How poor does a child's diet have to be beore it beocme a problem?

[SewingBox]

DS2 has always been a picky eater. I've tried not to pander and not to cook him special meals etc and work on the if he's hungry, he'll eat it principle but the thing is (a good thing!) in our modern affluent world, he's never properly hungry. Thankfully few of our children know what real hunger is.

So for example today. He had cornflakes for breakfast because I won't buy the sugary cereals he'd prefer. DS1 has porridge or eggs, but Ds2 won't touch them, so he has his cornflakes, pours himself a tiny bowl and eats half of it.

He'll get lunch in the school canteen, where there are loads of good meals on offer. DS1 will have chilli, rice and veg or roast dinner etc, but DS2 will have a hot dog or something that sounds vile called a potato dog.

Then I give them a good dinner. Last night I did a lamb dish with couscous, DS2 ate the cous cous. If I do a roast, DS2 will have a go at the meat, provided it doesn't take much chewing and eat the carrots, but not touch the potatoes or other veg. Tonight I'm doing bolognaise and he'll eat as much pasta as he can, provided the sauce hasn't touched it.

So, he eats enough not to be starving, but it really can't be said he's well nourished. What does anyone else do and when does it become a real problem?

He's 12 yo BTW.

My 24 year old has lived on pasta and broccoli until this week. He has gone on holiday with a mate & is eating everything the Med can throw at him including snails.

Have you checked to see if he has any food intolerance? One of my DDs was always terribly fussy - she lived on thin air and sugar! until we discovered 3 months ago that she is Gluten intolerant, now she is on a gluten free diet she is eating so much more and a really good variety too.

I would say GP too and see if you can some referral.
And carrying on as you are.

As they say 'you can take a horse to water but you can't make them drink'.

YY to make the healthiest version possible of what he eats and 'disguising' things in what he likes (grated/puree courgettes in bolognese for example).

Also, as he is becoming a teenager, I would make a point of talking about what is a good diet, what happens when you don't have enough minerals, how it affects his energy levels so can't do or that it will stop him doing .
aka appeal to his 'brain' and the very reasonnable reasons to make an effort whilst leaving him the choice to eat whatever he wants.

Angel has a good point.

My DS has many food allergies. He is allergic to milk, kiwi and strawberry and avocados (genuine, rashy allergies) and i think it's what started his terror of fruit and foods he isn't familiar with.

I really don't think you should bring him to a dietitian, i just don't get how that is supposed to help? He clearly doesn't have the maturity to really understand how beneficial it is to eat a range of food and a dietitian telling him us v unlikely to change that and will just give him undeserved attention and possibly make him think he has something wrong with him that he can use as an excuse to eat even more poorly.

Just let him at it. Put the food out, if he wants it great, if not fine too. Agree with you on snacks, for children who eat poorly they definitely are not helpful.

How about more calorific food? Pain au choc and the like? Would he eat ham and cold egg for breakfast? Cheese on a waffle? Also, I hate to say it but is a full bowl of sugary cereal better than half a bowl of "good" cereal? Re dinner, I'd try maybe giving less carb and more meat.

He does sound really childish around it which must be v frustrating. It's not easy to fix really at 12 but teenage boys are famed for their appetites so simplest thing really is to more or less carry on and wait for that monster appetite to hit!

Only other idea I have, is to talk positively about the effects of food, I do this with mine, they are grumpy before a meal, I say oh you must be hungry you seem quite cross and then after I say wasn't that a lovely meal and don't you feel better now, sort of thing. I draw attention to how being hungry made them feel and the change afterwards. Mine are only 4 and 6 tho so v easy to direct.

Another vote for going with the flow.

If you can shoehorn in some odd bits of dried fruit, fruit juice and dairy even better but don't worry about balanced meals.

( @ the parent of 4 & 5 year old, opining like a prison officer that they "wouldn't tolerate this from a 12 year old".)

Just make them eat. How does that work then? Tie them to a chair and force it down? That's abuse.

OP, for a much younger child, we had to require a tablespoon sized serving of everything before the dc could have the entire bowl of plain pasta, for example. The child would have happily lived on white carbs and nothing else. We emphasized they didnt have to like it, but they had to have the variety of foods. It might not be too late to try some form of that.

