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?

Cereal isn't a great food to start the day with. And a lot of US foods are quite toxic compared to UK and European foods (even the same product). If you compared the ingredients for US and UK versions of the same processed product, the US one often has twice the ingredients (mostly additives etc.).

I’m going to guess commercial apple sauce - especially in the US - has a fuckton of sugar in it as well as containing natural sugars.

Obviously all fruit has some natural sugar, but I can get hung up about home made apple sauce.

For an easy life DC and I have porridge heated up with frozen fruit, typically blueberries or raspberries.

I’m throwing out our Frosties after readying this thread

@Draggondragon

I don't get the nursery angst. Surely it's just guilt about not being there for a small child who should be at home. Of people feel this strongly about parenting why don't they parent instead of outsourcing?

I’m sorry, but just fuck off with comments like that

@Maskless children need a lot of carbs

PS I didn't mean I'd serve the child all those things at once at the same breakfast LOL - just that this would be the ingredients I would let them choose from.

@Cosyblankets

Well I'm 50 and I grew up on cereal for breakfast most days and I'm perfectly healthy.

Same here, I'm not sure how we made it, but we did

I think you can go too far analysing kids diet. My mother is a bit of healthy eating evangelist. She’s extremely proud of the fact I had no sugar that wasn’t natural (fruit etc) until I was 3. It did me no good in the long term. I used to sneak bits of the homemade playdoh and eat them as I loved the salty taste. We had no salt on anything growing up. When I moved out I went wild in the aisles. I got fat. My mother is still very proud of the no sugar til 3 thing .

@Graphista

It makes me wonder how the older generation ever got old given the amount of rubbish they have consumed in their lives

Yes! I wonder this myself!

My grandparents all lived on :

Fry up every morning cooked in lard

Pasties/pies/chippy type things for lunches, maybe doorstep sandwiches filled with full fat real butter, beef and dripping, thick slices of cheddar etc

Cooked dinner every night usually a soup to start with. Then a meat and 2 veg type dinner, often something deep fried or roasted and a "proper" pudding every night usually sponge and custard type thing

Three of them lived well into their 80's, the one who died "young" at almost 70 died as a result of messed up lungs from serving in wwii in an area where toxic gases had been an issue.

They were all slim, fit and healthy too!

Makes me wonder if we're REALLY eating more healthily now?

I think a lot of the advice is incorrect eg low fat spread rather than real butter...

Hard to know

@Draggondragon WAY out of order!

The difference with what you've described vs modern diets is sugar and processing. The only sugary thing on your list is pudding, which would have been fine once a day and probably still far less sugar than in a modern pudding. And our grandparents were more active too.

@Graphista

It makes me wonder how the older generation ever got old given the amount of rubbish they have consumed in their lives

Yes! I wonder this myself!

My grandparents all lived on :

Fry up every morning cooked in lard

Pasties/pies/chippy type things for lunches, maybe doorstep sandwiches filled with full fat real butter, beef and dripping, thick slices of cheddar etc

Cooked dinner every night usually a soup to start with. Then a meat and 2 veg type dinner, often something deep fried or roasted and a "proper" pudding every night usually sponge and custard type thing

Three of them lived well into their 80's, the one who died "young" at almost 70 died as a result of messed up lungs from serving in wwii in an area where toxic gases had been an issue.

They were all slim, fit and healthy too!

Makes me wonder if we're REALLY eating more healthily now?

I think a lot of the advice is incorrect eg low fat spread rather than real butter...

Hard to know

@Draggondragon WAY out of order!

People cooked from scratch so a little went a long way. There’s no way someone who learned to cook in the interwar period (or even after ww2) would have used the amount of seasoning and fat we do for pastry. They would substitute with lower fat things. Same with sandwiches - when you bake your own bread fresh you don’t need to add milk, soy powder and other shit to make it palatable - so you lower the calories. As loaves were smaller a little butter went a long way. These people didn’t snack and they exercised while young and so lived fairly long lives even if they did have a higher rate of dementia.

