To not understand adult food vs kids food?

[SofandaCox]

I meet up occasionally with my old baby group. Our babies are 3 now. We met up yesterday for lunch and there’s a few in the group that are firmly in the adult foods are separate to kids food camp and I find it so bizarre. They make really weird comments like “why would you give that to a child” “my child would never eat that” “I wouldn’t waste that on a child” etc. my child has a long list of allergies and I’ve had gastric surgery so can’t much so we usually share a meal. The offending meal? Calamari. Basically chicken nuggets but wish squid. They acted like I had just purchased my toddler a fillet mignon with champagne and lobster tail. Which, again, don’t see the issue if that’s what he wanted! Has anyone experienced this? And also just to be so rude as to sit there and actually make comments about it. I’ve had judgey thoughts about them feeding their 3 year old jarred baby food but I’ve kept that to myself. It’s making me not want to meet up with them anymore but it would be a shame for my son as he enjoys spending time with the others toddlers.

I wonder if it’s a concept that’s grown from people using jars of baby food to feed their kids.

Yes!! SO much of it on this thread too. Honestly the smug judginess of so many posters on this thread is a lot even by MN standards. Good for you that your children eat homemade sushi with raw fish (bit cringe you felt the need to brag about this btw), but honestly - calamari is just a different variation on a chicken nugget. Carry on using this thread as an exercise in showing off the food your kids eat that you think makes you a superior parent, you clearly need that validation. For the most part, everyone’s doing their best - whatever they choose to feed their children.

My three kids love a good steak. Rather than chicken nuggets and chips when dining out, we would buy a steak and split it if the restaurant was okay with that. I mean, if they wouldn't give us an extra plate to split an expensive steak between 2 kids they got the nuggets though. Ain't no way I'm wasting steak money for bellies too small to eat them.

I may have said something like my dd would never eat that but it wouldn’t be said with bad intentions, more i wish she would eat more varied foods.
My dd even from weaning has been fussy about foods in general she’s just never been overly interested in food, where as my son will eat anything both weaned the exact same. It’s not that she’ll only eat ‘beige’ food as she isn’t a big fan of a lot of them either, she just only likes certain things.
I wouldn’t feed a jar of baby food to a 3 year old (not a chance my dd would eat one either) but I also wouldn’t make a judgy comment about someone doing it. Trying to get food in to a child that isn’t overly interested in eating is hard and maybe that’s what they’ve found works for them.

We brought our children up to eat whatever we were eating ourselves and this would lead to the scenario you describe whenever I was with my sister who had children of approximately the same age - she'd want to give them pizza every time and looked askance at me giving mine fish & rice & vegetables

It’s really not ‘only in the UK’ you find this. It’s common in America (not surprising) but as an expat who’s lived in a number of different countries around the world I can confirm it’s also common in many countries.

It's also the weirdness of thinking/expecting that a small portion should cost less than an adult portion. Most of the cost to the restaurant is per-plate, regardless of how much is on it. But we expect a child's meal to be cheaper than an adult meal.

And this is how we end up with the concept of Hungry Horse as good value..

This.

All you parents whose kids will eat anything and everything - do you think the rest of us actively discouraged this in our kids? Do you think we like cooking different meals? Some kids are fussy, some aren’t.

DS1 was terribly fussy, and would rather starve than eat stuff he wasn’t keen on. If he forced himself to eat it he’d vomit. Now he’s 19 and he eats anything.

DS2 ate anything as a young child. Now he’s mid teens he’s become ridiculously fussy, and has a tiny repertoire of meals he’ll eat without a big drama.

I've got about 4 foodstuffs I don’t like. I’m incredibly unfussy. Did my absolute best with my kids diet, but ultimately they are who they are.

This whole thread is a stealth boast.

Who feeds a three year old jarred baby food?! Unless there’s some kind of developmental issue.

I think the point is that, in much of the world, beige kids’ food simply wouldn’t be an option. They’d have to eat some form of ‘adult food’, as that’s all there’d be.

I’d never even come across either ‘kids’ food’ or ‘fussy eating’ as concepts before I moved to the U.K. When people from places where this isn’t ‘a thing’ say they don’t get it, it’s not a judgement (although I appreciate why it feels like one, particularly if you’re struggling or have struggled with a fussy eater). It’s often genuine bafflement.

The above also applies to pride and/or smugness about what or how ‘well’ your child eats. Why would that be a source of pride?!

