IABU but half the time I don't know what to feed my kids

[monkeymamma]

So toast and roast potatoes cause cancer. Cured meat (sausage, ham) cause cancer. Kids shouldn't eat more than a teaspoon of sugar over a 20 year period and no salt should be added to anything.

What should my kids be eating?

I have two (5 and 2) and the youngest is fussy to the point I am going to ask the HV for advice.

The 5yo wrote a meal planner for the week to help me with our weekly shop and this is what it says (these are his choices I should point out)

Bolognaise
Fish fingers
Curry
Toastie
pizza

(He gets a cooked meal at school too).

The above just doesn't strike me as healthy. The bolognaise has loads of hidden veg and is made with lamb and will be served with broccoli. The curry is homemade with chicken, veg and apple. The toastie will be ham, cheese and mushroom (the only veg the 2 year old will knowingly eat) and the pizza will be made with hidden veg sauce and both will be served with raw carrot and cucumber.

But the toastedness of the toastie and the hamminess of the pizza and toastie now worries me. And overall it just doesn't sound 'healthy' iywim.

If you would say your children (of similar age) have a healthy diet what would it involve? Are there kids out there who will eat e.g. lentils and spinach and whatnot?

Actually DS1 will eat spinach (but only raw) but he will not eat (and nor will the 2 yo): quiche, soup, anything with butternut squash or sweet potato, avocado. 2 yo will eat bananas and baked beans (not together obvs) but the 5 yo will not.

Both kids will, with some cajoling, eat chicken pie and fish pie. The 5yo will eat a stir fry and noodles (e.g. prawn and broccoli).

I loathe cooking meat that's just meat (e.g. chops, ribs, a roast). and I don't think it's so healthy that i need to feel guilty about not doing it (do i?).

We do try to do meals together but DH is not home till past 7 so the kids do eat together in the week (then family meals at the weekend).

Breakfast I don't feel so bad about as they have porridge (the 2 yo) which I have stopped sweetening as he doesn't seem to care and yoghurt and fruit (the 5 yo). But I feel like the rest of the day is fairly bad.

I also let them have ice creams and loads of sugary yoghurt. The 2yo is addicted to biscuits which we don't have at home but they seem to pop up in his line of sight almost everywhere we go and there are well-meaning people everywhere (I find) with treats for my kids.

The 5yo has a krispy kreme obsession which means I can no longer take him to tesco (or anywhere else they are on sale).

For the 2yo he has various 'safe' foods he will eat reliably, but if there is a foreign body in there (e.g. if I added spinach to his pizza, say) the whole plate is pushed away and there's no more eating that day. Other than biscuits

Any tips/recipes/meal ideas? Am I the only one to find family catering a bit repetitious and tough?

My DD eats a ham toastie almost every day - she is DOOMED. Except she looks like a very healthy 19yo to me.

OP - your meals look absolutely fine. Stop reading the food scaremongering stuff in the news and trust your instincts. You will probably find your DC widen their food choices as they get older any way.

It's often the reporting that's the problem. I find it highly unlikely that you feed your child enough roast potatoes to significantly increase their cancer risk.

Lots of fruit an veg and not too much processed food, especially meat. Sugar occasionally as a treat. If they'll have sealed wholemeal bread give them that rather than white. Everything else is just noise.

Try and breadcrumb a salmon fillet! that has worked with my fusspots, and now they actually like salmon

I have a big pan with lids and chuck all sorts of veggies (often some from reduced aisle or frozen from a bag), carbs type thing (rice, pasta, potatoes, quinoa) with some water and gravy granules/tomato sauce/cream/other sauce if needed and meat/quorn/fish/seafood. There are lots of combinations you can make, DCs are told to leave out the bits they don't like (3 years old mostly fishes out the pasta or rice and 1 years old use the whole lot to splatter the floor).

Toast is fine unless more of less burnt and even then I imagine you've had to eat a loaf a day to raise cancer risk!

Yes things like sausages, bacon isn't great but once a week having a decent quality sausauge isn't going to cause any great harm.

I believe only processed ham is a problem, and even then only if you eat a lot of it. So unless dc are having each day I wouldn't worry or you could cook the ham yourself and then it's not processed surely

My dd is just a baby and won't wean until next month but for me & dh we eat a lot of veg/carbs/ and have fish once a week and meat twice a week I do tend to avoid red meats as I prefer chicken. We don't have much processed stuff and cook from scratch where we can so we know what's in our food

My 3yo DS has toast every day for breakfast. And we have roast potatoes every Sunday. 😁

I don't worry too much. The government seem to think anything other than green veg is terrible for you. I try not to give DS too much sugar, he has chocolate every Friday after nursery as a treat and a couple of bits at the weekend. I avoid processed stuff and just make everything from scratch, we have red meat about twice a week and takeaway on Saturday night - pizza or similar. It's just about moderation.

It is difficult, made all the more difficult when you have children who are fussy eaters.

The only rules I have are no fizzy drinks and eat vegetables and fruit with every meal.

You have a two year old that eats mushrooms? You are doing something right...

Amy two (5 and 7) will eat mountains of raw peppers, cucumber, carrot, and cooked edamame beans, green beans, sugar snap peas, broccoli and baby sweetcorn. (DS1 would happily eat a whole cucumber, whole pepper and two whole carrots in one sitting - I am not like that at all!).

I often load up their plates with these easy favourites and a smaller portion of their main food (which often they're fussier about and gets pushed around their plate). Then tons of fruit as snacks/pudding.

It's not haute cuisine but I can relax knowing that they've had lots of fresh veg.

My 3yo DTs are quite good with food, not fussy at all, not sure if it is thanks to me, but here is what I give them...

I always try to pair something not-so-healthy with something healthy, for ex sausages and steamed veg.
They get a small serving of each, if they choose to only eat the not-so -healthy food and ask for a second serving they are told to finish everything first. Usually works.

My go-to dishes, always easy to prepare and (I think) healthy:

• Mash mixed with tinned tuna and random veg
• Lentils/carrots/pieces of ham
• Soup, bread and cheese (no "kid cheeses", selection of hard/soft)
• Broccoli/cauliflower florets and fillet of oven cooked fish
• Pasta with any leftover veg and grated cheese, or pesto
• Prawns with courgettes
• Meatballs with random veg
• Carrot batons and hummus

Dessert is fruit/yoghurt/fruit puree or every other day a treat like biscuit, cake, small piece of choc...