To despair at the crap some people feed their kids

[Apotofrealcoffee]

Currently watching a kid who can’t be more than age 3, tuck in to a packet of ‘squashie’ sweets on the bus. No sign of a tantrum, kid seems perfectly happy looking out the window, but out come the sweets. And to pre empt the ‘snobbery’ thing, the parent seems middle class to me and certainly eloquent.

I regularly see kids tucking into chocolate bars, packets of crisps, lollies, all on the school run. Many of them toddlers in their buggies dropping off older siblings. Parents meeting kids at the school gate with full packets of Oreos, bottles of pop, doughnuts.

I’ve been trying not to judge for years and have been repeatedly told it’s ’just one snapshot of their day’ but honestly, I feel like the time for judgement has entered. I have never fed my toddlers crap like that, let alone just after breakfast. My 3 year old has never had a fizzy drink.

Why, just why! AIBU to feel there needs to be some kind of very direct public health campaign at this point? Maybe even a ‘no sweets at the school gate’ rule?

You’d think so but I think a lot of people have very, very little food awareness.

I didn’t mean just snacks though, I meant overall meals. I’ve never seen SIL’s kid eat a fully homemade meal and I don’t think it’s due to lack of care, just ignorance. That child is absolutely doted on.

That’s not what you said, you said oat bars were perfect for treating hypos because of their slow spike, which they aren’t specifically for that reason.

Juice is not a practical thing to carry around for a child, not sure why that’s so hard for you to understand or why you’re intent on claiming I’m over treating a hypo.

A carton of juice followed by an oat bar would be the definition of “over treating” a child.

For every story like this there's a story from the other side.

Full disclosure - I do not drink coke or any other fizzy drink apart from sparkling water!

Coke is actually pretty good if you get sick or feel sick. All that sugar and caffeine and what not really can sort you out. It used to be my go to hangover cure when I was a student!

Maybe they were once part of a balanced diet and then all the other food started to be refused? We are going through a fussy stage with our toddler. Hes started refusing lots of food he previously ate. Luckily for us the foods he will eat consistently are relatively healthy.

100% agree OP, there is no need to get them into craving those sugar hits so young. There is a reason children's dental health is in decline and it's not just a lack of dental list spaces.

You're quite right of course, and I suspect it is very much "head in sand" types who might be arguing to make themselves feel better.

It's not just a snapshot. Out and about with my 3 year old, it's constant, everywhere. See the snacks and lunches other people give their kids, wherever we go. White bread jam sandwich, crisps, biscuits, chocolate...how can that be a lunch for a growing body?! I want to feed my kids with good stuff, I'd hate stuffing them with things which are invariably going to cause them harm in both the short and long term.

I also help at my eldests school sometimes. I have wondered before where is actual food is in some of the lunchboxes. Honestly. It's just packets of crap. And this is supposed to be 'healthy" lunches/snacks as per the schools request.

When the kids are hungry after school/while I'm making dinner, I'll put out a plate of veg/salad bits. They're hungry, they eat it, easy win. If I gave them crackers or whatever other nonsense, of course they wouldn't eat much dinner. The whole snacking thing has just gone mad. They don't need snacks!

Fruit juice cartons are terrible for teeth - full of sugar. Unless you are eating very specialised oat bars, they are also full of sugar.

Her parents were very strict and rigid about food and she vowed to be the complete opposite.
She never really and still doesn't understand moderation, treats or balance. To her it's all or nothing, and food has a high emotional value to her.

For us, learning about balance, moderation and not seeing food as all or nothing from a young age would have helped.

This is where things like school meals being genuinely nutritious and universally available would have made a difference. I used to get a pasty, crisps and a rocky bar.

Actually saying to your kid 'it'll rot your teeth and you'll get fat' is cruel, even though I'm sitting here feeling smug my two year old doesn't eat sweets (someone once gave him a jelly baby and he didn't know what to do with it!) He doesn't like cake or chocolate either, (which ain't right.) Bananas and blueberries are like catnip for him though, and he gets bags of mini cookies/biscuits at church sometimes which he likes. I'd rather not set him up for having issues around food, because eating some occasional junk food is NOT going to rot your teeth and make you fat.

But 3 year olds shouldn't be eating McDonald's in the first place, thats the point. The amount of fat and salt in maccies is just too much for such a tiny child. I see toddlers in maccies sitting in high chairs sucking on fries and it just really pisses me off that parents think that's acceptable. Under the age of two children are supposed to have no added salt at all in their food, so strapping them into a highchair and giving them salt bombs is just pure neglect.

