Is this 'junk food'?

[Laquitar]

We had a party for dd's 5th birthday.
I had little sandwitches, mini pizzas, potato wedges,biscuits, cake.

Now being a mumsnetter i knew that some mums will be about the sweets. Fine i was prepared for that. But potato wedges? What is wrong with them? One mum said 'oh she always go for the junk food' when her dd ate the potato wedges first, the other moron said 'at least they eat it with hummus and it balances up, oh its ok once in a while' .

Funny thing is they were very happy with the olives (salt).

Do you call home made potato wedges 'junk food'? Potato, olive oil, oregano.

Borderslass, I remember us dipping chips in ice-cream - yum!

is hummus really full of salt?

champagnesupernova
I make my own and all it is,is chick peas, fromage frais, lemon juice and garlic I sometimes add red pepper as well.

Maybe when it's shopbought the chick peas are salted then?
I should make my own really the amount we eat.
Don't you need tahini too for hummus?

YADNBU they sound like utter twats tbh, who do not know the first thing about nutrition. How rude! Sounds like a fantastic party with lots of good food, fun and enjoyment. What so they would have kids eating carrot and cucumber sticks, followed my mieso soup, and macro biotic pasta. Lovely, how fund is that, not! Ignore, ignore, ignore. The smiles on the kids faces and them enjoying the food are all that matters tbh.

That's not junk food - this is junk food:

Party rings
Hula Hoops
Pink Wafers
Jam/Marmite/Primula sandwiches on white bread
Dips
Breadsticks
Pringles
Cocktail sausages
Jelly
Ice cream
Fairy cakes

All of which we had at the last birthday party I organised, (as well as grapes, strawberries and carrot sticks) and do you know what, it's a PARTY, they are supposed to have some junk!!

Your food sounds lovely

the last official 'kids party' with balloons and cake at home i did we had:

chips.
mini pizzas.
lovely cheap supermarket pop in every flavour. and we let the kids mix them into their own concoctions.
chicken things.
crisps by the bucketful.
part rings [mmm]
chocolate stuff.
cake.
breadsticks.
cheese sarnies.
chocolate sarnies.
random lumps of cheese/gammon/sausage
strawberries&ice cream

ahh, 15 hyperactive 9 year old girls. thats how you do parties.

i dont get the aspartame thing. i get that its bad for you, but i havnt heard of anyone being killed or maimed by it yet? [images of cakes strangling toddlers]

You should have seen him

understanding the prisoner.

"People are fucking twats about food."

Amen to that!

That food all sounds lovely, Laquitar. And the idea of hummus "balancing up" potato wedges is so idiotic it's laughable.

champagne a little bit of salt (like that found in shop baught humous) isn't gonna kill you and isn't bad for you, not if your overall diet is well balanced as far as salt is concerned.

Salt is another area that gets me annoyed, people are so ill informed about salt, it isn't the devil's food. It's only babies that can't have salt, as their kidneys aren't developed enough to deal with it.

Shop baught humous isn't high enough in salt to get your knickers in a twist over.

Humous and wedges sounds pretty balanced to me, you got your carbs and your protein and a nice amount of fat which children need.

Apspartame isn't necessarily particully bad for you lemony. The Food Standards Agency says it's fine, pretty much. Some people have reactions to it, but the same can be said for all sorts of things.

And no, Shiney, a children's party is not the appropriate place for that kind of thing.

overmydeadbody - my point were that the cats-bum mothers were suggesting that hummus is a "good" food which mitigates the effect of "bad" potato wedges.

To the OP why does it matter if they are home made wedges? most chips/wedges are nothing more then potatoe and sunflower oil anyway.

Food is food, junk is junk, junk food is food full of crap like artificial food colouring, artifical sweeteners etc.

Homemade wedges = she knows exactly what is in them. They're not coated with msg or anything.

Well, they could be, the pakistani grocers near me sells bags of msg, I bet that would make anything really tasty

This reminds me of a party that we atended a while ago, all the children there were between 18 months and 2yrs.

They had provided all these Organic, sugar free, additive free, Oat Cakes, sticks of Veg, Grapes, and homemade 'everything free' muffins and stuff like that. However in the middle of the table was a wacking great Chocolate Fudge Cake that the Birthday child and many of the others wernt allowed to eat, the Mum said it was there for,

'them that cant help themselves!'

I ate some Cake so did DS whilst all the other Mums looked at us like we were lepers.

Well you know whats in shop bought wedges, they come in packets with whats in em written on them.

msg being bad for you is another food myth. It's a naturally occuring salt found in loads of foods - some people have a sensitivity to it but genuine cases of that are very rare.

But everyone knows that homemade = healthier than shop bought. It's the blood, sweat, and tears that go into them, they destroy anything that is bad for you

Riven - If you need extra umami flavour in things I find celery salt does a good job. But maybe there's glutamate in that and you'll have the same reaction.

Loads of naturally occurring glutamate in parmesan. And marmite too I think. Emma - the reason I am so tempted to buy some msg is precisely because of the 'it's evil' myth. Some people have a bad reaction to it, most don't.

Party food is just that.

Blood hell when we have an adult party we have lots of achohol - you don't drink like that every day. But at our party you can because it's A PARTY.

Oooooh - I'm going to a school full of mum's like that I'm gonna struggle - really struggle!

My ds is sooo fussy such a narrow diet but luckily healthy yet boring. I say bring on the crisps - I'm trying to get him into a macdonalds for the variety but he won't touch meet and doesn't like chips.

I'd love your party - can we come next time.

But for you, OP, next birthday, the parents don't have to be there so their kids can actually ENJOY themselves at your fab fest.

Riven - chinese food gives me nightmares!! I've been told it's because of the msg...