Why don't parents feed children what they eat?

[Gruffallowhydidntyouknow]

Twice this week I have had conversations with people that make me wonder why in the UK we are obsessed with children's food and feeing children bland foods.

One friend told me that they were furious at their mother in law, as they had been for Sunday lunch at the weekend and had had to go to Tesco to get food in for their children (5,7, 10) because it was ridiculous that they were being offered the roast beef dinner.

Another friend was bemoaning cooking two different meals as she had to cook something the children would eat and something separate for her and her wife. She laughed and said she couldn't wait until they were old enough to eat curry (8 year old twins).

I despair at the sight of pub menus as it's always beige and chips for the children or a token tomato pasta unless you are in a really nice place. Is that really how people feed children?

I have literally never made separate foods with the exception of not giving my children steak pre teeth.

I'm genuinely intrigued what makes people feed their children separately. Is it that people really believe that children won't eat normal foods? Do people think you "shouldn't" give children spicey foods, or Game/ an olive / duck / stir fry?

Is it that they were weaned on plain things and are now fussy?

I'm not talking about the tiny portion of additional needs selective eaters.

You can’t avoid these things forever- much more useful to help them have a healthy relationship and understanding of them.

My daughter adopted two children, 2 and 4, who'd been in foster care. All they'd been given to eat for main meals was things like chicken nuggets or other oven cook easy food, with chips or other frozen potato products (though fortunately they did also eat rice). The result was that they preferred really crunchy browned food. The older one, now aged 8, still prefers her food well-cooked to the point of being almost burnt. We struggled with "real" food for a week or two but they quickly showed a willingness to try new things.
Now we all simply give them "normal" food and they will eat almost everything if they are hungry.
I also hate restaurants' childrens' menus, the food is dull and nondescript. We usually solve that by halving an adult portion of real food which often doesn't cost any more anyway. If they like a meal they'd probably eat most of an adult portion anyway. We often give them a little of what we are eating, to try to widen their tastes

My nieces once came to stay with us with their grandmother. I cooked a big Macaroni cheese one night, lovely and cheesy with a browned top, as they'd told me that they liked it. The eldest one burst into tears, it turned out that she'd only ever had white macaroni cheese from a tin. I do know that my SIL doesn't like to cook and quickly found out that the girls only really ate ready meals or frozen food, though reasonably healthy ones in some cases.

Is that irony? Go pick a fight elsewhere. People that want to try and escalate every issue and cause drama are just boring.

Want your children to eat healthy, diverse food? Don’t buy the junk! Don’t take them to KFC, McDonald’s etc.

There may be some children who are fussy eaters because they’ve only ever been fed beige food.

However there are also a whole load of fussy eater children who have been fed good and varied food but have strong dislikes due to sensory issues or just very particular tastebuds.

Growing up I was a very fussy eater. I wasn’t given beige food, indeed my mum was a good cook and very into healthy eating. I liked most veg/fruit/meat but wanted everything plain. No sauce. And there were some things like onions, even cooked, that I just couldn’t bear. It was just how my tastebuds worked - a strong dislike of certain tastes. I grew out of it in my teens and now eat everything, though it took me a very long time to like anything with bitter notes.

I firmly believe that most fussy eating comes from nature, not nurture. Same as poor sleeping.

Parents who pat themselves on the back about their great eater or great sleeper are misguided (and smug) and should accept that it was 90% luck. I have great, adventurous eaters but won’t be listing “what I did right” because I’m sure most parents of fussy eaters did exactly the same.

Dd1 was a nightmare because of sensory issues so didn't eat many foods because of textures (and would literally have starved rather than swallowed) she is much better now but still has some issues. Dd2 ate anything but then developed severe allergies which have taken ages to identify all the triggers (sulfites). I have different but severe allergies which don't much overlap so we are a nightmare. It's now at least 2 if not 3 different meals on this house and we can never really eat out anymore even if we could afford it.

We enjoy eating a burger or pizza now and then. We order McDonald's as a treat for the children why would I deprive them. Sometimes I don't want to cook.

