Children’s diets - where does it all go wrong?

[Inmydreams88]

I am about to wean my baby in the next few weeks. Call me naive but I have high hopes that he will eat my delicious healthy food and enjoy it 🤣

I see most children (I work in a primary school) who eat poor diets. Obviously unless parents weaned them on chicken nuggets and Greggs sausage rolls then they were also weaned on nutritious healthy food, this led me to thinking where does it all go wrong? Is there actually anything I can do now whilst my baby is young that will impact his diet later on? Or do all children go through a beige fussy eating stage?

I completely understand some children have SEN/ND issues which can cause major issues with food, so this thread isn’t about that.

Africa is a continent with what, fifty four countries? Do people really still think it’s all like the footage from Ethiopia in 1984?

I think grandparents can play a part in this.

Speaking as the mum of three good eaters, I would say that most children go through a fussy stage as toddlers (for mine it was around 14 to 18 months). The important thing is not to stress about it and start bribing / begging them to eat. Act as if you don't care whether they eat or not! (This is easier said than done when they seem to be existing on air.) If you give in and get into the habit of unhealthy food, it's hard to get back on track.

I have one who will eat anything (eldest) and who is very healthy and really into cooking (11) and one (9) who is more restricted and prefers more of the beige stuff (but will have curries and sushi although won't eat any fruit). I did the same with both of them.

Feel free to explain the point to me.

Children in Africa aren't fussy.

Dear god, did I just read this comment posted in the year of the lord 2024 on a public forum by someone who genuinely didn't mean to be ironic?

The majority seem to go from happily eating a wide variety of healthy stuff to only wanting to eat sausages, chips, pizza, biscuits and crisps. And it happens before school age! They become suspicious little luddites who only want boring beige sugary carbs!

I think mostly it's parents not having a great diet themselves and not knowing how to cook easy healthy meals. Or knowing how to do it but falling into too much convenience food due to tiredness, stress etc. Too many snacks also, giving too big a portion at mealtimes. Kids not moving about enough, nowhere to run about outside or not being able to afford after school activities.

Time & cash poor parents have to reach for the easiest options available.
Sadly that's processed crap like chicken nuggets, burgers, pizza fishfingers served with chips. Add the addictive factor and the result is a poor diet lucking in fresh fruit and vegetables.

But can you really blame the parents that have to magic up a quick, & affordable dinner after a long day at work?

I followed all the good advice on here, then DS went to university and now has a serious weight problem. (And yes, I had taught him to cook).

Other DS, who went through a seriously fussy stage in his teens, is now slim and fit.

I too have been relatively slim all my life (BMI never above 24) but until I went to secondary school, my evening meal was bread and jam, followed by sponge cake. With strawberries with sugar and evaporated milk in the summer.

On the plus side, my (size 18) mother was a good role model in that she was always keen to try new foods (lets face it, nearly everything was new and exotic in the 50s, even yogurt and any pasta except for macaroni).

So my conclusion is, you don't have the control you would like, but you can model good food habits, don't keep a stock of biscuits, crisps, fish fingers in the house, and let children feel hungry if there is a meal scheduled in the next hour.

Oh god there would be a riot if we don't have snacks in the house. Personally I wouldn't ever keep chocolate, biscuits or crisps in but I am overruled, four to one. DDs are both slimmer than DH or I were at their age though, so I'm not too concerned.

Absolutely nothing wrong with a fish finger - in fact nutritionists are actively encouraging them again!

I take into consideration real dislikes due to texture, taste etc. but generally meals can be quite the battle. I’m quite strict on unless you try it there isn’t anything else, and I will always include something they will eat.

I try a lot of the time to include them in my meal planning, and I also try and serve meals with help yourself kind of thing, it seems to help I have one coming out of a fussy stage and one going into one. Generally it’s around vegetables, so I offer fruit after a meal, they do like raw peppers/cucumber/carrots so I’ll offer those too.

they would always pick the beige food over a home cooked meal, and I factor that in when I cook but I don’t make it a daily thing. So once a week they get a beige meal, a meal each they’ve picked and we muddle through.

I pureed butternut squash like a super Mommy. Then the kid goes to somebodys house and eats pizza and chips.

Thats vile tbh. The comment.

When my son was 2/3/4 he would eat everything, his favorite food was broccoli and cavello Nero, he ate octopus, razor clams and mussels with gusto, liked sushi and sashimi, I was quietly smug.

he went to reception where he started eating school dinners.
suddenly his appetite for sugar increased, he stopped eating green vegetables.

the school has a come to lunch day for parents, where I observed dinner ladies piling on the praise to those who ate vegetables and I suspect this made my son realise that they were an optional and possibly objectionable part of a meal, and so he stopped wanting to eat them.

he is 9 now.

And all our previous restaurant and home meals are long forgotten, and now margarita pizza is a firm favorite.
I don’t know what I did wrong.

