Is DS’ diet really that bad?

[enuquer]

Please be kind.

DS is 2, will be 3 at the end of the year. His daily diet is usually

Breakfast: weetabix or rice krispies/corn flakes

Morning snack: an orange or a yoghurt

Lunch: Ham sandwich with an orange or yoghurt (whatever he doesn't have for snack) and some wotsits or quavers

Afternoon snack: 2 biscuits or a small packet of chocolate buttons

Dinner: pasta/pizza/ sausage and mash with carrots/fish fingers/chicken nuggets/ the occasional McDonald's happy meal (probably once or twice a month)

Dessert: ice cream or a small chocolate bar

Then he sometimes has chips if me and DP have had a takeaway, and he isn't asleep yet.

The only fruit and veg he'll eat are oranges and carrots. During the day he does drink water or apple juice and has a bottle of milk before bed.

We recently stayed at my mum's as my mum said that he shouldn't be eating those foods and his diet is awful.

Is it really that bad?

Well, the good news is that he eats oranges and carrots- so he's doing better than some kids! He also has plenty of fibre from the weetabix, and calcium/protein from the yoghurt, so he's ticking quite a lot of boxes.

Yes, of course it could be better, no he doesn't need crisps and chocolate every day (and tooth decay in a little kids is really distressing). Crackers and breadsticks are your friends. And it sounds like you're trying to hard to offer a wider range of food in a really calm, low stress manner. What you've written here isn't disastrous at all. xx

Okay so I don't think it reads great no, but I also don't think it's that unusual. Although I also don't think it's unusual to find a toddler who likes rice cakes?! My two eat the yoghurt covered ones daily.
I can see how it's happened though, my eldest ate anything till 1 and a bit and then we got stuck in a rut with evening meals and had 3 on rotation. I was then heavily pregnant and decided I wasn't cooking twice and I was getting stressed about him not eating stuff. So I cooked for everyone, we sat down and ate. I always made there was some 'safe' food, but also new things, and he eventually tried stuff. If he didn't want to try/didn't eat anything, he still had pudding which was always Greek yoghurt and whatever fruit he wanted, and toast later if he was hungry. But I stopped caving and bunging in fish fingers/pasta as a 'back up option'.
The only time either of mine have had chocolate is after the hairdresser's as a treat and at Easter (and only then when they were 3!)

Looking at your routine, I would start with at snacks offering yoghurt rice cakes/crackers/breadsticks/carrot sticks. At dinner, if you do fish fingers or something, make your own wedges or mash (and stir cheese in!) And do carrots and one or two other vegetables at the side. Broccoli, sweetcorn, peas, roast squash. Don't point them out, and see what he does. Eventually after seeing them a few times he might try one, and then hopefully he'll eat it.

It's a huge amount of processed food and sugar. No 2 year old needs chocolate bars. Chicken nuggets/ham/sausages are not healthy at all.

You've had some good advice here. From a dental point of view, yoghurt, oranges, fruit juice every day turn their little teeth into colanders full of holes. It's not just sweets that interact with teeth badly 🙈

@mantlepiece

I’m old! I’m quite surprised by all the pasta and pizza suggestions alongside all the frozen items that are battered and baked. It would seem the adults in the house eat lots of this as well. Maybe it’s the future. We still eat a lot of the meat and 3 veg variety of dishes but have branched out into food from other cultures over the years.

I am boring I suppose as we have quite a few meals that are on rotation most weeks, but throw one or two occasional ones into the mix too!

Most weeks I will cook a Sunday Roast, either spaghetti Bolognese or Lasagna, chicken curry, steak and chips, mince and dumplings or beef casserole, fish pie or baked salmon, a gammon joint with cauliflower cheese, lamb chops with roasted vegetables etc. All these would come with various veg, maybe boiled ones, we have swede, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, frozen peas, sweet corn, sprouts, various incarnations of potato (boiled, chipped, mashed, sautéed, roasted, hasselbabacked etc.

