To expect my children to eat real food?

[chickpea1982]

How do I get my kids to eat real food?!

I have 3 DCs - a 7 year old, a 6 year old and a baby just a few months old. Leaving the baby aside, my kids just want to eat pizza, burgers, sausages and chips. They will eat vegetables if forced, and will voluntarily eat fruit most days, but often (mostly) turn their noses up at "home cooked meals" e.g. spaghetti bolognaise, chilli, curry, stew, shepherd's pie - nothing very exotic! They absolutely refuse to eat anything more adventurous - things like chinese food are rejected outright. . They obviously get enough to survive, and I consider myself quite fortunate when I speak to mums with kids who refuse to eat anything but cheese strings and white bread, but I know it's not good for them to eat so much processed meat, and they need more vegetables for their health. I also want them to like home cooked food. I worry that when they get older they will think that food = burgers and chips, and they won't feel the need to learn to cook or eat well.

What makes it even more maddening, is that sometimes one child will like something I make, but the other will hate it. What should I do in this situation? Should I force the reluctant child to eat the food?

Any tips on how I can encourage them to eat "real" food?

I'd serve one meal to everyone and get them involved in the choosing the meal plan/preparing/cooking process.

Tell them you're making some changes for the good of their health and that they do have to try to eat a better mix of foods, including veg.

If they don't eat what's put in front of them, bar illness, they'd not get anything else in my house anyway

Thank you for your reply. This was exactly how I was brought up. I don't know why I don't apply the same rules to the kids. Probably because we often eat at different times, and I'm often so exhausted that I go for the easy option to avoid fights about what they eat.

Don’t buy the processed things. Be clear that these things will not be options. But get them involved in choosing the week’s meals by e.g. posing options for them to pick from. For some children fussiness can also be about simply knowing what dinner is going to be in advance - a meal plan chart can help with that.

Since reading ultra processed people I am also making a huge effort to reduce ultra processed food in my kids diet. I think im finding it easier as my kids are younger but some of the things I hsve swapped out are juice /squash, we only have milk or water now, cereal, we only have porridge, muesli or eggs and fruit now and I only cook one meal but I make sure there is something each kid definitely will eat at each meal time. Also a good trick is serving myself something and just eating it near by them as a snack and within a few minutes they're trying to steal from me because I have made it 'grown up food' . I tried air frying butter beans in olive oil and seasoning and they loved them suprisingly and ate a whole can between them. Also swapping out crisps for proper popcorn and getting good quality ice cream rather than cheap supermarket ice cream which is full of emulsifiers and other additives. We love the ice cream from Cook which is comparable in price to ben and jerrys.

Agree with not buying the processed food. Tell them you are all going to make the food, so begin by making the foods they like at him- pizza, burgers etc. Gradually add a new meal a week, and get them to help making it.

We all eat the same meal and sit down at the table and eat at the same time.
You could try getting your children more involved: planning the meal, buying the ingredients and cooking it.

I always cook meals with the veg on the side and always 3 different ones. I make sure there is at least a couple of things everyone will eat so if I make spaghetti Bolognese then dc3 will have spaghetti, grated cheese and broccoli. They will all eat different combinations of vegetables. 1 doesn't like tomatoes unless they are blended in and he can't see them. You could start slowly and serve up sausages, chips and different types of vegetables.

Also getting them involved with making their favourite dishes like burgers, then leads to trying different ingrediants like bean burgers, its easy and fun to make home made pizza and breaded chicken for example

I mean most people would want to eat their favourite food every day but I can't live off cake and pizza! Maybe talk about the difference between food we love eating, foods we don't mind/like, and foods we really dislike, do some meals on paper and get them to put it into love/like/no categories (say no more than 2 meals/ingredients in the no!)

Cook the meal. Offer the meal. Do not offer an alternative. Repeat

I hope this doesn't sound too harsh as it's kindly meant but as they so little they can only eat what you buy for them to eat.

I would gradually change over to food you want them to eat and batch cook so you can easily defrost a spag bol etc. There's probably going to be resistance but I suspect once they have realised that they aren't going to get anything else they will eat. In our house, the kids don't have to eat what's put in front of them but we aren't making anything else - generally speaking most gets eaten most nights and no one has starved themselves yet.

All the meals you said they don't eat could be described as "wet" meals. Maybe they don't like the texture.
Would they eat something like grilled chicken or fish (or breaded) with rice?

