Filous, Organix crisps, "yogurt covered" cereal bars all of which seem to be considered quite healthy, just because they are not bog standard crisps and chocolate.
My friend, whose whole extended family is overweight, so there are issues behind it, stands by the " no bad foods" thing. Her oldest child came home with a letter from school, after weighing, saying he is overweight, but she won't stop getting in the non-food rubbish, as she doesn't want to make a big deal of it.
The thing is, you can restrict stuff without kids knowing you are doing it. I was a right greedy guts as a child (still am) and my parents put me on a diet. They never told me this at the time though, and I had no idea, so, no food issues.

Ppeat, there is no 'bad' food unless it's literally poisonous (and wouldn't be on sale in Sainsbury's!) Only 'bad' diets - and even then, the worst diet is insufficient food.

I have little boys round my house all the time, a whole variety of them, and all bar one eat NOTHING. They can't all be naturally avoiding things that might upset their tummies.
I am so sick of chucking food in the bin, that now I will ask in advance what they will eat, and if you want to talk about restricted diets, my God some of their diets are limited!
The only one who eats is the one whose family have an allotment, and they eat from there a lot, which may be be no coincidence.
I am quite a good cook, honest (I have cooked for a living) and I used to make what I thought was food kids liked-lasagne, fajitas, roast chicken-but they don't eat it.

Of course there are "bad" foods Garlic. Many things sold as food, have zero nutrition in them, and many ingredients that will, in the long term, cause heart disease and diabetes. These non foodstuffs are not merely neutral, they are bad for you.

They are only bad for you if eaten regulary though. As an occasional thing then they do no harm, they don't do good but they don't do harm

It's about moderation.

healthy really does mean different things to different people

Yes indeed that's why I follow my Blood Type way of eating and I hate it when for some reason kids are made to eat "what is put in front of them". Thus depriving them of their autonomy, we wouldn't do it to an adult, no wonder there are so many eating disorders out there.

I think one of the problems with children's diets nowadays is that they have become so much fussier about what they will and won't eat. I know some people who kick about 4 separate things for dinner because one won't eat pasta and another won't eat potatos and another won't have butter on anything etc.
When I was growing up in the 70s there was one meal made every night and no pizza or chicken nuggets on standby in the freezer. None of us were force fed with food we literally didn't like, but neither were we pandered to. If you turned your nose up at what was for dinner you could have bread and butter and that was it. As a result we ate most things and anything we refused was because of a genuine inability to stomach that food. As a result my mum could easily keep track of our few genuine dislikes and work around them.
Nowadays, kids seem to change their minds from week to week as to what they will and won't eat.

They are only bad for you if eaten regulary though. As an occasional thing then they do no harm, they don't do good but they don't do harm

It's about moderation.

This ^^ 100%

The pearl clutching attitude to some foods is worrying.

Exactly the way my family worked Vintage. Bread and butter to fill up if you didn't like what was on offer.
Out of the 6 of us, one brother was quite picky and probably lived on bread and cheese for about 4 years, but he got over it.
Parents now are terrified their child might go hungry, and will capitulate over food, which I think actually makes food issues worse.
A fiends son will never, ever eat a meal. He is cajoled, and bribed, they leave the meal on the table so he can finish it at his leisure. He gets rewarded for eating with sugary treats.
Not a one of my 5 siblings or I have any food issues at all, and all of us are slim/average, probably because it was just our tea, and if you don't eat it someone else will, so better be quick.
Children now are so pandered to it's unreal.

I think it is about good habits. My kids are used to having decent, good quality food with plenty of fruit and vegetables. In situations like DD's recent school trip, they really miss it. I remember DS coming home from a sixth form trip where the catering had been pretty much centred around fast food outlets, and telling me he was actually craving a salad. Similarly, although my kids enjoy sweets and chocolate, in our house it tends to be a couple of sweets or a few pieces of chocolate, they are quite over faced when friends bring round numerous massive bags.

I do think separate catering for kids is a bit bizarre. Kids' food is often a synonym for crap, low quality food, both in restaurants and in what people feed their kids at home. And it is so easy to just give your kids what you eat.

