To be staggered that only 1 in 5 children eats vegetables every day

[Beloved72]

Are there really families where children get no vegetables with their evening meal or packed lunch/school lunch?

Quite shocked actually. I can get my head around children and adults not having 5 a day, but NONE?

And 1 child in 10 refusing to eat ANY vegetables ever?

Yikes. I worry for our future health.

Mominatrix, I know what you mean. Where I grew up everyone ate veg. Every day, every meal. Cooked in a wide variety of ways. I do think that wider food culture is a factor. Clearly it is not always enough to model for your dc if many around you are refusing to touch the stuff and think meals without veg are norMal.

As a child I loathed fruit (and still struggle as an adult) but loved vegetables. I was raised by Mediterranean parents & I have raised DS on the foods from my childhood, he is great with vegetables, fruit, fish & will even eat squid, he is 3 yrs old. But he is not keen on meat at all, I think I am a good cook, I try to be creative but some days I watch as the vegetables are heartily eaten & the meat remains on the plate.

DSis raised her children in exactly the same way, they love meat & some fruit but veg is a daily battle.

I can understand why parents on a restricted budget can despair at buying food that they know will not be eaten.

Flowergirlmum have you not tasted breast milk recently? It's like liquid sugar. I'm pretty sure that DC don't have a sweet tooth simply because they've been corrupted by chocolate buttons.

I have two DC, both mix fed as infants and brought up on more or less the same diet except that my PFB got a bit more hand puréed Annabel Karmel (before the days of BLW being a thing) and second born got a few more jars. PFB is now sugar obsessed and takes a fair amount of work to squeeze any veg into (I manage a couple a day but it takes effort) Second-born will raid the fridge for raw vegetables, can take or leave chocolate or sweets, and says "Sprouts! Fantastic!" without a hint of irony.

I get that not everybody is living in a Waitrose and Nigella MN bubble, and I understand that some people have serious problems with money/organisation/cooking skills, but 80% not eating veg every day and 40% of children refusing to eat vegetables full stop are genuinely shocking figures if true (which I kind of doubt).

Mind you, if the "not eating veg every day" one means "at some point in the last month did your child have a day when they ate no veg?" Then yes of course I can believe that most children had one day when they went out for the day and had a ham sandwich and an apple for lunch and picked up fish and chips on the way home in the evening. It's the 40% of total veg refusers which is difficult to believe.

Lol at those who can't imagine what those who don't eat veg actually eat.

Outside the middle class MN bubble, the closest a lot of people come to a vegetable is the tomato sauce on their pizza.

When they're not eating pizza they'll be eating something beige with chips, cereal, toast, or plain ham/cheese sandwiches. Even roast dinners can consist solely of meat, roast potatoes and gravy without the veg.

I once sat opposite DSis, BIL and their DD at a Chinese buffet and not one of them had picked a single vegetable containing dish, perhaps with the exception of the bean sprouts in the spring rolls.

Some children go through picky phases like my eldest where they just don't like vegetables and short of ramming it down their throats foie gras style there's nothing as a parent you can do. I've tried all sorts- hiding it in other foods, mashing it all together, blending it into a pasta sauce, blatantly lying to him about the superpowers vegetables possess . He just is the definition of a fussy eater, he'll only touch spinach if it's raw better for him I guess but sucks when I try and put it into meals which I do quite regularly as a veggie. Luckily for me I own a nutribullet and he'll have smoothies so often I get his spinach and kale in with smoothies for breakfast, not all families have access to a blender.

So it doesn't surprise me from the standpoint of some children going through fussy phases. Vegetables are way cheaper than fruit though so if price is the issue that doesn't really make sense. You don't need vegetables every day as long as you have fruit instead but you really should be aiming for at least three pieces of one or the other. I think the issue is we have some weird obsession with meat in this country and a lot of people find it acceptable to just eat their meat and dairy and nowhere near enough vegetables or fruit. Diets are too animal protein and fat heavy thus we are getting fatter and sicker as a nation.

Yesterday the same food was put in front of all my DC. As we had home made tomato soup for lunch and veg gratin followed by apple and pear pie for dinner, DD had onion, garlic, leek, carrots, tomato (ok, technically a fruit), broccoli, aubergine, potato, plus apples and pears - quite large quantities, as she had 2 portions at both meals, though I'm not sure whether the garlic is enough to "count"...

DS2 was offered the same food but ate a bread roll at lunch and a tiny taste of soup to allow him to get down from the table having tried it, and a tiny amount of gratin - barely a teaspoon - plus the apple and pear pie at dinner (so 2 portions of fruit, but with sugar and pastry!). He did also eat carrot sticks between meals so just avoids the "no" veg label.

DS1 fell between the 2.

All offered the same meals. Smug "my kid lives veg" people are lucky just like smug "my kid slept through from day 3" people - of course there are things that help and hinder, and you have to offer the veg for them to eat it - but beyond that it isn't you and your great/ terrible parenting, it's them and the phase they're in or their natural tastes...

flowergirl really? past 3? wow. my DCs got chocolate before their first birthday!

restrictions on foods could lead to problems in diet later on in life. im sure I read that somewhere. ..
so I don't tell them they can't have anything. I don't want them thinking they have to eat it in secret. or that food is bad so they mustn't eat it. I know these are extreme examples but children have enough pressures on them in everday life.

we should be teaching our children about healthy balanced diets, which can include chocolate and crisps, in moderation.