DD ( 2 1/2) have cereal almost every Monday - Friday, weekends are a 'treat' with either cooked breakfasts like eggs on toast, bacon, pastries etc.
I was raised on cereal for most breakfasts as it was all my mum had time for being a busy mum with 4 kids. It's done neither me nor my sisters any harm. No health issues etc.

[quote shouldistop]@Maskless children need a lot of carbs [/quote]
They need a good foundation of protein and calcium for all the bits of them that are growing and need proper nutrition.

If they need extra carbs on top of the basic nutrition then wholewheat toast, brown rice, etc for snacks.

The human race literally had NO cereals and no bread for millennia. They are not our natural foods and are entirely man-made.

I wasn’t a fan of the cereals when we were in the US for a few years so compromised on porridge M/T/T/F with cereal on Weds and weekends.

Fairly sure my MIL thought I was a snob too but it actually saved money.

@SuperCaliFragalistic

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.

Oh this made me laugh so much! I am quite precious about foods at home but lived on sugar and pot noodles when I first left home (well the cheap, knock off versions anyway) and fully expect that my offspring will do the same 😄

YABRidiculous 😂

I really fancy making some blueberry bran muffins now.

@Goldbar

Cereal isn't a great food to start the day with. And a lot of US foods are quite toxic compared to UK and European foods (even the same product). If you compared the ingredients for US and UK versions of the same processed product, the US one often has twice the ingredients (mostly additives etc.).

I looked at Shreddies vs whatever the US one was called and the sugar content is the same. Both list sugar as the second ingredient and the US one also lists molasses, whilst Shreddies list three additional types of sugar. I was surprised, to be honest - we are as bead as each other this time!

*bad

I get it, op. I wouldn’t like it either if it was coco pops, Frosties etc. I once got the mini packs of cereals with them in as a treat for Dd to have each day (I remember begging for them as a kid 😅) I felt pretty crappy doing that though, so it’ll be rare. She’s ok with oats, berries, toast, fruit, some Weetabix etc

If nursery and you are both happy then its no issue. I studied abroad in America and I agree that a lot of their food is fucking grim- full of goodness knows what. Even their fresh food isn't bound by such strict regulations and rules as it is here, I was suspicious of a lot of it and would not feed my child a lot of it either.

Of course your child can eat cereal! Can’t believe how much time people expend on analysing every aspect of their children’s diet. As other have said, I’m in my fifties and was fed cereal, biscuits and, God forbid, Findus Crispy Pancakes! I’m fine and healthy!

Our DDs nursery seems to give them a lot of sugar too- they have cereal for breakfast and often have cake or biscuits as pudding. However I've decided to just let it go- it doesn't seem to make sense to deprive her of it when all the others will be eating it and to be the "difficult" parent and I suppose we could offset it with no sugar on non nursery days if we wanted to. Having said that we give her cereal at home too- Cheerios and weetabix. Cheerios has a fair amount of sugar though so that's fairly rare.

@Graphista

It makes me wonder how the older generation ever got old given the amount of rubbish they have consumed in their lives

Yes! I wonder this myself!

My grandparents all lived on :

Fry up every morning cooked in lard

Pasties/pies/chippy type things for lunches, maybe doorstep sandwiches filled with full fat real butter, beef and dripping, thick slices of cheddar etc

Cooked dinner every night usually a soup to start with. Then a meat and 2 veg type dinner, often something deep fried or roasted and a "proper" pudding every night usually sponge and custard type thing

Three of them lived well into their 80's, the one who died "young" at almost 70 died as a result of messed up lungs from serving in wwii in an area where toxic gases had been an issue.

They were all slim, fit and healthy too!

Makes me wonder if we're REALLY eating more healthily now?

I think a lot of the advice is incorrect eg low fat spread rather than real butter...

Hard to know

@Draggondragon WAY out of order!

But they typically ate smaller portions, less snacking, less ultra processed foods, more active etc. I agree that a lot of healthy eating advice is out of date, but as lifestyles are so different now it's not really comparable.

In a couple of years she'll likely be eating lucky charms and pop tarts if you're in the US