beans mash and sausages is a healthy meal

[madhurjazz]

Mother in law thinks its junk food. But the beans contain 1 of your 5 a day, mashed potatoes are just veg and a good source of carbs and the sausages are full of essential protein.

We often have ketchup, this has been shown to reduce many cancers like prostate, and a glass of juice.

Seems healthy to me and not junky.

Em do you cook stuff that you know he actively doesn't like and serve him that too or just new stuff he hasn't tried?

It seems to me like deliberately serving smaller portions of stuff that you know he likes until he's eaten all the stuff he doesn't is a plan that could backfire with the wrong child. I could see a few children just spending their entire lives feeling hungry because they've had just enough to stop them feeling hungry but not really enough to keep them going for very long.

My children eat better around other children because they copy them. I find they are more inclined to try something new if one of their friends are eating it. It's not a case of that's the only option so lump it.

Same with every other child, MrsK. IME children rarely eat better at school just because they won't get another option. Copying peers has a huge impact on children, not just with eating.

The change of adult can help too. Much easier for an adult to get a child to try something if they're desperate to impress you with how well they've done.

IIRC that might have something to do with calorie/sugar intake too. They tend to stuff ready made stuff full of salt to give it a longer shelf life. Which means they then have to shove it full of sugar to stop it tasting foul. So the same portion sizes of a ready made and home made version can end up with a very different calorie count. And I don't think anyone ever adjusts the portion size to take account of that. I certainly wouldn't.

I'd agree it's being around other children that encourages mine to eat not that he's not given a choice - he's not given a choice at home either but he chooses not to eat stuff. He would refuse to eat things at preschool in the last year or so too. At school they get a few choices each day so I hope he'll widen his repertoire over time.

If I insisted he ate large portions of things he doesn't like at the moment he would vomit on his plate or on me (looking at you trip to Carluccios). My ds is stubborn and would not eat enough for general health if I took a hardline approach. Judge away if you like, and it's not that I feel judged, it's that I am being judged. Again, I'd be really pleased if I had a simple way of getting my child to easily eat a wide range of food rather than judgemental of those that don't. I know dc that eat anything and dc that are incredibly restricted and I can't say it's particularly down to how their parents approach food and mealtimes.

Tomatoes are sugary. This is a carton of Passata.

I was just in Tesco and picked up exactly those two jars of sauce to see how much sugar was in them.

They do Ego. They have recently said that people shouldn't eat Dolmio more than once a week, due to sugar content.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36051333

ego you should self publish and sell it to MNers we would make you famous then you could write another book that would sell more because you'd then be famous.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay I'm not a total cow who deliberately force feeds my kid food he hates (although I'm definitely quite far along the spectrum towards the tough love end of the parenting styles). Both kids (so far) are happy and healthy and school says they are confident and well mannered. If that showed signs of changing or my approach with food was causing one of my kids to be underweight then of course I would reassess.
It's actually the good eater that probably needs to come to terms with spending the rest of his life a bit hungry. He's naturally a sturdy build like me and his appetite is huge.
Some things DS1 says he doesn't like (spinach and chickpeas are the main ones I can think of) make regular appearances at the table. If he was sitting there looking green and never eating them or anything that touched them then of course I wouldn't serve them so frequently, but actually after a grumble "ugh...spinach" he eats it happily anyway. Basically he means that he would prefer it to be a different vegetable. My view is that if he's happy to eat an omlette that I've chucked a portion of chopped spinach into then he's less likely to spend the rest of his life avoiding it. Green leafy veg are important. Not being a fussy eater and understanding healthy eating is important.

It did sound a little extreme the way I read your last post and there are people who do serve something their child really doesn't like and I'm not sure the two approaches would work well together.

Wouldn't hold your breath about the spinach though. There's only two foods my mum insisted I have a serving of and ate as a child and I avoid both of them where possible. On the other hand a lot of the stuff I didn't really eat and wasn't pressured into I eat loads of now. It can go either way.

Ah, but I'm crafty...when I know he's not so keen on something I don't chuck a heap on a plate for him to focus on, I slip little bits into foods he does like. I think it's normal to have something you REALLY hate, or even a few things you struggle with, but it's really not normal for the short list to be the things you do eat and the rest of the foods to be ruled out. Personally, I wouldn't have to be 'hungry' to eat blue cheese, I'd have to be 'at-risk-of-death-starving'. That might be spinach for you. And I thought afterwards that I do 'pander' by spicing food differently for the children where chilli is concerned I must be going soft in my old age I'm really talking about the type of fussiness that sees kids living on coco pops, white pasta and nuggets or drinking juice because they don't like water.
Seriously. I worked in a school that had a water bottle policy and I used to get letters from parents telling me that their child didn't like water and would probably dehydrate if I didn't give them a dispensation to have juice/squash etc.
FFS!!
The worst thing is that some of the kids really were prepared to go without water when they were thirsty on hot days because they were so used to sugary drinks they had conditioned themselves to believe that they 'hated' water.
I agree about not forcing kids to eat things they don't want to (they do have to try new foods though). But I'm OK with them being hungry as a consequence if they choose not to eat what's on offer. It clarifies pretty quickly how 'deep' the dislike is. I find that the less attention I pay to whether or not my fussy son eats something he has declared he doesn't like, the more likely he is to eat it without a murmur. He'd probably leave a big roast mushroom and stay hungry and he's really not keen on over ripe bananas, but he eats everything else most of the time and he isn't fading away. If I showed him any signs of weakness, the list of things he wouldn't, couldn't eat would be as long as my arm and before we knew it he'd mostly be living on pasta pesto.

If he doesn't want to eat it he goes hungry. No drama. No alternative offered though and nothing until the next meal.