my 7 year old asks for food all day long....

[queenrollo]

After teething he became quite a fussy eater, with a very limited diet. After stressing about it I eventually gave up and just fed him whatever he would eat, but putting new food on his plate alongside that and he's improved loads in the last three years though still with a lot of restrictions.

Just lately though I can't keep up with him and after yet another weekend where I seem to constantly be in the kitchen preparing one snack after another I've reached the end of my tether.

For breakfast he'll have an apple (which I have to cut up because he's losing teeth at the moment and genuinely struggled to bite them), cereal and then toast. He will then ask for food every 20 mins until about 11.30 at which point he starts constantly whining about how long it is until lunch.
He'll have lunch (usually sandwiches, crisps, carrot and something sweet) and then after 20 mins on with the constant demand for yet more food.....he'll eat cheese, rice cakes with choc spread, toast (only with butter or choc spread), Frubes (but no other type of yoghurt).
Then it's dinner, which is always a flash point for me because for some reason he takes so damn long to eat. He will seriously take an hour and a half to eat a pizza (i know because once I left him to see how long it would take).

He's fit and healthy, tall for his age but slender.
I'm just starting to find it so wearing. If I give him lunch and then tell him he wil get a mid afternoon snack and that's it until dinner time he will just moan and moan all afternoon about how hungry he is. I've been trying to encourage him to drink more, explaining that he need to learn the difference between being hungry and thirsty.

I am trying to be sympathetic to him because by nature I am a grazer, and don't eat meals quickly, but he's really taken this to an epic level. I also think the fact that he refuses so many things makes this harder for me.

Am I missing something? Is this a normal 7 year boy phase or do I need to start looking for a 'reason' for this and figuring out how to address it?

Have a full fruit bowl from which he can help himself so you're not always preparing things.

that doesn't work because he will only eat apples, which he refuse to eat unless they are chopped, or grapes - which I have to restrict or he will eat so many he suffers the inevitable effect on his bowel.
I am not pandering to him, so he's been told the fruit bowl is there for him to eat as he likes - but he doesn't like bananas, pears, peaches, nectarines, kiwi fruit or tangerines.
I have raisins and nuts available for him to help himself to but he's not interested.
It's not about sweets and cakes, because he'll often request carrot sticks. I bake and there are biscuits/cereal bars/flapjack/cake available and he rarely asks for these.

give him carrots then - they don't have to be peeled and chopped so he can get them himself

Sounds like he is bored!!

i do have to get off my backside to prep the carrots as they come straight out of the ground.....he really isn't capable of cropping the green off the top. I tend to do a few first thing so they are ready in the fridge for him.

Actually that's a problem I'm working against - some idiot gave them a talk at Beavers about healthy food and said it should be freshly prepared....so anything that's been sat around for more than hour he gripes about 'not being fresh'....