With another child, we spent years letting him eat piles of the raw veg he preferred to cooked and other quirks. He was a fussy eater, but so long as he was fussy in demanding choices that were essentially healthy, why not? Is it really a bad thing that he would rather eat an adults salad, without dressing, ewwww! Than a mac and cheese off the childs menu? Now he is 8, logic helps. Cooked carrots release vitamins that raw carrots dont, so he accepts that he should eat a few bits of cooked carrots when they are part of a roast dinner or a pie, for example.

If he is tired, he likely is lacking in nutrients. He is at an age when most children, boys and girls, eat shocking amounts of food to keep up with their growth. It is very much worth seeing your GP and having blood tests for anemia and other defeciencies. If he isnt interested in food, then perhaps he will agree to eat specific servings of of foods that would solve those problems. A single hamburger patty, or a serving of yogurt. Or a smoothie with ingredients geared to fill in what he is missing.

There are people who arent much interested in food for aesthetics sake, the different flavors and textures, rather than being enticing as for most of us, are a nuetral or objectional thing. These people are happy to live on a limited range of foods, even eating extremely weird combinations in order to get maximum nutrition from least food eating effort. Their food choices were almost medicinal in type and quantity. 6 almonds plus 2 ounces cheese plus an ounce of grain plus a carrot. That sort of thing. Not a made dish, just ingredients chosen to make a meal that met specific nutrient goals. My google ability is failing to find the article I read about them. In some ways, it was like an eating disorder, but then, his current habit sounds like one as well, and this does sound like an improvement of sorts.

The only bonus about seeing a GP or dietician is that the OP can rule out if the present diet is doing any 'harm'. Blood tests etc will check if he's iron deficient as this would make him less energetic.

That way, the OP can relax a little and mealtimes can be truly an enjoyable nag-free experience.

Despite Mumsnet wisdom that you will die simultaneously of scurvy and protein deficiency if you don’t have lots of fruit, vegetables, meat and fish every day, plenty of people appear to function quite normally on all sorts of completely shitty diets for lots of reasons.

Obviously your DSs diet is not ideal, but could he be eating elsewhere – supermarket or takeaway/sandwich shop purchases for example? Is he a healthy weight? I suppose one thing to hope for is that he soon develops teenage boy ravenousness and starts eating more .

Does he ever do any cooking/food preparation? That just seems to be something often encouraged with small children who are fussy about food, so maybe it would translate a bit - try getting him to choose and put on toppings for homemade pizza, assemble a burger himself, he could make a batch of cheese scones? Perhaps start with the sort of food he usually likes anyway and then expand out into new foods or dodgier grounds, he'd have control and feel ownership of the process - unlike just having finished meals presented to him.

Actually givemushy, he does love to cook and often suggests new or unusual dishes which he says he will eat once he's cooked them, but once they're in front of him he doesn't.

He really loves to make pizza, from scratch, but makes a plain garlic butter one for himself.

Will make a curry but pick out the chicken and scrape the sauce off and have it with bread, rather than rice. Which is OK, I suppose. Cooking lets him choose what goes on his plate so he likes that, but it doesn't really improve what he eats.

I think you need professional help, because this is a problem diet, and the older he gets, the less chances you'll have to correct it. See your GP. Have you sat him down and explained he's now gone beyond being a fussy child stage and asked him why he won't eat anything other than bland plain foods?

If there's a pattern for any foods in particular being rejected (DB wouldn't and still won't eat anything with tomato in/on, that does rule out a lot of pasta and curry sauces and pizzas, but would eat cheese based sauces, I know someone else who won't eat any diary, but pretty varied other than that), but otherwise, you need professional help for him.

Sewingbox, sorry but a lot of what you describe are possible signs of an eating disorder possibly starting to develop.

imho, talk of GPs & specialists is OTT.

I know an adult in her 60s who has never willingly eaten fruit or veggies (that she can remember). Pretends to eat them for grandchildren (who eat veg fine, as do her adult offspring).
She's in as good health as most people her age!

We know a lad who literally eats only like 6 things, orange juice is the healthiest item on the menu. He's as healthy as most 11yo boys.

My dd12 is avery picky eater no veg salad pasta etc and I've never forced her ,brother eats any thing ,she gags at trying anything new .the other month she came home from school upset about a Chinese tasting day and asked me to take her to the docs , I rang the health visitor and she referred us to camhs we are seeing a lovely nurse once a week ,she as taught her breathing excersises and done lots of different things to do with her problem and already she's trying different foods and actually wants to ,I'm so pleased we are starting to change her view to food .