All the things people claim are the only foods their three year olds will eat are foods my three year old has never eaten in the first place so I agree with the PP that it makes no sense how it gets to such young children being able to eat nothing but McDonald's or crisps.

There is a big gap between giving your young kids haribos on the way to school and being strict to the point of orthorexia.

I also think telling a child “you can’t have that you’ll get fat” is some very gross early indoctrination into the theory that you’re only valued as a person if you fit a certain visual threshold. I can’t imagine saying that to anyone

Are you quite alright !? I can practically hear the gasping in your posts!

It's really odd how defensive you've gotten over this and how aggressively you are going after that poster with such obvious disdain. Touched a nerve?

Lucky you that your autistic child does not have ARFID. 50% of ARFID cases are autistic children. ARFID is an anxiety based eating disorder and when people are saying their kid will only eat chicken nuggets and chips ( if they are being truthful and not hyperbolic) they are describing a child with ARFID.

When you have a child like this they starve on the food you try to feed them as they won't eat it. ARFID kids will not eat rather than eat things they regard as 'unsafe'. They will end up malnourished, failing to grow and the worst cases end up in hospital to be peg fed. They will not finally 'eat when they are hungry'. So when you have a kid like this and they are wasting away or failing to grow as they won't eat the healthy meals you give them, you start to offer them other foods until you find something they will eat. Unsurprisingly, foods designed by humans in industrial labs to be very easy to eat and highly taste rewarding, are often foods that these kids are able to accept.

If you haven't got a kid like this you cannot even begin to imagine how awful and stressful it is, and the judgement and ignorance you face only makes it worst.

I tell my children that we eat different foods for different reasons. Some foods make our bones grow, some foods help our skin and hair stay healthy, some foods help our livers work better, some foods make our muscles strong... and some foods we eat just because they taste really nice. And that's okay too. It's okay to eat something just because it is lovely to eat. (We just try not to eat them all the time!)

It's an easy message that can always be age appropriate.

What isn't an easy message (for most of us, never mind children) is that you can crack open a packet of wholemeal tortillas to serve with the chicken you've slaved over and then, when you turn the packet around, find this "food" is full of absolute shite. And that is something I have a REAL problem with. Haribo is Haribo. It's very clearly a refined sugar product; too much of it and your whole body suffers. The messaging isn't lost there. But products like children's yoghurts and simple wheat-based foods that I trust and are actually full of shite - how do they keep getting away with it?

Oh for god sake avoiding being fat isn't about vanity it's about health! No one wants their kids to be fat because they don't want them to be unhealthy, get sick, have lifelong health conditions, die young etc. you know, all the real problems caused by being fat. The ones that are far more important than what you look like.

Tell your children it's nothing to do with fitting a visual, it's about not feeling like shit all the time and dying young. That should make it clear to them why it's important not to shovel sweets and chocolate down their necks in vast quantities.

Is anyone familiar with the dietician Abbey Sharp? I really like her podcast. She is herself in recovery from Orthorexia and she had some really interesting views on access to food education. She also advocates for no shame around food

Alot if it starts at home.
Why is it every time I pass a Mconalds it's full and also the drive thru always has loads of cars waiting.

You say that but there’s a lot of “it’s for your health” rhetoric that ignores other parts of your health and wellbeing and I think it’s more ingrained into us than we realise. I think in this instagram day and age a lot of people only think you are healthy if you look a certain way.

and this thread highlights it. A judgement has been made about the health of a child and abilities of a parent on something they have seen for literally a few minutes at most

Perhaps you shouldn’t be so nosey, none of it affects you.

I don't think we are talking about the relatively small number of children who are extremely limited in their diet. What we may well be talking about are in fact the majority of children who according to the statistics will go on to become obese and suffer from all the health related misery that brings with it. The most common reason for child hospitalisation as I understand it is now tooth extraction. Once a child has a taste for sugar and high fat ultra processed snacks, sweets and food they will have that preference for life. Take your heads out of the sand - as parents you have responsibility for your children's diet and their future long term health.

That may be, but there's enough stories like this to illustrate the compliant young child who eats well due to fabulous parenting is not necessarily the teenager you assume they will be.

It’s how it is now though - children can’t go 10 minutes without eating