Do people really not know what to eat?

[WilderHawthorn]

Watching ‘what not to eat’, and the family they’ve found are just hopeless. Four small children all shovelled full of UPF junk, parents both obese, freely admit to eating crap constantly.

How adults choose to feed themselves is their choice, but to feed four small kids that much junk? It’s bordering on abuse. An apple/banana costs the same as a packet of crisps, jacket potato is one of the cheapest meals you can make, basic porridge oats and milk for breakfast, it’s not difficult to eat whole foods, so why rely on packaged things?

Freely admit I judge those who feed their children this way and truly despair over childhood obesity stats. I work full time, have 4 DC, DH works full time and I volunteer. I’m very time poor and partially disabled, I still feed my kids well and it doesn’t cost me a fortune. Taught myself to cook. There’s no excuse!

I'm glad that it works so well for you.

Yes but that’s probably cause you would use more mincr - use smaller pack and pad

a sainsburies cottage pie for 2 uses 240g mince and costs over £7. Compared to £2:70 for the same amount of meat. It’s only 30% mince - the cheaper cottage pie is only 12% mince. That’s why it’s cheaper - more filler.

you are not comparing like for like

That's not what you said. Your initial comment was only multiple allergies and intolerances. His allergies were milk, all legumes, gluten, and peanuts. Now it's just the last two.

He does have ADHD but no, he doesn't have ARFID.

Thank you!

Im mainly speaking from flavour. They all taste odd to me. And the expense of it to be honest.

I was saying that a fresh sauce isnt his preference, he likes the processed flavour. Jarred and tinned foods have quite a distinctive flavour to them. Its not my preference and I think if someone eats too much of it, they lose the ability to enjoy fresh foods.

Tinned foods are really helpful and I dont demonise them. I was giving an example of his preferences and why

I always put sugar and salt in my sauces.

Do you have any space anywhere in the house to put a small freezer in the corner

We have one out the back as I freeze every single thing!

@GiddyRobin that was my very first post.

The child in question was ARFID, ASD, legume intolerances (D&V), soy allergy (eczema), severely anaphylactic to ALL dairy and nuts, coeliac, also an immune deficiency. Is still coeliac, and anaphylactic to dairy and nuts and intolerant to soy and some legumes. Also can’t have oats.

I took the win of a safe food.

and again. Bananas and apples don’t always taste the same.

edit for clarity.

Someone literally came along not long after and said it’s too many carbs so🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m really sorry to hear that.

Mine are similar in that I always cooked from scratch (still do) so they grew up with next to no UPFs, aside from the occasional treat like McDonalds or a takeaway, something I’m very relieved about! However, they see it as a type of deprivation and now they’re adults they all live on beige crap and takeaways.

They all know how to cook, I taught them. They just can’t be arsed. None of them have DCs yet but I dread to think what they will feed them when they do!

In terms of ARFID and safe foods, and this is a genuine question; how can they make a UPF a safe food if they're not given it? If you make chicken nuggets or whatever from scratch to begin with, then it's the food they'll learn to like?

I appreciate it's much harder and I can see the difficulties, absolutely. But if those foods aren't available as ready made then they don't know they exist. They're things that can be made healthily.

Because the child was literally starving and on the verge of being tube fed and the dietician at the hospital said any calories and any food was a win. So we tried everything.

Ah, okay. So you tried making the safe foods as home made first and they were rejected?

Neither of my parents knew how to cook and I was raised on UPF. Literally every meal in our house came out of a can or a packet of some sort. From the age of about 13 I stared to hate it and would request my parents buy bags of frozen veg so I could at least have some vegetables with the crap coming out of the kitchen.
In our case it was laziness and selfishness of parents. They would rather spend the time doing things that interested them more than learning to cook and preparing decent meals for their children.

I loved going to other people's houses as a kid because the food was normally a lot fresher than anything served up at home.

