Not to let my DD eat cereal?

[Peridotty]

My 16 month old goes to nursery 5 days a week. We pay for her breakfast, lunch and snack (included in the fee). However, I don’t like the thought of her eating cereal so we provide the breakfast and the snack. I don’t think it’s very healthy, even though it’s a wholewheat type cereal. I give her porridge made of steel cut oats instead with some applesauce. Would you be ok with feeding your kids cereal?

You seem to have a lot of knee-jerks, opinions and 'thoughts' OP, but you have whatsoever no facts.

Maybe stop using social media and spend 5 minutes using google?

Steel cut oats

Ok.

If you are happy to entrust your child to nursery, you have to be happy to go along with their decisions. This is one of a gazillion reasons why I wouldn't have sent my children to nursery. You just can't have it all ways.

Never had them before but I’m suspicious of them.

Have you checked the actual nutritional content or are you just assuming they're unhealthy?

Plus as per my first post what matters is an OVERALL healthy diet, what is she eating the rest of the time?

"Applesauce" also irks me, as it shouldn't be one word. Is it apple purée?

I must have too much time on my hands because I just looked up the nutrition content for Wheat Chex and they are 12% sugar, which is high, albeit not as high as some cereals, particularly in the US. They would have to be less than 3% to qualify as 'low sugar' in the UK.

As an aside, I think steel cut oats are marginally healthier than typical rolled oats because they are less processed and therefore harder to digest so lower GI.

Huge disclaimer - I don't have kids and am just mildly interested in the nutrition conversation here. I imagine if I had a 3 yr old I'd be happy that she was just fed and looked after!

Yabu purely because you made your porridge without milk in the first place... making porridge with just water is a travesty! They are supposed to be cooked in milk to go all creamy and to fill you up!!

One kid has Rice Krispies most days, occasionally Cheerios or porridge. I fed him porridge or weetabix for as long as possible but he got bored and stopped eating it. The other doesn’t like cereal so eats fruit. I grew up eating coco pops, sugar puffs, golden Graham’s etc, so this seems healthy in comparison 😆. I still enjoy an odd bowl of Frosties with whole milk. Cereal at nursery wouldn’t bother me.

I asked my sons nursery not to give him chocolate based cereals when he went. I'd have preferred him to have porridge but they didn't provide it. Not sure why as it's cheap, filling and healthy 🤷🏽‍♀️

No. Bang on, steel cut oats! Great choice.

Aren't oats a cereal too?

I was like this until ds was about 2 and a half. Was anti sugar and crap. No puddings etc. allowed at nursery or anywhere. Now nearly 4 I gave up ages ago! Once he spotted he got a banana when others got a cake with custard it was game over. Instead, he’s aware of what’s healthy and what’s not. He chooses veg and fruit over cakes sometimes and refuses sweets if he feels he had one already that day. I’ve relaxed a lot , I can’t stop him eating a sugary thing his whole life especially with kids parties on the horizon. I eat a bit of chocolate daily as does dh so it’s hypocritical too!

@Peridotty

Yes I’m British but living in the US. I’m very suspicious of the foods here especially processed foods including cereal. I was brought up on U.K. cereal which is fine. I don’t want to touch US cereals though.

Oh don't talk such nonsense. I'm a Brit living in the States too and if you're shopping in Whole Foods then you're clearly not running the risk of accidentally feeding your PFB lucky charms etc as Whole Foods DON'T SELL THEM.

In fact, I'm hard pressed to find much that tastes of anything at Whole Foods but that's my own personal grumble.....

I don't have anything to add that's helpful on the topic of cereals, but I did want to add a warning as your baby grows up.
DD's school went on a healthy eating fad when she was 6 or so.
The result was a child who saw things in very black and white terms of good and bad. The balanced diet idea either wasn't mentioned, or she didn't get it and so ignored it, not sure which.
I finally went into school and had words when she came home saying that she didn't think she could eat flapjacks any more as they probably weren't healthy. But she really liked them, so maybe she could just hide to eat them.
I had to go in and say an approach which is so black and white that kids think some food is almost 'banned' which leads to them deciding to hide to eat is not an approach I want anywhere near my daughter. There are worse things than snacking on something unhealthy and hiding to eat seems like a highway straight to major food issues to me.