I do try and mix it up a bit and now and again I will do a stir fry with noodles, a chilli, a chicken schnitzel, smoked haddock, a Spanish tortilla, A Tuscan bean stew, corned beef pie, Cumberland sausage etc.

For lunches we mostly have a light choice. Cheese on toast, beans on toast, a soup, a jacket potato, tuna salad/egg salad sandwich. Sometimes we go mad and do bacon and eggs with mushrooms tomatoes etc!

We don’t snack really, occasionally might have a biscuit with a cup of tea but not every day. I might offer a pudding a couple of times a week which would be rice pudding, apple crumble or maybe a portion of pie or cake with custard or ice cream. Not every day though.

We never drink pop or juice. Water, tea, coffee or wine or beer.

Mornings are porridge, wheatabix or toast.

I am writing these down as I think this style of cooking is becoming a bit old fashioned. If I critique it myself I would say we don’t eat much fruit. Mainly apples, bananas, rhubarb and pineapple with our gammon!
I buy lots of veg. We do eat pasta but maybe one a week. We never eat pizza.
We are a healthy weight, slim and active and so are our children who were brought up on this plain fare. However, when they visit they sometimes order takeaway. The portions are absolutely huge! Also very stodgy and beige for our tastes! They do seem to enjoy them but alot gets thrown out which I don’t like doing. Normal food leftovers can usually be repurposed for the following day etc. But this takeaway food cannot.
Anyway, we have to embrace new things and the future! I do like Mexican food!

I guess I'm a generation younger than you (maybe half a generation 😉) and I'm horrified how much meat you're eating!! Fashions change, but the one thing that stays constant is that there will always be someone somewhere who'll tell you you're doing it wrong 🤷‍♀️😏

@ViceLikeBlip

Well, the good news is that he eats oranges and carrots- so he's doing better than some kids! He also has plenty of fibre from the weetabix, and calcium/protein from the yoghurt, so he's ticking quite a lot of boxes.

Yes, of course it could be better, no he doesn't need crisps and chocolate every day (and tooth decay in a little kids is really distressing). Crackers and breadsticks are your friends. And it sounds like you're trying to hard to offer a wider range of food in a really calm, low stress manner. What you've written here isn't disastrous at all. xx

Sorry, I didn't mean "trying too hard" I just meant "trying hard!"

Theres not really anything fresh in there.

None of it is things I wouldn't give occasionally, but it would be balanced out with meals cooked from scratch including a wider variety of fresh meat/fish, veg & starches eg rice, potatoes but not chips, noodles, pasta.

Even ham is relatively processed as a sandwich filling, unless you are buying quite expensive ham.

Rannva: Baffled you have to ask. Is this a reverse? It's the kind of things dodgy TV channels put shows on about.

Sugary cereals, sugary yoghurts (can barely be called yoghurt; sugar-filled guar gum aimed at children is trash), orange puff crisps devoid of any nutrition, biscuits and chocolate, "kid" food like chicken nuggets and then more chocolate. Juice or milk before bed to rot the teeth.

Would you like to live on that? Can't the kid have a single decent meal? He gets to eat an adults' chips 'from the takeaway'?

Are you describing a neighbour or friend you don't like? This doesn't seem believable.

Prepare a fresh meal and serve it to adults and children. Don't faff about with "liking", just let him explore it. He'll eat some of it and develop a proper palate. Don't be surprised if he's bowled over by tasting flavour for the first time.

You do not sound like you even have dcs of your own, but love to judge other people's parenting.

I shall use your rhetorical question style of posting:

Do you even have dcs of your own? Have you actually tried to parent a child? Do you even like children and parents? Did you watch a dodgy parenting show and now claim to know everything? Your advice does even not seem believable. Don't be surprised if children and adults don't behave exactly as you expect. You might be bowled over if you had a taste of real life.

I think the dinner can be improved. It sounds quite processed. Can you make jacket potatoes , or spanish omelette, or salmon ( just as easy to cook as pizza really - just put it in the oven and bake it), stir fry, prawn linguini ..
and I wouldn’t give apple juice at this age - it’s pure sugar.
You could do a smoothie instead with hidden veg..