Home- made burgers:

Good quality mince of any sort you like

Mush up in a bowl with your hands with any flavouring you like (a little bit of tomato ketchup is child friendly, but I like tomato purée and grated onion).

Grab a handful, roll into a ball, squish flat

Grill or oven bake

Try starting with homemade versions of what they eat . Such as homemade pizza , burgers homemade at home are relatively easy .
things like wraps with cooked chicken , and salad they can help themselves works well .

I think it's an age and stage think. Keep offering a range of stuff and eventually they will eat it.

My DCs were very unadventurous around that age. They're now teens and for lunch today we had filo butternut kale and goats cheese tart with mushrooms and feta quinoa. There is hope!

Can you start where they are?

Chips- they love chips. Can they help you cut up potatoes and sweet potatoes and choose flavourings to make chips? Can they make a dip for said chip with tomatoes (salsa), cheese or avocados (guacamole?)

Burgers: can they help you make burgers with veggie and meat mince? Would they help you make the coating for a chicken burger?

sausages: switch to organic, HECK type ones?

Then one day could they help you make some fish fingers? Perhaps some plant based burgers?

one step at a time in what I know sounds like such a laborious journey

I agree with pp. Cook one meal for everyone and you’re the one that chooses. Don’t replace food or offer something else. Get them involved in cooking it if possible. If they have a healthy dinner they like, I’d add that in or make some simple changes, like mash and veg to sausages or trying toad in the hole. Build up a list of meals they will eat so you can refer back to it. Be clear on health and take any emotion out, talk to them about what nutritious food does to their bodies, about vitamins and minerals and fibre. (We have a book about the human body which helps explain.) They might have done the eatwell plate at school, which you could chat about.

My two still complain sometimes, but I just plough on. I’ve finally managed to get my ds to enjoy a very mild curry (yellow Thai), which is an achievement because he’s always preferred the blander flavours (even though I’ve always made a point of variety).

Another thing that I find useful is meal planning. It makes it simpler and means the ingredients are here, so that’s what we’re having. It could also help to look at meals with similar flavours to start with eg. Tomato and mozzarella risotto. We often rename meals if we want our children to be more open to them - “Pizza rice, anyone?” 😁

This!

Obviously avoiding anything anyone has a real aversion to. I think really making an effort to eat together is very important too.

Can't help I'm afraid.
Bought my kids up with the simple premise that I'd be preparing one meal for the family and anyone who didn't eat it didn't get an alternative, they just went to bed hungry.

But I appreciate that's not the done thing these days, it's frowned upon and I was probably being abusive of something. Just feel incredibly lucky that through some sort of Devine Intervention my kids have grown into adults that eat pretty much anything and value a healthy varied diet themselves, phew.

Feeding advice is best left to the professionals - paediatric dietitians, paediatric OTs and paediatric SLTs.
A fantastic resource is the NHS patient webinars website which has valuable information for parents who are struggling with fussy eaters.

https://patientwebinars.co.uk/condition/fussy-eating-in-children/

All the best with this!

One could say that of any of the forums here from life limiting illness, to mental health, to money matters to pregnancy. It is absolutely acceptable to chat, commiserate, and engage with fellow parents who’ve been there - quite similar to when standing outside school gates.

The link of course is useful.

My Mum was the same and I'll be doing the same too!

There isn't a food I won't at least try and I'll pretty much eat anything.

Chances are they'll grow into liking more things. I wouldn't stress too much about it so long as they're getting a relatively balanced diet even if unadventurous. Yes, cut down on the processed stuff and make sure you're offering a range of food, but I wouldn't start starving "offenders" whose crime is not to like the food offered. As an adult, there are certain foods I don't like and won't eat and they do sometimes change. Just make sure any alternatives are fairly unexciting!

I would give them what you eat, cook the whole meal, then if you tend to eat later you have the 'left overs' if you like.

One meal, one choice, get them involved in chopping and mixing or whatever.

And also OP eating together. We both work FT and have kids aged 4 and 8, and we always eat every dinner together as a family around the table at 630. It helps talk about our days, there’s never multiple meals made ever, it helps laugh together. And if making time for “learning/homework” an issue or a struggle - this leisurely dinner around a large table also helps have all sorts on the table from phonics flashcards for a preschooler to her math link dino cubes to DS8’s endless logic puzzles for DH and I. We often continue to sit around for 15 mins after we’ve finished!