@inmyslippers

I asked my sons nursery not to give him chocolate based cereals when he went. I'd have preferred him to have porridge but they didn't provide it. Not sure why as it's cheap, filling and healthy 🤷🏽‍♀️

The nursery we went said they didn’t do it because of the burning risk ( from microwaving ) not sure how they managed with other hot food !

Cereal, bread and carbs should be a major part of a balanced diet. Esp for a growing child.
Cereal has no more salt and sugar than bread.

Other fashionable foods are full of sugar and salt eg maple syrup pancakes, hummous.

Reminds me of the MN thread from years ago when one poster claimed that all cereal was "actual shit in a box". I bet her kids are on cans on monster for breakfast now.

Cereals are just pudding for breakfast. Oats don't need to be 'steelcut' though, just oats.

@EverlastingSatisfaction no it's not a simple apple purée it's a heavily processed product basically stewed apples with a lot of sugar and often other ingredients added sometimes simple flavourings like spices sometimes lots of preservatives/"e numbers" type additives depending on brand or if you make your own

My relatives emigrated when eldest cousin was 4-5 months old and the other mums thought it weird my aunt DIDN'T feed her baby applesauce several times a day! She had looked at what it was and realised it was just sugar laden stewed fruit often with some quite worrying additives.

This was 30 odd years ago but when that same cousin had her babies cousin and her mum found little had changed certainly with the bought applesauces

As pps have said the American palate seems heavily weighted towards pretty much everything being sweet!

Eg Aunt still hates American bread and having tried it when she first went over immediately went "yuk" and has instead mostly made her own, she can tolerate it when eating out but she prefers a more Uk less sweet version

Cereal is cardboard and good for no one, along with toast!

Cereal isn’t particularly healthy, but it’s easy which I suspect is why the nursery serves it. As long as it’s not he really sugary stuff then I would probably let it slide and really watch the sugar content of the food I’m feeding them at home. Kids like to be the same as the others in their group so I probably wouldn’t insist they ate something different unless it was for a good reason like an allergy.

Bitesize shredded wheat
Weetabix
Cornflakes

All fine.

A while back I read something which was basically along the line of your adult body grows/develops according to the nutrition you were fed as a child. So I try very hard to limit processed foods to my kids. I bake a loaf usually and make eggs bread for them. They don’t eat cereals.

@Graphista

Definitely an acute case of pfb syndrome!

We all had our moments op.

But yea you kinda need to get over yourself and be more realistic.

The point re the porridge is it IS also processed you're not feeding her raw oats straight off the ears of the grass it grows on!

Almost all food is processed to some degree with the exception of fresh meat, fish, fruit and veg.

Bread, milk, applesauce...

Blueberry muffins are huge cakes for crying out loud! Far more sugary and fatty and processed than a healthy wholegrain cereal with milk!

My understanding (never having been there but have family there) is that both food and childcare standards and regulation in USA is far more lax than here.

My aunt and uncle often despair at what my cousins and now my cousins dc consider "healthy" foods based on USA standards as they're not healthy by Uk standards and the portion sizes when eating out/takeaways are apparently insane!

So maybe this translates to the way the nursery op uses operates?

Certainly no nursery or even childminder or nanny I've ever known (I've worked in childcare) would consider muffins healthy or appropriate as a regular breakfast for little ones, it would also go against the nutrition guidelines here for childcare professionals.

Why is mumsnet always so snobby about PFB’s? Is it just a way for women who have had more than one child to feel smug and sanctimonious for no other reason than the fact they’ve birthed one more child? Or just a rude way to dismiss anyone else’s point of view on the sole basis they’ve only had one child so can’t possibly be as smart or knowledgeable or perfect as you? It’s a strange high horse that only serves to belittle and dismiss people and I wish it would stop. By all means engage in the actual point of the post, but your language and tone is patronising.

I do not eat highly-processed food and therefore have no intention of feeding it to my (shock horror…) only daughter!! It’s got fuck all to do with the fact I have one child. It’s about the food that I myself eat and therefore the food that I will let my child eat. I see no reason why the OP or me need to ‘get over ourselves’, nor that I need to be more ‘realistic’, considering it’s how I’ve eaten for years, as it’s how I will always eat.

@Peridotty

Yes I’m British but living in the US. I’m very suspicious of the foods here especially processed foods including cereal. I was brought up on U.K. cereal which is fine. I don’t want to touch US cereals though.

Now that I know you are in the US this all makes sense! I initially voted YABU but actually I would not feed US cereal to a toddler either. Food standards are much lower in the US.