My dad had an awful relationship with food he followed his mum. Eat little and stay slim. I didn't want that I enjoy eating and so do my children. My children understand far more about food than what I did when I was their age. You can enjoy food as long as you exercise. Like everything in life it has to be in moderation.

It weren't personal get over it and move on.

You are big on irony aren't you? Or it is just hypocrisy? 🙄😴

Also, it "wasn't" personal. And yes, proper English does matter.

You can't admit you was wrong. It's okay we all make mistakes.

😂I didn't make a mistake. Almost funny from a person who can't even write English properly.

Go and pick a fight elsewhere as you are really boring me now.

Chicken or egg type question. How do kids become fussy eaters - why?

And for me, the cultural question is very much part of the answer. Why are kids in most EU countries, where families always eat together most of the time or always, generally not fussy eaters, 99.9% of the time?

No high horse- but interesting questions (for me at least).

👏

Well said! 100% agree.

This is a parenting forum for parents to share their experiences. I am sorry you feel that way it wasn't my intention. I will continue to post as I am and if you would like to ask me a question I will happily answer it.

Most children are fussy with at least some foods and that is perfectly normal and healthy. Their tastebuds are far more sensitive, so things like olives, onions, garlic etc will be far stronger tasting for them than adults whose tastebuds have been dulled by a lifetime of consuming strong flavours. However there is a big difference between offering plain home cooked food such as pasta with butter, roast chicken and potatoes etc than offering chips, nuggets and other pre-made, highly processed foods which many have mentioned on this very thread that their fussy children will eat as opposed to other healthier opinions. The problem is that oven chips, for example, will be tastier for many kids than mashed or boiled potatoes and chicken nuggets yummier than roast etc. This is due to salt content, added oils, coating etc.

A parent can absolutely cater to fussy eaters with healthy, home cooked food and doesn’t need to resort to UPFs and if they don’t want their fussy kids asking for these foods then they should avoid introducing them in the first place.

Don’t you just realise there are things people like and don’t like? Or that every person is individual?Tastebuds exist.
For example I wouldn’t eat a curry if you paid me yet my children love rice (they were weaned and grew up eating everything) yet they don’t like peas or pasta! Sometimes it just is not practical to make the same meal for everyone. If I made a meal myself and my husband had bought and planned for and refused to make a separate meal sometimes they wouldn’t eat for days.
I want to keep my children alive…

It is very much a cultural issue. British food habits are perhaps the worst in Europe and more in line with the US. There are so many reasons but a few I have noticed compared to other countries/cultures are the following:

Parents and children often eat at different times and thus eat different meals entirely. This is connected to the very early bedtimes kids have in the UK so it’s quite normal for children to have dinner at 530/6pm and parents a couple of hours later.

There is a huge grazing culture in the UK for both children and adults where snacks are constantly available and people are constantly picking at food. Children are often not sufficiently hungry at dinner time and therefore can afford to be more demanding in terms of what they will accept.

Ready meals, ultra processed foods and fast food have become so normalised and prevalent in the UK that if you don’t allow your children to consume these products at all most “normie” people will see you as cruelly “depriving” your children.

Fatness likewise has become normalised and even celebrated to the extent that the average adult is slightly overweight and this trickles down to the children.

Children go to bed earlier than adults because they need more sleep than adults. School age children don’t make up the difference with naps in the day. No one would benefit from keeping children up and letting them become over tired.

Grazing (eating little and often) is perfectly healthy if what you are eating is reasonably healthy. The problem there is with adults insisting children also need to eat 3 big meals a day, instead of teaching children to listen to their own bodies.

Fast food, like social media, sugar, and gaming exist- you can raise your children in a bubble for so long, and then they will encounter the real world, and they will navigate it much more successfully if they are prepared for it. You can always spot the kids at high school who have never had any sugar or junk, then suddenly have cash or a dinner card and discover chips, cookies and coke exist.