I was overweight as a child and struggle to control my weight as an adult which I am sure is partially related to the bad habits I learnt as a child. Anyway I always try to cook as fresh as possible for my family although time constraints sometimes make it difficult.

I think its normal and not a terrible thing for people to eat UPF and pre prepared food but there is no need to take it to the extreme like some families do.

And I can’t guarantee that my home made chicken nuggets (bad example - child couldn’t have those but for the sake of the discussion) would always taste exactly the same. Birds Eye always would. Until they change the recipe and then we were back to square 1.

It depends. Muscovado, Jaggery, Demerara etc are less refined. Cheap supermarket brown is indeed refined sugar with molasses added back.

Yes my step-son did food tech. He’s about 30. It was nothing like the O level in Nutrition & Cookery I did in the 80’s. This was meant to be my non- academic subject but there was actually a lot to it. We had to cook a meal from scratch every week, had to do a theory paper on nutrition etc and the practical was preparing a 3 course meal in a set time. where you had to demonstrate various different culinary skills and create a written plan and finish everything within the set time.

Even pre O level we still cooked whole dishes from scratch every week, starting simply and getting more complex.

Step-son’s food tech in comparison was a bit like the English exams where it’s not required to read the whole book.

Right okay, fair enough. I have a friend and her DD has ARFID, she cooks everything from scratch so it obviously varies. I can absolutely see why it was worrying!

I tried to make things but as I said I couldn’t guarantee to make them so they tasted exactly the same all the time.

the dietician wasn’t concerned so why are you questioning their expertise?

I don't tend to take NHS dietician advice strongly. They told my coeliac son he'd be okay with a bit of regular wheat pasta! Another told me to feed him shop bought biscuits rather than homemade for the milk ladder because, "well they'll be tastier won't they?"

Well mum had a hot chocolate for breakfast and a brownie for lunch and dad had pot noodle every day so obviously either don't know what healthy food is or don't care. Also who the hell eats 2 BIG bars of chocolate every night? Then they act amazed when they are told they are overweight with various health problems.

They said in the evenings it was either takeaway or ready meals.

The child was on a food replacement diet - actual food was a bonus. It was important that we got them eating and the hospital just wanted them to eat. Anything.

I was a single parent to 3 kids. Working full time. With a child who was incredibly unwell. I made home made stuff for the rest of us and it bloody broke me that the child wouldn’t eat what I made. Even if it didn’t have an allergy food in it.

But. I just needed to feed the child in question. That was the orders from the dietician and I did as I was told.

It’s sugar, salt and fat, it sets off all the bells in our bodies and is addictive. I used to eat lots of that stuff but can’t anymore as once your taste buds adapt it is gross.

No. We have an extra fridge due to my son's medication which has to be stored separately and that takes up any extra space we had.

I wish that was the case. My child with ARFID started off with a really good, varied diet. He’d eat anything. Gradually, at around 2, he started rejecting things. Every day something else would be rejected, until literally the only thing he would eat was Greek yoghurt. Nothing else. In desperation we arranged an appointment with a private dietician, who basically said to offer him anything. Offer him something alongside his Greek yoghurt every day. We did this for months… every food he’d ever eaten in the past and anything new we could think of. One day he nibbled a block of cheese. That also became a safe food (bear in mind that while this is going on we’re in absolute despair because he’s now showing signs of malnutrition).
One day he leaned over at a party and took a (processed) chicken nugget off someone’s plate. Can you imagine the joy at your child trying a ‘new’ food after nearly a year of Greek yoghurt and cheese? Damn sure we then continued to feed him chicken nuggets. Birdseye, as that’s all he would eat. Then it was a French fry.
Having spent £1000s on dieticians over the years, we now have a decent range of ‘safe’ foods. He was actually weighed today and for the first time in his 8 years he’s not underweight.
Until you’ve been through the agony of dealing with a child you love more than anything in the world going through something like this, I don’t think you can judge them for resorting to Birdseye chicken nuggets.

Thank you for getting it and explaining it so well.