"restrictions on foods could lead to problems in diet later on in life."

I don't think that means if you don't give your 1 year old chocolate buttons that they're going to have an eating disorder when they're older :)

Flowergirl I'd say the same about my DD loving veg (and she had chocolate from a year old) - but she's one of 3, my daughter lives veg, my sons not so much - you just got lucky, it's not that you did it right and everyone else weaned their babies on chocolate and sweets

bumbley that came across wrong!
I know that I was just explaining why personally I choose not to bother if they have a bit of chocolate or a few quavers from time to time at a young age! it doesn't mean I have subjected them to a life full of sugar!

We eat LOADS of veg - both kids love their veg - even sprouts! Roast on Sunday has 4 or 5 veg alone

But on Saturday we didn't have any veg at all...

breakfast was porridge with banana and blueberries

lunch was poached egg on toast with followed by an apple and orange cut up so they could suck it off the skin (for some reason they still find it amusing to do the orange skin teeth thing )

tea was fish, chips and curry sauce from the chippy - sauce was luminous gloop - doubt it had seen a vegetable - maybe an onion?

Oh I lie - we had movie night after - does popcorn count as a vegetable?

surely everyone has the odd day with no veg - I am not surprised at all by the stats.

The figures sound off.

"Just 19 per cent of parents said their child eats vegetables every and of those who don't, over half said their child, 'simply won't eat them at all'." [sic]

The maths is wrong surely? if 19% eat them every day then 81% don't. Over half of 81% is not 10%.

Much of the fruit and vegetables we eat nowadays are covered in fertiliser and pesticides and have a tiny amount of available nutrients compared to fruit and vegetables in the past.

I am lucky to have a child that loves both but it actually worries me that I can't afford organic. Food is such a minefield now.

Smuggy righteousness is its own evidence. Despite evidence to the contrary.

There is scientific evidence that if a child is exposed to new foods at least 24 times before they are 2 or 3, they learn to like that food. Don't ask me to link to the evidence but I did have it at one stage!

My kids now adults eat anything and always have, with one or two small exceptions. They would have whatever was cooked put on their plates and they ate it. If they didn't there would be no fuss, questions or hoo-haa- just put it in the bin and offer the same again the next day.

They both had 'real food' from the age of a few months when weaned- so broccoli, carrots, and other veg was pureed in with meat and fish, so they got used to the flavours. They never had packet meals or jars except in emergencies- travelling etc.

On the other hand I have a cousin, who at 50 is morbidly obese, diabetic and very ill. As child he refused any veg except potatoes. His mum went along with that and as far as I know he doesn't eat any or much now. Eating habits are formed early in life.

I had beans on toast, spam fritters, chips - oh, and litres of instant whip as a child - I was 25 before I tasted pasta that was not of the "hoops" variety - I eat anything now

I am really surprised at those numbers. It makes me feel a lot better about my kids eating habits. They eat fruit or veg with every meal (and generally both). It's healthy protein I struggle to get into DS1 (2). He will only eat fish in the form of fish fingers, cheese and nuts :(

mine eat fruit OR veg with every meal too - but that is not the issue here - it talks about VEG only - do mumsnetters never have a day without veg - cereal breakfast, eggs for lunch, takeaway tea - can mean no veg - may have tons of fruit - but no veg...

makes me wonder how the question was phrased anyhow - since one report finding was that 40% of the parents questioned said that they didn’t think vegetables needed to be part of every meal

I personally don't think veg NEEDs to be eaten for breakfast...

The figures are so dubious - where do they come from? What is the point of them? To make both the smug feel self righteous and the non veg eaters feel it's not so bad as there are so many others the same?

As others say it's not even clear what some of it is supposed to mean - do these children have a very occasional day without any veg (perhaps they were ill or ate nothing but party food on their birthday but healthily the rest of the year) or do they rarely eat veg? And as Bertie says the numbers don't even add up.

Either way it achieves nothing - it's just an excuse for people to feel smug and congratulate themselves for something that would have happened anyway.

Somewhere - mine eat veg with breakfast most days, usually fruit also. This morning they had poached egg, with grilled mushrooms and tomatoes. Plus small bowl of Greek yogurt with pear.
I like that it sets them up for the day, and I can get something healthy and nutritious in early incase the rest of the day goes pear shaped

I'm in my early 60s.
I hated veg and meat when I was a child.
I could just about manage a few carrots and maybe fresh peas in the summer.

Wer had lots of egg and chips for tea, sometimes had an apple in with the packed lunch.
To me Sunday lunch was potatoes and gravy and a mouthful of carrot and meat if I really had to.

I remember gagging on cabbage at a friend's house.

But we didn't have take away or ready meals or crisps.
We didn't eat food full of additives and chemicals.

Fresh strawberries and lettuce and full of pesticides and other poisons.
They can do more harm than good.

BILL who at the age of 40 sthg only just starting to eat veg, since he had a child, I don't think he wanted to be shown up or set bad example. My DH, his brother, really only started to eat veg in any quantities or interesting ways when we got together 10 years ago. His ex doesn't do cooking really. Their mum home cooked every day, is a good cook, but just her boys didn't get veg. They can change though!

2 step kids are like their mum, beige food, the other one will eat anything!

going back to the start of the thread where an allotment was suggested. There's a 2+ year wait in most places, I waited for 4. then it requires time, money and knowledge to get anything out of it.

Artandco - but technically mushrooms are fungus and tomatoes are fruit... sorry, but neither fit as veg.