Fast food, like social media, sugar, and gaming exist- you can raise your children in a bubble for so long, and then they will encounter the real world, and they will navigate it much more successfully if they are prepared for it. You can always spot the kids at high school who have never had any sugar or junk, then suddenly have cash or a dinner card and discover chips, cookies and coke exist.

I often hear these types of arguments but what they fail to address is that there is a huge difference between introducing junk food and junk culture when children are old enough to understand how to deal with them than to introduce them too early. And I know plenty of adults including myself who were raised on a healthy, whole food diet with very limited access to fast food and every single one of them has a healthy diet as adults as do their children. All the people I know raised on junk food feed their children in the same way because it’s extremely difficult to break this type of conditioning.

Spanish and Italian children manage to make it through their childhoods (with lower levels of obesity, anxiety and other ills) while going to bed at 9 or 10 and eating dinner with their parents.

Don't Spanish children still nap at school? (Not sure about Italian).

That would explain it.

Mine goes to bed at 7 because he needs to be awake for 7 and also needs 12 hours of sleep. Going to bed at 9-10 when he needs to be awake for 7 would be miserable for everyone, he'd be falling to sleep in his dinner and certainly not enjoying it.

Indeed. Giving a 3 year old chocolate buttons for breakfast on the regular is not a good idea, but neither is having a fit of the Vapours if granny gives them a packet when she comes to visit occasionally.

There is a normal median point between never letting them experience the real world and weaning them on blended chippy tea.

As with most things, the application of common sense is very useful.

Why do some many posters explain away their kids reluctance to eat certain foods as ‘sensory issues’?

Is ‘sensory issues’ regards food the modern equivalent of ‘I don’t like it’?

I think it's a good question but a really complex and nuanced answer. For a start I think there's a huge difference between those of us 'privileged' parents with the will, means and inclination to feed our children varied, cooked-from-scratch, 'adult' meals but who may inadvertently or otherwise end up with fussy eaters by being over anxious or giving them too much bland or processed food or allowing them to snack too often or whatever and how you deal with that, and trying to help parents who are living in poverty, poor mental health, unstable lives where nuggets and chips might be literally all they can afford or are able to feed their children, obviously there's overlap but conflating the two isn't that helpful.

Plus there is the need to challenge your hypothesis that Spanish or Italian children are less fussy than UK children, I'm not sure that's 100% true, yes we've all seen (and envied!) the beautifully behaved continental children enjoying a grown up meal in a restaurant and compared that with our own howling brats demanding chips and ice cream but I think it's a bit dangerous to extrapolate out from that too much, (a) it may well be that because fussy eating is less tolerated in restaurants in Europe parents don't take their children out if they won't behave/eat well in the restaurant so fussy eating is simply less visible. Or in some other countries it appears quite normal for children to roam around casually picking out bits from the meal and playing, rather than eating a full meal from their own plate so again this could be masking fussiness. Or it may be the children are equally fussy but the foods considered 'bland'/child friendly are different to in the UK e.g. maybe the child is given some plain crusty bread rather than chips, again maybe more healthy but perhaps equally selective in what they'll eat. It's certainly very common in different parts of the continent for children to have special after school snacks like the French 'gouter', often quite sugary and carby types of things like bread and jam, even if not ultra-processed. This is particularly as dinner time may be traditionally later in some countries than in the UK, so it's absolutely not the case that children are always expected to eat exactly in tune with the adults with no variance tolerated.

i do think food cultures are different in different nations and there's a lot we could learn in the UK from the Mediterranean traditional diet which most scientists and researchers seem to agree is amongst the healthiest in the world, and that must start in childhood, but i believe it's also true to say that many European countries are also seeing a rise in childhood obesity particularly in very poor children as we are in the UK so I don't think you can necessarily say they've got it all right. It must help living in a sunny climate with plentiful delicious seasonal fruit and veg though!

Bed at 7 is wild to me. None of mine have ever slept that early, or slept for 12 hours straight. Loads of kids don't even get home from nursery/wraparound until 6.30! I don't how you'd manage to even fit a meal into that schedule.