Have you ever seen those tiktok videos of babies trying ice cream/pizza/whatever for the first time? Their faces light up and they grab it like they're possessed.

That light-up-your-face, feel-good 'hit' still goes on in our brains as adults, that's why it's so good to eat. It's specifically formulated to make us want more. That's not to say avoid all junk food obviously, but some kids then want that 'hit' from everything they eat, and let's face it, no one is ever going to get that from broccoli 'Real' food is boring in comparison!

Obviously I'm only talking about more general 'fussyness' rather than SEN or other food aversions obviously, but you asked about junk food, and I think some people are more vulnerable to the addictive quality of it than others. I'm not sure you as a parent can just switch it off for them.

Lots of parents don't cook from scratch they used pouches etc that are sweeter than the proper raw ingredients with things like parsnips in that encourage a sweet tooth, they use flavoured baby yogurts, fruit pouches and fruit flavoured yoghurt bites, snack on sugary flavoured baby crackers etc feed raisins assuming things made for babies are fine without looking at labels or limiting quantities.

I have a 21mo and my experience so far has been that I did start her on healthier foods at home but once she went into nursery/grandparents' care she ended up eating a variety of things that I'd never given her (goujons, biscuits, pizza etc).

She still has a balance as I feed her healthy homemade things at home but the reality she has most of her meals elsewhere nowadays and there's only so much I can control. Also, she sees me and her dad eating other things and she obviously then wants to try those too - for example if we're out at the weekend and get a cake or something. We do try and eat the same as her for the majority of meals we have though.

I also think there is a natural preference for easier-to-eat things on her part too. So she enjoys pasta, mashed potato, curry & rice. She is not keen on harder textures so that probably plays a part too.

Just because a lot of children are given unhealthy food, I don't think it necessarily means they wouldn't eat nutritious food. Both my DC have a really good diet most of the time, but if I gave them a sausage roll for lunch they would happily eat it.

If I'd only had two children then I'd think smugly to myself that I did everything right and that's why they eat a wide range of flavors and a balanced diet containing lots of healthy foods.

But I have a third who will eat nothing healthy despite having been raised on the same foods as his older sisters, so... shrugs

(They're all late teens and early twenties.)

All kids are fussy at some point, some children just like food more than others etc. I would say that for me I just focus on having a wide selection of healthy foods at home, allow kids to have some control over what they’re eating (I think at toddler age food gets caught up in their general boundary pushing - it’s one big area they actually have control over) & do the thing of some safe foods and some new foods on the plate, they love a “buffet” (all the things I’d normally serve on their plates but put on a big plate in the middle and they select from it). I’d stay away from processed stuff, there is nothing wrong with a fish finger or chicken nugget so long as it has been prepped properly. And most importantly get them involved in cooking! Mine have child safe knives and will help chop veg which they love, we do homemade chicken nuggets and they’ll roll the chicken in the breadcrumbs, we bake together. They learn about the different types of ingredients and will
happily eat the outcome of their labours —even if there are some strange flavour combinations that make it into their “recipes”—.

but ultimately they are individuals. I have 2 children - one sees food & hunger as irritating impositions on his time and would live on air if possible, the other is a proper gourmand. Raised the same way. What can you do?!

It’s so important to model good eating habits. So eat the foods that you want your children to eat, have variety, eat together, let them see you eating so they can learn from you, can learn table manners and how to use cutlery. Interesting that it’s beige food that is seen as been more palatable for kids and foods like curry and sushi are seen as more adventurous. This is not the case in multicultural houses where these foods are potentially the staples.

My opinion of where it changes is when they get to school and the catering companies (because it's cheaper/the food giants put a lot of pressure on) do desserts with every meal.

That creates an expectation in children that there needs to be a pudding after every meal in the week, when it really isn't necessary. They could increase the calorific value in good food, but no, it all goes into the sweet things (seen it at secondary as well - five chips, a 1oz burger that doesn't even consist of 50% meat, no veg, no salad, but a slab of flapjack resembling hardstanding for a driveway).

I agree with you. If children are never introduced to junky food in the first place, they wouldn't know about them nor, in extension, crave them. Trouble is, parents DO introduce processed food to their children (for the reason you mentioned). That's their doom, really. I didn't grow up eating processed food, neither did my parents, so we just don't eat that kind of stuff now, in adulthood.

I also think teaching children to snack throughout the day, like they are grazing cows, is a bad idea. If you eat enough and well at your main meals, you likely won't feel the need to snack throughout the day. Eating constantly puts your digestive system into overwork! No wonder people have gut issues.

When my DD was a toddler she was so fussy and would eat about 10 foods total but they were actually mostly healthy stuff. She wouldn’t eat chips (unless sweet potato), nuggets, pasta or pizza. Her favourite foods were avocado and scrambled eggs. We’d always up to that point done a fairly varied mix. Some kids are just fussy and will have strong preference 🤷‍♀️ And she’s 7 and so much better, the only things she really doesn’t like now are sushi or anything spicy.