DH upset about his childhood diet.

[Fussyeater321]

Name change for this as it could be outing…

Yesterday we got onto the conversation of DH’s childhood diet. He started it that during his whole childhood he wasn’t never not allowed something because he had already had enough sweet treats/it wasn’t healthy/needed to eat something healthy etc. DH got quite serious (obviously been on his mind for a while) and said I could never really understand how bad his diet was. I knew that his dad made him chicken nuggets for breakfast before school everyday (primary school!), that the first time he ever remembers trying any vegetable was with his ex and that his mum always told him that he wouldn’t like pizza/curry/pasta/any normal meal.

He said that in primary school him and his brother would usually have some sort of club every night of the week. He would either get in the car to southern-fried chicken and chips waiting for him or he’d have to run into the chicken shop before they got home. He always wanted to try pizza/go to Pizza Hut parties but was told he wouldn’t like it as he didn’t like cheese or tomatoes etc. Countless times I’ve heard his mum tell them both in restaurants that they won’t like something because they’ll be hidden garlic/onion/cream etc in it.

Both DH and his brother has some pretty bad health conditions as kids. Both of them had skin issues, DH sometimes had to get in the bath to peel his clothes off and his brother had the district nurse coming out to him regularly to change his dressings. DH was under a children’s hospital specialist for a few years as he had such bad migraines he’d be bed bound for days. Both MIL and FIL have had cancer, they eat a much wider range of food than the boys in childhood but apart from baking cakes or making curry from scratch I’m sure all of their food comes prepared/heat up only.

His mum is always moaning about their fussiness as kids, that she had to cook different meals every night as one would want ‘burgers and chips’ whilst the other one wanted chicken wings and chips. Apparently I’ve got all this to come once my DC can have an opinion on what they eat.. apparently DH ate normal food until he was 18 months old. DH literally ate no diary, eggs, vegetables, very limited fruit and only drank fizzy drinks (wouldn’t drink anything at school). Even on Xmas day him and his brother would be served up meat, chips, gravy and yorkshires. Again he cannot remember trying any other type of potato apart from crisps or chips until he was an adult…

Now my big issue is that she’s starting to try to put DD off her food. DD loves mushrooms which MIL will always make a huge deal how ‘yucky’ they are. DH ordered DD grilled chicken, mash and sweet corn and MIL was trying to insist that DD should be allowed chips (she was 18 months old) and making a big deal how the poor kid was getting excited over a corn on the cob…There’s also lots of comments how mean we were as we weren’t weaning DD on cake/ice cream/chocolate. She’s always telling DH how mean he is for limiting sweet treats…

MIL is a wonderful baker, PIL have never had any financial worries and invested a lot of time into the boys in all other areas of their lives. Neither DH or his brother are ND and both now eat loads of different foods. There’s still some deep rooted food issues but fortunately DH is adamant that our kids won’t grow up the same.

I was raised on turkey dinosaur shapes, chips and beans or peas. My parents then had a different meal a few hours later. I was constantly told I wasn’t allowed to order something it came with things I didn’t like.

I tried fish / vegetables / curries all when i moved out and have spent years unpicking my unhealthy eating habits.

If my mother started with my kids I would keep them away at meal times and I’m with your husband…I am still a bit bitter they didn’t try harder than feed us freezer foods.

I know I’m talking about possibly a couple of decades before your DH. I’m mid 50s. But I had everything with chips for my meals when little. Egg and chips, fish fingers and chips, sausage and chips. Smash on a Sunday, rather than mash. Not a big amount of veg, and definitely not every day. But I don’t feel bitter about it. I guess it’s only this last three decades that more emphasis has been placed on good healthy diets, especially for children. Maybe he’s focussing on that aspect of his childhood because you’re making it a big deal about how your own dd is raised in relation to healthy eating? Very few childhoods are perfect.

Tbf my very fussy teen doesn’t eat fruit, veg, his main diet is just chicken, rice, pasta, sausage, yorkie lids. He used to eat a lot more variety and this has got worse as he’s got older. But he doesn’t have any health conditions. It sounds like you are saying they were being neglectful. But I’d be tempted to have a conversation with the in laws and get their side.