My own personal observations about extremely fussy kids are that often they have lots of other issues going on. My autistic nephew for instance has real issues with texture. I do know a fussy child whose parents are just massively controlling. I wonder if their fussiness is about taking some kind of control back for themselves.

So you like to eat the same every..single..day do you Vintage? i know I don't and i would'nt expect my dcs to. We all need variety in our diets. It's not the 70s. If you want to blame anything for it blame the tv not the dcs.

How hard is it to put bowls of food on the table without dressings and let the dcs help themselves.?

We eat rubbish occasionally, I said this Yes, in moderation it won't kill you. The point is that it needs to be acknowledged that it is rubbish.

In our house meals where people help themselves from a variety of stuff are always very successfully. More so than when we have something out of the big pot (casserole or stew or chilli).

There are a couple of foods that are sooo acid forming (apart from the non foods) that they can make people ill.

DH has had to stop eating pork products because he literally gets terrible pains in his legs that stops him walking he worked out it was the bacon and now he can walk with no trouble ( he notices that the pains return if he 'forgets')

The other is rhubarb which is full of oxalate acid and gives me vile reflux and arthritis.

As someone who boarded from age 7 I think Walton's post about "no fussy kids at boarding schools" is total rubbish. I would go days on end only having dry, white, sliced bread because I didn't want to eat the food on offer. I lived for "Chip day" on Fridays and I wasn't alone. School meals actually caused me to have a very limited diet for years because the use of cheap meat and overlooked veg led me to assume I didn't like things like courgettes and spag Bol, which it turns out I do, if they are cooked properly with decent ingredients.

i do think separate catering for kids is a bit bizarre. Kids' food is often a synonym for crap, low quality food, both in restaurants and in what people feed their kids at home. And it is so easy to just give your kids what you eat

I agree with this too!! If you have seen other threads it seems MNetters keep a freezer draws full of this crap just incase a child comes to dinner. The consensus seemed to be tht even a home made pizza wasn't the same as a shop bought one and the kid must hae been very user to have expected pizza then be presented with one that was so far removed from what she would know

There seems to be zero expectations for kids to eat anything else. When people post saying their kids eat hummus and olives and tomatoes it's seen as pretentious. No one seems to believe kids will eat "normal food".

I agree Giles.

Unless its something one or the other of us doesn't like me and DS eat pretty much the same. I couldn't be doing with the hassle of cooking sepertly!

DS has started ordering something off the lightbites menu when we eat out as he isnt keen on nuggets and things and often even the sausages are different to the ones they serve for adults - cheap crap for the kids decent ones for adults!

Our dcs can cook well and have done (helping at first) from age 2. IMO That's very important;DD1 says all her friends at uni were amazed and really appreciated her cooking. Which says it all really!

We usually just order a spag Bol or a steak and chips or something and share between them.

The only time we resort to having the kids menu is of there's a kids version of shepherds pie or something, or everything on the adult menu comes with a creamy sauce or a BBQ sauce or goats cheese or vinaigrette or something I know they don't like. (Those catering size cheap BBQ sauces etc can be very harsh and vinegary) and then chicken nuggets and chips is the safer option.

But yeah, when you look at the kids pasta dish it's plastic pre grated cheese. It all comes with beans and my kids like beans but the option of vegetables or salad would be nice.

Everything looks like it's been sat in the freezer for months and it never looks nice.

I agree that the "kids menu" is crap. It's frustrating when a cafe has lots of lovely adult sized portions, then a kids menu with 4 things on it, all of them re-formed, bland and mushy.
Again, not saying the odd fish finger will kill you, but it's the assumption that kids will only eat this stuff that annoys me.

Peat where did I say I like to eat the same thing every day. My mother cooked a variety of meals, just not six different dinners every evening. As a result we learnt to try different things as opposed to putting on a mute face and sulking until the pizza or fishfingers came out of the freezer which is what I see children doing nowadays in some houses. I had a friend as a child whose mother was like that, and she grew up to be the fussiest eater ever.

Many things sold as food, have zero nutrition in them

What? Really? Zero nutrition? No calories, no proteins, no fats, no micronutrients, no anything?

Packaged air, in fact or did you mean water?