Awful diet. Poor kid. How's he ever going to learn about proper food? And when he's fat or having his teeth out or gets something horrible wrong with him it'll be all about how useless the NHS are.

Cornflakes are crap for every day - porridge, eggs, cheese on toast, peanut butter..... Cut the sweets and the crisps and ice cream and biscuits. So many other things you could feed him. He doesn't have a choice at this stage. He's relying on you to give him the best.

You're doing just fine!! Remember that there is no perfect parent and that the flawless parenting portrayed in the media is unrealistic. The most important thing is that your son develops a healthy and positive relationship with food!

Perhaps try incorporating a multivitamin and omega 3 fish oil ( these can both be got in gummy vitamin form), as our gut microbiomes can have the wrong combination of bacteria which leads to cravings only for foods such as carbs and processed foods rather than a more balanced range of foods and this is quite common in young children nowadays!

I would also recommend switching the apple juice for water as it can have alot of added sugar and ensuring pasta and bread is brown. Make sure all dairy products are full fat, although there is such a war on fat the fats in dairy help with satiety and are important for brain function! Our bodies need fats and semi skimmed milk also often has added sugar ( theres useful resources online about the benefits of full fat dairy vs semi skimmed). For protein maybe try him on things like nuts and nut butters and get breaded chicken fillets to replace chicken nuggets!

Banana pancakes are easy to make and would be a serving of fruit and the eggs in them would have protein! I would also highly recommend nakd bars if youre concerned about your son getting enough servings of fruit and veg as each bar is one of your five a day and they are delicious!! They dont taste healthy at all and are like a dessert even though they are made from dates and nuts with no added sugars etc. My favourite flavours are carrot cake, blueberry muffin and cocoa coconut ( the best out of the chocolate flavours i have tried so far!!). Even my mother who is not at all health concious loves them and couldnt believe it when I told her they were one of her five a day and only contained natural sugars. Perhaps you could try to switch his afternoon snack for one as its probably the most realistic way of raising his fruit and veg intake!

Overall youre doing amazing, parenting isnt easy and he is a 2 year old his diet is pretty normal. Simple little tweaks are the most realistic and sustainable way to improve his diet I hope you and your family are well take care!

Upon rereading his diet I realised that your son has consistently the same colour food. Oranges and carrots are both orange. Perhaps look into asd or arfid.

Another mum in the real world here - mine eats basically the same. He's pretty much skin and bones from running around and I do give vegetables chopped up to atom sizes in everything; if you can find me a toddler who eats alfalfa sprouts and quinoa I'll give you a fiver.

@FunnysInLaJardin

Oh OP, the last place you should ask for a critique of your child's diet is AIBU.

Without fail all the responses will be YABU as MN has an obsession with children eating hummus, rice cakes and every other food type that no self respecting toddler would eat. And as for sugar, well you may as well give them poison.

DS1 is now 15 and has still never knowingly eaten fruit. He has always had specific likes and dislikes..

However we went with it, fed him what he would eat and he now has a very varied diet and seems to live on cheese, eggs and fish. He will eat pretty much anything - except for fruit - and I am very glad we let him develop his own tastes in his own time.

Do keep offering a variety, but don't get too hung up on it. He is only 3 and there is plenty of time for his tastes to develop.

The food you mention seems very usual for a toddler, despite what this thread seems to indicate.

I sort of feel like this too to be honest, giving your children healthy food is very important, but so is allowing them to develop a healthy relationship with food. What I ate as a child was policed and restricted no end, I now struggle massively with binge eating and I used to smuggle food behind my mums back as a teenager!

His diet isn't brilliant, but you can definitely make subtle changes that will make huge differences without it being a huge deal to your son. Swap out your yogurts for natural yogurt (if you don't already offer that) change the afternoon snack to something different, there have been some really good suggestions on this thread - some which I've noted.