If this is something that is weighing on DH’s mind, I would recommend him seeking counselling. I don’t think the connection between food and emotions is to be underestimated, especially the effect it can have long into adulthood where early attachments are concerned. I’ve been in counselling for over a year and a huge part of it was concerning my diet in early childhood which stemmed into other areas and unfortunately, long into adulthood, for example my ability to trust myself and others. It’s quite easy to brush it off or say oh maybe he’s forgotten he was a fussy child, but I would disagree based on what you’ve said here. You mentioned this is weighing on him so I think it would be worthwhile for him to explore why and how this has affected him. Hope he is able to find peace with it OP. 🙏

This. Your DH is looking at it from the perspective of a child. One of my children is a terrible eater. There are times when I give due to work demands, fatigue or simply wanting a break. It wears you down.
Also people didn’t have the same level of information a generation or so ago.

Are people genuinely missing the bit where MiL calls her son mean for not weaning the little one on chocolate, cake and such like?

This information that you need to wean on healthy foods has been out there a very long time now. Many decades.

Maybe it's the teenage-like behaviour of a lot of AIBU posters, have to automatically take the awkward position.

Honestly though I think not knowingly having tried a vegetable until adulthood and eating chicken nuggets for breakfast everyday is in a different league of awful. I was a very picky child, but at least I know my parents tried to feed me proper food!

Oh those poor little boys, that your husband and brother were. My heart aches for them.

Your MIL and FIL were/are neglectful and abusive, it's awful when our own parenting journey shines a light on horrible shit from the past. This is absolutely worthy of therapy. Does DH eat a variety of food now? Honestly I would cut contact, they sound awful.

Also people didn’t have the same level of information a generation or so ago.

I'm not entirely sure that's true.

I'm 51 and my eldest is 27. Healthy eating was very much understood a generation ago! My grandma cooked from scratch and ate very healthily. She'd be 103 now.

Some people might not have eaten healthily and maybe some people didn't understand the dangers of eating unhealthily quite so much. But eating healthily was definitely understood a generation ago.

And no one has ever thought chocolate ice cream was healthy.

I'm not sure that 'abusive' is the right word for your PIL, or even 'lazy'; maybe they were just 'wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong'. They think that children can only thrive on chicken and chips and refined sugar and fat. They think that if they are offered anything else they will become miserable or ill. Your poor DH, he must have suffered horribly. I'd avoid meeting them at mealtimes when your DC are there.

DH was neglected.

Neglect isn’t always intentional.

I have food issues due to my mums eating habits but hers was MH where she thought if we ate certain stuff we’d die and so there was only a handful of things we were allowed and they were all white/beige and sugar or carbs.

It stays with you and affects you as an adult.

DH needs to work through his issues and how to be careful not ti pass any issues on to his DC.

And I would avoid eating around MIL at all.
If the times you can’t avoid it, you and DH need to have phrases ready to tell her to mind her own business in a gentler way.

I agree. My grandmother was providing her kids with balanced meals with only occasional sweet treats during the second world war and she learnt to cook from her mother. I think that eating rubbish when you don't have to is a fairly new phenomenon.

I think it was very divided back then due to the introduction of convenience foods (which we didn’t realise were so bad for us!).

Some people had mothers who were really good cooks and had been taught. This was definitely a thing.

However some of us had mothers that hated cooking! So all this convenience food was a god send. I mean Smash!! Who thought that would be a good idea?! Also remember some Mums were working and exhausted some were at home so had time to make lentil stew.

To my Mum’s credit we did have fruit and vegetables.

Though I wonder if your DH was on a plain exclusion diet due to eczema? It would definitely be neglectful not to offer fruit and veg otherwise.

My MiL maintains DH would never eat any fruit. Kids can be strange.

I don’t think people realised how bad chicken nuggets were back then. Arguably (playing devil’s advocate here) having a low sugar, high protein breakfast was better than the rice crispies with piles of sugar on top I had….let’s be honest we weren’t all eating Greek yoghurt and homemade granola back then.

With regards to the restaurant- if he was denied food he wanted then that’s awful. But maybe your MIL didn’t want to waste money buying dishes for kids she knew they wouldn’t like or eat . A hint of a rogue mushroom or onion and some children wouldn’t touch it. Then that’s money wasted. Also eating out wasn’t such a thing in those days so maybe she wanted to play it safe..