Mine eats mostly what we eat - he isn’t that keen on highly spicy food so we tone it down for him with yoghurt, but he eats everything else we eat (except salad, strangely, but that isn’t a hill I need to die on). He tends to have half of my main course and a side of chips or veg, I have the other half and a salad.

Jarred baby food aged 3 sounds like potential SEN to me - the only three year old I know who would tolerate a pouch over chips is autistic with a very limited food repertoire.

Yeah, I mean I understand that some people think young children having a sophisticated palate is a class marker, or that it reflects particularly well on them as parents, and fine for people to have that little emotional boost if that's what they want. But as you say, children of all cultures will tend to gravitate towards simplicity of taste - French kids with their Nutella on toast, Indian kids with Bournvita milk & sugar, Japanese with Kakigori...of course you'll always get kids with adventurous taste buds but I'm not sure it proves anything much either way.

‘This whole thread is a stealth boast.’

💯💯💯💯💯💯

Fussy eating is a normal developmental milestone for toddlers. It’s actually evolutionary, as it’s the age when small people had to learn that some berries/leaves etc are poisonous and you can’t just eat anything you find on a bush. They also have different taste buds to adults so some young children taste dark green vegetables as very bitter.

Our toddler went from eating everything (olives, chilli, fish etc) to suddenly much more selective. We still feed him child sized portions of normal adult food but he’s now very picky. So for example if it’s curry he’ll just eat the rice. If it’s sea bass, potatoes and broccoli he’ll just eat the potatoes. It’s probably even less balanced and nutritious than the “kids’ food” about which so many parents are so scathing, but I’m not going to make multiple meals.

This is a very cute story.

No it's not.

Yeah, I mean I understand that some people think young children having a sophisticated palate is a class marker

You have to scrape the barrel to find class markers with toddlers when they all eat bogeys, can’t wipe their own noses and struggle to pronounce synthetic phonemes 😂

My kid lives off hummus, avocados and pollock. She'd love calamari though, come to think of it. Need to give that a try!

hahahahaha, yes I feel you! I'm sure posh toddlers are out there lol.

If anything I'd say that a kid thinking calamari is similar to chicken nuggets just suggests that the kid's not eating decent calamari. Firstly with proper calamari, the delicious little delicate purple tentacles should be clearly visible through the lightest possible dusting of batter - delicious for adults but possibly a bit discombobulating for a child. Ad the texture's entirely different too of course.

I think it's:

Still somehow have yesterday's hummus crusted in hair = posh.

Still somehow have yesterday's ketchup crusted in hair = common.

In my culture - and a lot of non-western cultures - kids eat the food you eat. Sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. If they don’t like it, there’s always the next meal. Like everyone else, they develop likes and dislikes, and those evolve and change. Sometimes they get their favourite, sometimes they get food they don’t like and they refuse it. None of this is considered a big deal.

There is no beige food. There are no kids’ meals. The idea of making a separate meal to cater to a child wouldn’t even come up. I’m not attempting to be scathing - these things simply do not exist as options.

My DS ate what I ate. He had his fair share of fish fingers for something quick but he mainly had the same food. He's always been a really good eater.

I think 3 is far too old for food in jars. They are in a world of hurt trying the little one on proper food.

I don't understand it either. In my ethnic group you wean early and on what the adults eat.

I disagree with your friend's comment about giving food like calamari to your child. I personally prepare separate meals for my 3-year-old because of their preferences. My child enjoys plain foods like white pasta (almost without any sauce and definitely not tomato-based), and they don’t care for meat or vegetables, apart from boiled broccoli. In contrast, I prefer meals with bold flavors—spicy, salty, sweet, or aromatic—so sharing a meal doesn't work for us. It’s not about what’s right or wrong; it’s simply a matter of personal preferences. While people often suggest sharing meals with your child, it’s not always practical in reality.

I also disagree with the idea that this is a "British thing." I'm from a different country, and in my home country, many kids' menu ideas are shared. Parents often reluctantly prepare separate meals for their children because kids are typically quite picky eaters.

It is fine some kids liking simple foods. Some adults like simple foods. It is why some young people think elderly people all used to eat mince and onions and plain meat and two veg - because that is what their parents or grandparents ate.
The OP was posting though about the idea that there is kids food and adults food, when it is all just food.
An adult who likes plain food like pasta in a tomato sauce, was probably a child who liked pasta in a tomato sauce. But there is no reason why kids can not enjoy steak, curry, or similar.