I also have a mega veg avoider, we have no trouble with any kind of fruit, but veg she hates, so I hide it in her food, cauli in mash and mashed up and stirred through pasta and cheese is a good one, and roasted veg blitzed up into a sauce with pasta or used as a pizza topping are some I use, but always add a bit of veg on the side for exposure and no big deal if he doesn't eat it but loads of praise if he does.

Pizza, nuggets and fish fingers, we have started making our own so they are a bit less bad, and try maybe sweet potato chips instead of normal chips. If you're on Instagram there are hundreds of accounts with some great ideas on for meals for kids, and realistic ones, things that kids actually will entertain

@movingadviceneeded

Another mum in the real world here - mine eats basically the same. He's pretty much skin and bones from running around and I do give vegetables chopped up to atom sizes in everything; if you can find me a toddler who eats alfalfa sprouts and quinoa I'll give you a fiver.

You know there’s a middle ground, right?

Your kids don’t need to be eating alfalfa sprouts and quinoa but equally they shouldn’t be having such processed crap with lots of chocolate, sweets and ice cream. It’s just lazy parenting.

Can I have the fiver? My toddlers wouldnt ear alfalfa and quinoa but they would eat okra, pumpkin, spinach, lentils, beetroot, eggplant, squash....because in the real world millions of toddlers do eat like that. Just not in Britain. Yeah, I know this sounds smug. But it's true.

Our social worker told us when DS2 was that age that as long as he was also taking a multivitamin he was fine.

OP my toddler is the same. Used to eat normal meals now won't eat anything I put in front of them that is fresh food or vegetables. Doesn't matter if I try and hide the vegetables in mash or in the rest of the dinner. They find them and pick them out. They Just Won't Eat Them. Will go to bed without eating anything all day rather than have a mouthful of vegetables. Or they hold the vegetables in their mouth and spit it out in the bin after 20 minutes.
Going by the responses here I should just let my child starve to death rather than let them eat a chicken nugget.

DS is really picky and he is 9!
One thing that works is giving him a raw veg sticks starter- carrot, red pepper, cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes - on a plate in front of the TV when he’s starving! Add a dip- DS likes hummus or aioli but even ketchup if it helps.
It all disappears.
Fruit also disappears- he likes it very firm (not mushy) - strawberries, mango, pineapple are favourites.
Also introducing other similar foods eg likes sausage, will now eat Heck chicken sausages and lamb koftas.
I feel your pain. I’m sure it can be a sensory thing because DS will gag and throw up if he doesn’t like the texture, even if he likes the taste.

No it doesn’t. Dad is an adult.

But he's also a parent and should be a good role model to his son with regards to healthy eating.

If a child sees his dad living off pizza, sausage rolls, chips and chocolate, he's going to want the same thing and won't understand why he has to eat vegetables and baked salmon instead.

Your kids don’t need to be eating alfalfa sprouts and quinoa but equally they shouldn’t be having such processed crap with lots of chocolate, sweets and ice cream

Exactly

A multivitamin isn't going to protect against gradually eating more and more bags of sweets, Happy meals, crisps and sugary shite.

@NameChanged4000

OP my toddler is the same. Used to eat normal meals now won't eat anything I put in front of them that is fresh food or vegetables. Doesn't matter if I try and hide the vegetables in mash or in the rest of the dinner. They find them and pick them out. They Just Won't Eat Them. Will go to bed without eating anything all day rather than have a mouthful of vegetables. Or they hold the vegetables in their mouth and spit it out in the bin after 20 minutes. Going by the responses here I should just let my child starve to death rather than let them eat a chicken nugget.

If your child is NT then of course they'll eat veg. You need to find a way thst they'll eat it. That's on you.

Not great?
Processed? The dinner is. Weetabix. An Orange. Are you classifying any Orange as processed.

I don't think it's too bad - but the bit that stood out is the dessert being chocolate or ice cream. I'd certainly switch that to a yoghurt instead and maybe chop some fruit to go with it.

The breakfast and lunches are the same as I feed my 4YO.

Weetabix with no sugar is fine
And orange is fine
Even a plate of beige crap is probably fine if depressing

It's the ice creams chocolate and crisps that are not fine