Oh for the sake of fuck, Dr Ranj!

[YokoUhOh]

Just bought DS1 the CBeebies 'Food' special edition magazine. It contains my biggest gripy fucking bugbear slap bang in the middle of it (I refer you to the attached pic, and I'm not talking about Dr Ranj's incredible dancing eyebrows).

Why is 'finish what's on your plate' still considered good advice? Surely 'eat however much you fancy' is more sensible? There's a obesity epidemic. AIBU to think that children shouldn't be rewarded for finishing everything put in front of them, especially as most portions are too humongous?

also on a meal if the children have a bit much on their plates....eg when we go out I put a little bit of each food to one side of the plate for them to eat. Usually the youngest two will share a child portion and I get an extra plate. They are 3 and 4 and it is usually about right. They also share a desert and I take their own little drink bottle.

Are you seriously thinking of complaining? Does it say pile your plate up high and eat it all and then go and get seconds?! No it's asking you to not waste food and not be a fussy eater.

DS will eat till he's full then say he's had enough.

Then half an hour later he will say he's starving and wants some fishfingers.

I believe you should eat what's on your plate within reason. I try to put food in the middle of the table and serve everybody up a small amount, then help them to more if they want it. But if they take it, they should eat it.

It's incredibly wasteful to leave healthy food and then snack as and when you feel like it.

I totally agree. With you OP. It should be eat until you are full up. I was brought up to not leave anything on my plate and I would never force dd to eat until she was fit to burst.

& this is an article (just googled to reassure myself that I'm not making this up!) and there is an interesting piece about this from a nutritionist - although she claims to have made the phrase up and she clearly didn't as I went to a lecture by a guy called Pete Cohen in the late 90's who said exactly this. Worth a read anyway:

daniellebinns.com/2016/01/clean-plate-syndrome/

Saturday - I will try a new fruit

There are 52 Saturdays in a year. Do Tesco sell that many varieties of fruit?

Yes, my parents had this rule. I used to sit there for hours, long after food was cold, eating what was I left. I have huge issues around food. They have since apologised and said it is one of their biggest parenting mistakes.

It always baffles me when people still go on about making kids clear their plates, despite the obesity epidemic.

Clear your plates is ridiculous.
I think there is more useful advice to give to children. I used to hear "if you were not hungry enough to eat your dinner, you will be too full for pudding".
I get that one, we often used to push veg away as we wanted to get straight to Artic Roll or Vienetta :)
Clear your plates is plain daft though, if you are full you shouldn't need to clear the plate.

DH and I were made to clear our plates. As soon as we left home, both at 21, we stopped doing it. I don't eat a lot now, DH eats as much or as little as he likes.

We never made our children clear their plates. More often than not they did.

Not clearing your plate is definitely not new - I'm thirty, and when I was a kid I worried about wasting food (something I picked up from school, I think). My mum used to say that it was just as wasted if I ate it when I was already full as it would be if it went in the bin.

DH and I struggle not to clear a plate. I agree "eat nicely" would have been a more appropriate message.

Not sure it's worth a complaint exactly, but Dr Ranj is active and constructive on Twitter and might respond usefully to a query or feedback on this point.

I think it's hugely unlikely he had any sight of the copy before it went to press, but his comments are often worth a retweet.

Red apple
Green apple
Banana
Orange
Grapefruit
Satsuma
Strawberries
Raspberries
Gooseberries
Blueberries
Lychee
Rambutan
Mango
Papaya
Kiwi fruit
Erm…
Tomato?

Ooh!
Blackberries
Sharon fruit
Red plums
Yellow plums
Black plums
Greengages
Damsons
Peach
Nectarine (cheating )
Flat peach
Flat nectarine

Erm…

Redcurrants! Hmm.

Red grapes
White grapes
Black grapes
Red cherries
Black cherries

Can I use different varieties of apple - Braeburn, Granny Smith, Spartan?

Blood oranges!

Honeydew melon
Cantaloupe
Watermelon
Can't believe I forgot pineapple!
And pears! Comice, Conference, Concord(e?)…
Apricots

I want to be able to count tinned fruit separately… peaches, pears, pineapple, mandarin, apricots, that fruit salad stuff with a single cherry per tin…

This is beginning to get expensive

Ugli fruit
Pomelo
Quince

Er

I'm sure there are more…

My parents didn't put on pressure. As got older rule changed - if someone else serves a portion you don't have to eat it. If you serve yourself or have a choice in size of portion finish it.

Kumquat
Fresh dates! (Well, you have to let them go a bit yellow and soggy first)
(I'm starting to get on to the things I can only get from the market now)
Kiwi berries
Loquat

Those teeny tiny bananas you can get…

Can I have dried fruit?

Raisins
Sultanas
Currants
Prunes
Papaya
Mango
Dates
Figs

OMG I forgot fresh figs!

Er, theothersock, I think you may have wandered onto the wrong thread? Unless of course shouting out the names of fruit is just your 'thing', in which case go for it...

They have durian in some of our local shops sometimes, but I suspect that's probably beyond the call of duty for a CBeebies viewer.

Oh, dragon fruit!

Boogers' post…

But yes, it turns out shouting out fruit names is fun Try it!

Asian pear!

Asian pear indeed! I love it

Pineapple TheOtherSock

Bollocks just seen you did put it. Um you could use frozen fruit as well as tinned

Starfruit turns up in the supermarket sometimes…

I listed pineapple a couple of posts back - and have just remembered I have a tin of such, and some double cream in the fridge…

As you were

Frozen is good!

Can we have cooked/stewed? Even if it's in a pie/crumble? Cause if so I'm voting for rhubarb yes I know it's not technically a fruit according to some people. And my dad used to make a mean bilberry pie.

Some people eat rhubarb raw, with sugar, but then some people will eat anything.