Are my dinners rubbish?

[Sowhatbigdeal]

Been told they are

Here’s an example of an average week, more or less:

Monday (I work at 6, so do something simple)

Feta & red onion salad with new potatoes & rice

Tuesday

Pasta with jar pesto (working today)

Wednesday

Dh to do omlette/eggs on toast with salad (working today)

Thursday

Salmon, salad, new potatoes

Friday

Homemade chilli with rice, nachos & dips

Saturday

Takeaway

Sunday

Roast dinner/homemade lasagne

Are they?

Laughing at a takeaway a week being a bit much. 😂 it’s really not if you don’t over order. How odd

Also if you takes you longer than 40 mins to make a casserole or lasagne (not including cooking) then you’re slow AF 😂

The amount of delivery bikes you see now I’m guessing most people have more than one a week and just aren’t admitting if.

A lot of the delivery places also do orders for supermarkets and other shops.

But I suspect a lot do have more than one a week but don’t announce it on here as they’d be torn to pieces by the UPF brigade 🤣

Exactly. The food snobbery on here (and on MN in general) is ridiculous. I think a lot of these posters would be horrified by how many families eat every day if they think this is poor.

Looking at them in isolation, they are not rubbish. However, a few tweaks such as including some leafy greens and a bit more protein with some of them would make them more balanced. Wholegrain rice, pasta, if not already used would elevate things further.

No, it’s added nutrients and variety. Variety is key when it comes to fruit, veg etc

You don’t need loads of variety in every meal though, as long as it’s varied across the week/month then you’re fine.

Also I think some posters are commenting from a perspective of a middle aged individual providing for themselves and looking for optimum nutrition/low carb/weight reduction. The needs of children are so different, plus there are a myriad likes and dislikes in a larger household and possible allergies. At the other end of the scale there seem to be people giving children two big dinners a day or saying kids can't have an omelette and veg for their dinner which gives you some insight into childhood obesity levels. Omelettes are one of the best, most filling and nutritious quick dinners you could have and by definition must be freshly cooked too. And they can be pretty chunky with three eggs, cheese, meat etc. I would give a bit of toast or potatoes as well for kids but it depends on what they've eaten the rest of the day.

@spoonbillstretford yep I think you’re exactly right re. people talking about what they’d like/need as a middle-aged woman as opposed to what a 7yo child wants and needs.

MN in general though is very middle class and I think often incredibly ignorant about how millions of families live day to day. Comments on here about broad beans and adding leafy greens are just an obvious sign of that.

To be honest I wouldn’t eat any of them

What do you eat?

I think so much of it is eating preferences. 7yo DS would eat broad beans and pretty much everything else mixed up in a pasta sauce. Meat, fish, nuts seeds, beans, radish, onion, peppers, olives, tomatoes, aubergine, blah blah blah, he eats a ton of veg. Show him plain cucumber and carrot though and it's a different story, he can't stand either. Leaves - only iceberg. Big hunks of steamed broccoli - also no, though he'll happily help chop it for a mixed veg dish.

What I've observed from all the little friends is that they are all picky, but about different things. Some recoil in horror at pepper and garlic, some don't eat crusts, one only eats plain pasta and plain veg, one doesn't like different food items to touch each other, they all have certain veg they "hate". Then all these parents on a forum saying "oh just serve X" make out that whichever child doesn't eat it is not being fed properly.

I do think it's nice to chuck some easy fruit, veg, nuts or seeds into every dish so that kids gets nutrients. I also think an occasional nutrient-free meal is fine. I still wouldn't say just pasta-pesto is a "healthy" meal though, because it isn't, not for any age.

What’s unhealthy about pasta pesto? @GRex

The OP asked about "healthy". Pesto has pine nuts and basil. It doesn't have enough protein, fibre, nor a range of nutrients. Any meal at all is fine as a one-off, but that particular meal is carb+fat, so it just is not an aspirationally healthy meal.

If OP said "I threw in a handful of cashews, handful of cherry tomatoes, handful of peppers / spring onions, handful of olives and some leftover chicken / ham" - THEN it has broad enough range to be healthy.

@faerietalesare you being deliberately obtuse?

What exactly is wrong with pasta pesto? I thought it was a pretty posh dinner when I first had it 30 years ago. Vegetables + pasta is one of my standard meals and sometimes we have pesto sauce, sometimes a cheesy sauce and sometimes tomatoey. I do make the sauce usually but wouldn't always if I had a jar of pesto in.

But other than that I agree. Mine were always talked of as "good eaters" when they went round to friends for dinner and I would do something like pizza, fish fingers etc when friends came round but a lot would hardly touch that even and hardly any would eat the veg, whereas my two always liked it. Probably genetic rather than anything we'd actually done - DH and I were the same as kids, good eaters, always liked veg. They would always eat veg sticks - carrots and cucumber, even at their fussiest stages.

One of my friend's daughters only ate pretty much Weetabix or sausages for a few years when she was little. She is 17 now and looks pretty healthy to me!

No - I genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong with it as a quick, one-off meal.

I can also remember a swimming through treacle phase of child rearing where I likely had mild depression as well, and the sheer effort it seemed to take to make dinner, making just jacket potatoes with baked beans and cheese.

We still have that as a regular dinner (or with tuna, salad, prawns etc). It's bloody cheap, filling and certainly from the Nutracheck readings, pretty good nutritionally as there is lots of fibre. I'm sure making your own baked beans etc is vastly better, but even being a good cook and having an excellent recipe, I haven't got round to that yet.

But that is unhealthy about it? Is it because it doesn’t contain meat? Multiple vegetables? Cheese?

Because there is absolutely nothing inherently bad about pasta, basil, oil and pine nuts.

@spoonbillstretford - given that you are adding veg, I'm sure yours is perfectly healthy.

They would always eat veg sticks - carrots and cucumber, even at their fussiest stages.
Ha! As I said, this is where kids vary, because DS very specifically won't touch either. We visited friends recently where he tucked into the veggie curry, spicy lamb, tomato salad and fruity couscous served for the adults... but is "fussy" that he wouldn't eat the 2 veg specially selected for the kids (served up with a crustless ham sandwich, which he did eat).

I’ve had my own muesli ( not the added sugar/salt kind) of rolled oats, spelt flakes and corn flakes with added dried apricot and almonds and hazelnuts. So I’ve counted 6 plants by Monday morning. I reckon the 30 a week is doable.

I don't know how else to say that it doesn't have enough protein nor fibre, and is a limited set of nutrients. It's a snack or a side dish, not a balanced diet.

If you ate carrots dipped in cream cheese, that also wouldn't be a healthy meal because it's limited nutrients and not enough fibre. It's a snack.

That’s four plants!