To wonder what non British folk feed their kids

[Mamabear04]

I heard a comment the other day about how British folk fill their kids up on cereal, pasta, bread etc. While I do feed my kids plenty fruit and veg, make home made meals, don't allow too much sugar or salt, the base of what I feed them is some kind of pasta or bread, for lunch at least, to fill them up (we eat more rice and potatoes at dinner time). The person who commented was French and now I'm thinking out of interest (and ideas!), what do other cultures feed their kids if not pasta and bread etc?

Oh please, do you remember when Nutella cut their prices in France and all the carry there was with customers scrapping over it and then there was a Nutella shortage and it got worse? It's not all clean eating.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42826028

No nationality is strictly clean eating, just as not all brits eat oven chips on a regular basis.

Ours are mainly fed traditional vegetarian Pakistani food with the odd bit of Swedish food thrown in.

McDonalds as a 'treat' (aka pacifier/bribe) far too often, if the number of threads mentioning it and the numbers at my local 'fast' food branch are an indicator.

We're Swedish and so far today DS(9) has had:

Breakfast: bondbröd, which google translates to peasant bread, with cheese, ham, and cucumber. And a very weak chocolate milkshake.

Lunch: halloumi and pesto pasta salad (rocket, peppar and spring onion)

Snack: sour milk, muesli and sliced grapes

Dinner will be homemade fish and chips with salad and red wine vinegar dressing.

@FourTeaFallOut brilliant! Makes me feel much better!

@Simonjt what does Veggie Pakistani food look like for lunches?

@LlynTegid where are you?

@Fladdermus like the idea of museli as a snack! Fish and chips with salad? It's illegal in Britain! ;)

@Fladdermus that doesn't sound that different though not sure about sour milk???

I always serve salad with home fish and chips (well baked wedges not chips)

We live in France and we’re and Irish/Italian family. Today myself and DD (22) have had:

Cheese with home made flax crackers (low carb)
Greek yoghurt with berries and chopped hazelnuts
Coffee with cream

Lunch was cold porchetta (Italian roast pork), tomato and mozzarella salad and a bowl of olives. We had iced mint tea (non sweetened) after lunch.

Dinner will be bunless bacon cheeseburgers with guacamole and onion and cucumber salad on the side. No dessert, that’s for Sundays.

French definitely eat bread, baguette and croissants are French staples

Southern Europe. Today Ds (3), has eaten:

breakfast : banana and glass milk
Mid morning nursery snack ( provided by nursery) : melon, grapes, cheese on rye bread, buttermilk
Lunch: wasn’t hungry, ate homemade courgette muffin, apple.
snack : ice cream from beach place
Dinner: will be veggie burritos and salad.

The nursery snack given is similar daily, always some kind of rye bread with topping, fruit and dairy based drink.

If children stay for nursery lunch it’s usually soup ( and bread), then main meal usually meat/ fish with veg and carbs, and then fruit and nuts for desert.

But the French don’t eat croissants, baguette and bread every day and certainly not for every meal.

Croissants traditionally were a weekend treat.

Sour milk does sound minging but it's lovely. It's not sour as in gone off, it sour as in fermented like yogurt. It's sort of in between milk and yogurt, thicker than milk but runnier than yogurt.

I worked in a french nursery years ago.

Children have breakfast at home. Woth us they had had some form of simple salad to start, usually cold lentils with onion or grated carrots with an orange squeezed over the top.
Then main was stew, fish pie or a puree with some type of meat.
After that they had plain, unsweetened yogurt and a tiny piece of bread and cheese, then fruit. That was just lunch time. Tiny snack of fruit and a biscuit at 4pm.

That all sounds delicious!

The difference is French bread is freshly made and bought daily from the Boulangerie, rather than the mass produced, additive laden, processed bread that is bought in the UK

You can buy fresh bread from the bakery in the UK just they way you can buy crappy sliced bread in france

We're in the US, we don't usually do cereal other than oatmeal but plenty of pasta in this house! I'll make a pasta dish usually once a week. Usually one weekend day we'll have Croissants or other breakfast pastry. We have sandwiches sometimes but don't usually serve bread with dinner unless we have guests.

Today for my almost 3 year old-
Breakfast- poached salmon, raspberries, whole grain toast, sliced cheese, chocolate kefir. (She didn't touch the cheese or toast)
Lunch- veggie pizza and fruit
Dinner- lentil and vegetable soup, crackers
Afternoon snack (if she asks) usually raw veggies with dip or unsweetened applesauce or some tortilla chips.

My husband is out of town this week so it will be a lighter week for meals in general without much meat.

Yes you can, but the point is the majority of French people buy theirs from the bakery each day. The staple for majority of British people seems to be processed food.

I think it's because in the UK the 'healthy plate' graphic, government / nhs messaging etc is all about building a meal around carbs. Which is a bit rubbish, actually, when you think about it. I don't think other countries necessarily have the same focus on needing potatoes / bread / pasta / rice with every meal.

When I lived in France for a year, I saw loads of locals buying regular sliced bread off the supermarket shelves.

And now in the UK, our local bakery has a queue outside every morning as people go in for fresh bread.

Based on my experience of growing up in Portugal and seeing what my friends / family/ people in social media feed their children, I would say the key differences between there and the UK are:

• a lot less ultra processed food. No ready meals, convenience food is a lot rarer, things like chicken nuggets, chips, fish fingers, potato smiley faces, supermarket pizza are seen as not appropriate for children, and never for a baby.
• breakfast is normally bread + cheese and milk or yoghurt. Nice bread, not sliced! we call that palstic!
• sandwiches are probably a lot more common now but really were not the norm before and seen as a very inappropriate lunch
• food in schools is (used to?) be planned by nutritionists, very balanced, vegetable soup everyday, no sweet puddings
• a lot of yogurts and A LOT of vegetable soup, children are practically force fed soup!

Having said this, I think convenience food is catching up and things are not how I remember them. I'm still totally shocked at what nurseries give to babies, what food is served at schools and generally what people think is appropriate to feed children though!! 🙈

Definitely a lot of bread in France. It may not be Chorleywood method and fresh but it's still not great for you, it's still made with white bread flour.

They don't eat as many chocolate bars and crisps as we do though.

We’re a Swedish Indian family. I think our meals are quite normal for UK though. It’s other things that are different. For example; we mostly bake our own bread, we don’t do take-aways at all. We don’t eat crisps and only have puddings on occasions.

We don’t snack between meals so no “grazing “ (hate that expression 😟). We don’t have a sweet drawer because we rarely buy sweets. No biscuits either although the kids like to bake sometimes. We don’t eat in front of the TV unless popcorn sometimes on a Saturday evening.

Husband and I don’t drink alcohol at all.

I don't think other countries necessarily have the same focus on needing potatoes / bread / pasta / rice with every meal.

Many Asian countries do.

When I lived in France, the supermarket aisles were stuffed FULL of convenience foods - crisps, chocolates, sweets, biscuits, pastries, instant pasta, pot noodles - the works.

They also eat a lot of croissants and pain au chocolat - often accompanied by hot chocolate. I don't think they're much healthier than we are really.

I live in Italy and despite all the stereotyping about ultra-healthy food plenty of kids are given tons of pasta, bread, biscuits, and cake - the slight difference is that a lot of it is homemade, but it is still a huge amount of sugar. Feeding kids chocolate cereal, pastries filled with nutella. McDonald's, and coca cola also seems to be fairly popular though!

As a Scandinavian living in England, the biggest food shock to me has been the idea of a dessert after lunch every day. So foreign to me! My oldest grew up thinking greek yoghurt was dessert but then started nursery and it was game over 😂