Is my son eating too much crap?

[Bog]

Sorry I have another thread on here but everyone here is very helpful and for traffic.

Son is 18 months old.

For breakfast he has either rice crispies or weetabix with marmite (not much) on toast

Lunch is usually half a cheese or ham sandwich with either a banana or half an apple, or Raisins. Sometimes I add a few of those veg crisps for kids or 3 of those organix animal shape crackers.

Either mid morning or afternoon he has a baby biscotti or organix snack

For dinner it's veg with some kind or protein. Frozen birds eye chicken, fish fingers,scrambled egg or the frozen baby food shapes. Annabel or something or other. But is this too much rubbish? Usually after dinner he has a pudding of petit filous or a suckies yoghurt.

He drinks water during the day and has a nighttime bottle of milk.

My wife died in the summer.

No, his wife died, as per his other thread. So get off your judgy high horse and appreciate this is a Dad doing a great job under difficult circumstances. OP, change boards and ask on the parenting forums. You are doing a great job.

Prior to her death she did everything as I worked and she insisted she do all house stuff as I didn't want her returning to work as I earn enough. I'm trying.

Or maybe it’s another mum. Sorry if I got that wrong OP

No it's me. I'm sure that poster meant well.

🙄
There is literally nothing wrong with yogurts or biscottis for a toddler. Everything in moderation.

Sorry for your loss, @Bog

Bog I'm so very sorry, I didn't know your wife had died - I haven't seen another thread. Have you got your own mum/sister, anyone who would be able to help you out a little bit?

whateveryousay I didn't know the OP's wife had died (not seen any other thread). Wind your neck in

I believe OP's wife recently passed away x

Sorry someone had already told you as I was typing it

I live at my inlaws and they are elderly but not infirm but my father in law lives with cancer so I like to do as much as I can. My parents live 40 minutes away and my mum helps my brother with his kids and my dad works full time.
I can make different things to batch and freeze in the evenings or on weekends. I just get tired. I'm able to work full time at home and work understand that phone calls from clients can be tricky with our son in the background 😅 I have finished work for Christmas so I'm not expecting him to eat great for the next few days as my parents like to treat him as they aren't able to much with their other grandchildren.

Peanut / almond butter good for snacks. I use oat cakes a lot for snacks. Normal Greek yoghurt with some fruit on is good.

I would drop the birds eye stuff and just cook tiny bits of normal chicken but hey, if you don't have time don't feel bad.

To make you feel better my son has a list of 5 foods he eats.... You're doing great

Sounds fine to me.

Definitely batch cook - ok I'm not a child but I am wiped after work! It's hard but you do feel better eating better for yourself as well
So on a weekend I make stuff like cottage pie, beef stew and freeze it in portions. Then you can defrost it, microwave it and it's done
Put as much veg as you can in the meal as it bulks it out and adds veg

Get some bags of frozen steam veg, frozen mash isn't bad either
Omelette with veg is a quick meal or scrambled eggs
Cheese on toast with cucumber/carrot sticks
Roasted chicken off the hot counter, add some veg and some of the frozen mash and you've got a meal
Greek full fat yoghurt with berries or banana and peanut butter
Roasted veg is great to make a pile of and keep in the fridge
If you've got an air fryer, chop a potato into cubes, add a bit of oil and put it in and you get tiny air fried crispy potato which takes minutes
Think assembling stuff and batch cooking to keep the time down, the supermarkets have loads of quick options if you can throw a bit of money at it

Rotisserie chicken from the supermarket is a game changer.

Sorry for your loss. My DD is only a couple of months older and here are a few things she has which might help:
breakfast: usually porridge wish mashed bananas in or weetabix with milk
lunch: at nursery it's a cooked meal, but at home usually either scrambled eggs on toast, or wraps, or sandwiches. I try and get some protein and veg in there somehow.
dinner: usually a smaller/simpler portion of what we have (she doesn't like really wet/saucy things) so tonight, it's spaghetti and meatballs, and will do some broccoli on the side. I'm pretty sure she'll eat the spaghetti and broccoli, meatballs are hit and miss. She occasionally has fish fingers which she loves, or sausages, or chicken etc.
An easy thing to make and keep in the freezer is mac and cheese - I put peas and sweetcorn and cut up carrots in mine, and it's a sure hit (although sometimes she picks the carrots out). It's easy to make a batch and freeze in portions and then defrost as needed.
We usually give her "pudding" after dinner. either yoghurt (plain) or fruit, or occasionally something sweet like homemade cake.

I'm struggling with DS 18mo. I feel like I buy fruit, chop it up. He refuses to eat it. So I bin it. And I can't afford the waste so we're kinda stuck in a rut!

I also don't eat fruit much with sensory issues so it's not like I buy it anyway.

It’s fine OP - a little heavy on the processed stuff and fairly high in salt with the marmite and ham plus cheese - but there’s plenty eat a lot worse.

We have phases of getting closer to the home cooked mostly veg based no processed ideal, and phases where it all goes to shit because work is crazy Or someone is ill or the oven packs up or whatever - and that’s without a bereavement such as you are dealing with. I’m very sorry for your loss.

I think it’s ok for them to have fruit for snacks but advised to eat it with another food group - so maybe swap one of the snacks for some apple slices with (100% nut) nut butter. Or berries mixed into plain yoghurt with a sprinkling of ground almonds or seeds. Other snacks could be breadsticks, pitta with hummus, unsalted rice cakes with cream cheese and raspberries or with nut butter/ hummus.

Dinners are fine - whack a bit of extra veg on there if you can and sometimes swap the protein for ‘proper’ meat or fish. Or you could use beans, chickpeas or lentils.

I find it helpful to have a list of absolutely no effort quick meals for the times when life takes over, things like -

• scrambled egg on toast with a bit of grated cheese or nutritional yeast sprinkled on (great stuff, always makes me feel marginally better when I’m doing lazy food) with some avocado or frozen peas or similar
• jacket potato, low sugar beans, grating of cheese, satsuma for after
• couscous just done with boiling water, mix through tuna or tinned chickpeas and some kind of veg, sometimes do a tomato ‘sauce’ with it (passata basically)
• Pasta with some kind of veg cooked in with it (frozen peas or broccoli or similar) with cream cheese stirred through, or cook the pasta and peas, cook some prawns in butter with squeeze of lemon and combine
• nut butter and banana on toast

OK so for his dinner right now he's got 4 of those Ella's kitchen cheesy cauliflower croquettes, some microwave veg and a corn cake with peanut butter. Is that good?

Swop the processed chicken for actual chicken breast. Doesn’t take long in an air fryer or oven to cook

I Will also say he definitely isn't overweight and I will be making sure he gets extra exercise over Christmas.

It's fine. I would try to have it so most stuff is unprocessed if you can

So chicken breast better than chicken breast goujons but they're better than mashed up crappy chicken nuggets
But the chicken nuggets are fine occasionally!

Absolutely fine