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?

I meant it's not really snobbery, of course.

We love Masala Dosas. But DH and I have cut down on those as it's just carb with carb.

I never make puddings so we have fruit or go out for ice cream probably once a week.

So many Swedish / part Swedish families on this thread! No sour milk for me thanks but I could enjoy two hot dogs for lunch.

Am enjoying reading what everyone is eating / feeding their kids. But whoever said clean eating is for wealthy people is right. Processed food lasts a long time in your cupboard due to the preservatives and is engineered to give you a taste hit when that might be one of the few pleasures of your day.

I’m sorry. I misunderstood. We were at cross purposes regarding the snobbery.

French supermarkets are filled with sugary breakfast cereals and sweetened yoghurts/desserts. My DC spend ages salivating in the supermarket.

They do have a great selection of fresh, locally-sourced produce too.

And I agree about the processed options in general.
where we live there is very very little pre made options in supermarket. So soups, quiche, cake, etc is all homemade if we want it.
we make pizza, don’t buy it frozen.
we have bread, but it’s usually bakery made and denser rye bread, spelt bread etc.
yogurt is just plain

If a British mum said her DC had had a chocolate milkshake for breakfast, she would be destroyed on Mumsnet. In my opinion, a milkshake for breakfast is perfectly fine and we often eat unusual things for breakfast like left over spag bol or curry.

I've lived in various countries:
Poland -
Breakfast cheese, ham, tomatoes and rye bread
Lunch: often meat or fish potatoes, salad. Stew, pierogi (dumplings filled with usually meat), coleslaw, cabbage, beetroot.
Evening meal: soup/bread more bloody ham.
The house of course been a massive increase in the amount of snack foods since when I lived there in the 90s and every year I go the kids are getting fatter and fatter.
Germany similar to Poland but more variety on the veg front.
Japan was a very healthy diet lots of fish, veg, fermented food almost no dairy.

DH isn't British and the idea of children's meals/foods is very strange to him, they just always ate the same meals growing up- no nuggets. With DS we have a balance, not averse to frozen food but definitely more fresh stuff and different flavours than I had growing up; and not as much bread.

I'm in the Netherlands.

The Dutch eat a lot of bread (sandwiches for breakfast and lunch) with sweet stuff (peanut butter, nutella, chocolate sprinkles/shavings with butter) or savoury (cheese, ate, ham, egg salad).

Supermarket bread here is nicer than bread in the UK (which often has added sugar).

Cereals for breakfast are not really a thing.

Dinner wise we eat a lot of stuff that my friends in the UK would though ready meals are few and far between (becoming more common now but when I moved here 15+ years ago you couldn't even get them).

No school dinners here so everyone has packed lunch. Multipacks of crisps are not really a thing (mostly large share bags so not something kids would have at school).

DD was born in Portugal. Definitely know what you mean about soup. One of her favourite songs when she was small was about making sure you eat your soup because it is good for you. The first thing she had when we went on holiday this year was Canja.😁

I'm loving this thread, getting so many fab recipe ideas! Thank you!

Today my DS (2) has had;

Breakfast - milk, yoghurt with fruit

Snack - apple and yoghurt dough cinnamon roll

Lunch - cheese sandwich with carrot sticks and hummus

Snack - leftover cupcake from his party

Dinner: Cauliflower cheese, raisins and fruit salad.

I must admit I do try to shovel carbs into him at dinner time as it helps him sleep through! Other regulars we have are courgette fritters, hidden veggie tomato sauce with pasta, green risotto (risotto with a ton of blitzed up green veggies stirred in), curries are a big hit, lentil bakes etc - I find anything with cheese is a big hit!!

OMG I havent had Canja in YEARS! It used to be my favourite growing up (because the other options were mostly carrot, or bean, and I was never a fan of either, even now!)

Now that Im an adult, if I have soup, that is the meal. None of this soup THEN main.

No lördagsgodis? <faints at the horror>

It varies depending on how lazy I’m feeling.

Today

Breakfast Halwa Puri, sweetened and spice semolina with a flat bread.

Lunch Dahi Bhalla with roti

Tea Chapshuro, a bit like a pasty really

I'm a Brit living in Germany...so our diet is a bit mixed between the two cultures😅but a lot of Germans are quite heavily bread based, with a main cooked meal at lunch, and bread for dinner.

When mine were tiny out local Mexican restaurant would bring out buttered tortillas and refried beans for the kids, the owners wife insisted every time and refused to let us pay, it was the food she weaned her kids on. The local Indian restaurant owners would bring out mild chicken curry for them, again a family recipe.

I lived in France and found that standard of everyday cooking was pretty poor tbh. I was served som plain pasta with a chicken breast on the side once and no one seemed to think that was a weird meal. ‘Occasion’ meals were very different. Also, a French person complaining about British people eating too much bread is a French person who is being arsey!

To be fair, I think a lot of Swedish mums would be horrified too. But DS is autistic and wouldn't drink at all. It was the only way we could get him to take milk as a toddler. It's still in a small sippy cup with half the milkshake dose. It's literally the only thing he drinks each day. Thankfully he'll eat ice lollies throughout the day to stay hydrated.

Another mixed household here (as in both parents of descent rather than 1st generation of different backgrounds here).
DC
breakfast normally egg, cereal sometimes a slice of bread with something on top (peanut butter, jam)
lunch atm packed lunches for summer camps so cheese sandwich, crudités some fruit, yoghurt, sometimes biscuits.
dinner today was dhal and roti. Biscuit milk before bed - that’s something dc brought into our home life himself after hearing about it in pre school.

I grew up partly in France and partly in the UK and Ireland.

Typical French child's food then (1980s) would be:

Breakfast: bread, butter and jam with a bowl of hot chocolate. Or sometimes cereal - I liked crousti-miel which I can't remember the name of in English, but it's the one that had the honey monster in the ads. Sugar puffs? Honey puffs?

Lunch: A lot more substantial than a school lunch here, with several courses. A starter (generally vegetable based, a main course with meat or fish, veg and bread, potatoes, rice or couscous, and a pudding and/or cheese. I don't really remember the full details.

Dinner would start with a vegetable soup, then there would be a main course, often followed by salad and then cheese. We didn't really have puddings - maybe a yogurt, but proper puddings tended to be for special occasions and bought from the patisserie.

We would also have quite junky after school snacks - chocolate sandwiches, biscuits etc with a glass of squash.

Crisps were mostly just served in small quantities as a nibble with drinks before dinner.

Today in our kitchen has been:

Porridge, made with no sugar - sultanas - so that anyone can put what they like on it (the weather is quite cold here!) with home grown strawberries.

Sweetcorn fritters for lunch

Lentil dahl and rice with greek yoghurt. Lots of chilli in it and garlic.

Used to live in Germany I really miss being able to go to the bread shop. Very many different kinds of mostly sour dough beautiful bread with various seeds and lovely grains. The way that it is made is a lovely, healthy staple and I have never been able to replicate it at home, though I've tried!

steamed rice, fried rice, soup, noodle, curry, fried egg, vegetable, sea food and etc..

I think its very odd to plan a meal for young children that doesn't include some starchy carb - but that might include skin on potatoes or brown rice, it doesn't have to be a massive bowl of white pasta.

Im the first to admit though, having tried for years to swap to brown pasta and rice, i gave up because they just taste much worse.

My main focus is on increasing the proportion of our meals that comes from veg. Lots of root veg & varied greens, salad our soup with lunch as a routine. I refuse to demonise pasta & bread, they can be perfectly acceptable components of a healthy meal.