Who knows. It sounds bad and I certainly wouldn’t be entertaining her views around my children. But maybe your DH wants to chat more to her as kids memories can sometimes be a bit inaccurate. It may not have been as bad as he remembers or there may have been a reason for it.

Also there was very much a view that if you were thin you were healthy. So things like sweets weren’t restricted that much. I was so skinny. So my parents were just happy with anything I ate.

True. Eating chicken nuggets for breakfast every day is very odd. My fussy eater has porridge.
I also don’t get all her dinners from a chip shop or tell her that vegetables are yuk.
But maybe the parents do have a take on it if DH was a very fussy eater. Why the chicken nights for breakfast as opposed to cheap cereal.

I do think people ding understand UFPs. They knew cake was to be restricted but not so much stuff like chicken nuggets etc.

My own mother who is pretty savvy said recently she regrets giving us stuff like potato waffles. She could cook she we weren’t eating waffles day & night but we did eat stuff I don’t think she’d give us now.

My mum used to give me sausages and lemonade for breakfast. She has 3 As at A’level and a degree 😫

Sausages are a breakfast food though, but chicken nuggets is really an odd one. Doesn’t make sense to me, if the parents really didn’t care about nutrition why not a box of cereal? Instead of cooking chicken nuggets every morning. That makes me think that maybe the kids were v fussy.

No comment on the lemonade! That’s funny!

But not healthy! I remember having a burger on a couple of occasions as well 😂

His parents were presumably bringing him up in the 80s and 90s? It was very common knowledge that chips were unhealthy then, that nuggets for breakfast everyday was not a good idea, that fruit and veg were important for health. But there wasn’t the same value put on a long healthy life in the same way, especially not in the 80s. People took a lot more risks in virtually all areas of life.

I grew up in the 70s/80s and we knew you needed fruit and veg. We knew chips were bad for you and being overweight wasn’t healthy. We weren’t aware of the damage UPFs did, but the rest was pretty clear.

But food was, relatively, more expensive then, with people spending a higher proportion of their income on it even though they focused more on lower cost items like milk, potatoes, (and chicken nuggets!). So lots of people didn’t eat healthy as they just didn’t feel they could afford to. That left it seeming more normal to eat the cheap and/or frozen food that was so common.

Also, I think a lot of parents back then reacted to their own upbringing and the lack of sugar from war time restrictions by valuing the ability to give children sweet treats. (I have noticed a lot of people who grew up in the 50s think it’s “cruel” to not give very young children lots of sugary things).

I agree with a previous poster, these are serious issues, and no wonder your husband is upset with the way he was treated. His mum's behaviour seems almost pathological.

I know someone who is equally bizarre, but in a different way, with regards to their children's eating habits. They're obsessed with what (in their view) the kids can't eat, and can talk about it for hours...even though the children are now older teenageers. It's like a form of Munchausen's by proxy, via food.

What do you mean what they can’t eat? Allergies?

He had a horrible diet as a child due to neglect and it is no surprise that watching his parents try the same shit on his children is seriously upsetting him.

I would ban them from all meal times with your DC. I would supervise all visits so they can’t push their awful disordered food view on your DC. I would even go so far as to tell your DC in an age appropriate way that their grandparents are of a generation that got nutrition all wrong so ignore anything they say food wise.

(kind of like my chain smoking nan telling my dad that smoking a clove cigar every day would cure my asthma. )

It’s hard because he had probably thought he had worked past all this childhood trauma and now he’s being pushed into reliving it by watching them doing the same thing to his child. So be kind to him and let him feel the upset. It’s really common that having your own DC awakens the trauma in survivors of childhood abuse/neglect

Your MIL sounds like a more extreme version of my DM... my DM was/is an atrocious cook. I love her, but I've reached the point in my life now where the only logical explanation I can come up with for her cooking is that she simply does not have functioning tastebuds. Everything she cooks is both overcooked and severely underseasoned, and its even more depressing because she's a brilliant gardener and has oodles of gorgeous home grown produce that she then proceeds to boil the absolute shit out of or massacre in other ways. And she genuinely thinks her unsalted carrots that have been cooking on the stove since the last election are lovely 😬

That's awful, diet is so important. I would not let my PIL negatively impact my child's relationship with food. Politely tell them to FO.