The MN food guilt phenomenon

[emkana]

Tonight I am serving my children

Bird's Eye chicken dippers
Bird's Eye fish fingers
McCain Oven chips
Broccoli
Heinz Baked Beanz

I feel that my mind has been twisted so much that I actually feel bad at producing such a "poor" dinner. But that's silly, isn't it? I mean it's 100 % chicken breast (plus batter, 100 % cod (plus batter), potatoes and sunflower oil...

www haddock is bad news too:

Haddock:

Some stocks are believed to be improving but many are highly over-exploited

Haddock are caught in mixed fisheries that also target other highly depleted stocks such as cod and whiting

Haddock fishing is associated with a very high bycatch of cod and juvenile haddock - up to 50% of the catch

(except haddock from Waitrose and M&S - both of these supermarkets are working hard to fish haddock in less wasteful and destructive ways)

My children had fishfingers today too, with new potatoes, broccoli and carrots. Making my own fishfingers (as suggested on this thread) would have been unthinkable today, since I could barely get the ones from the freezer onto a baking tray (I can't stand up straight or bend without wincing currently due to acute back pain) without a sweat beading on my brow.

Christ knows what I'll give them tomorrow if my back is still fecked....

This weeks menu plan is up in smoke. Thank God for my freezer back up staples!

I feel very sad that so many of you revel in giving your kids crap.
The ad men are rubbing their hands in glee.
The claptrap they peddly has been swallowed hook line and sinker.

So the organic/free range/lentil weaved industry uses no marketing whatsoever

Why does rejecting crap automatically turn you into a willow basket weaving alfalfa growing crusty?
I don't live like that.

Theres a great book called 'The Rebel Sell' forget the author now, about how there is a whole concept of so called 'alternative' /organic/ whatever companies who are just as manipulative as mainstream and trade directly off their wholesome image. Organic/ free range is not above stooping to any level.

if ant and dec gave you 2 wooden plates

one with chicken breast

one with chicken vagina (but covered in breadcrumbs

WHAT WOULD YOU PICK

WHAT WOULD YOUR CHILDREN PICK

??

theres a middle ground.

tonight matthew i am going to cook..............custymince concoction with giant pasta.

have to defrost mince. shit

Moondog chill!!! My DS has several serious food allergies and has a very restricted diet. His relationship with food as a result is terrible (food having nearly killed him a couple of time can do that). He is a as a result underweight and frankly I am happy if he eats chicken nuggets although I do buy the organic ones from Waitrose (no egg). He will eat veg, luckily, and pasta with Olive oil drizzled over it. This is a typical and frequent meal.

I can persuade him to eat roasted chicken thigh with garlic occassionally. I love to cook and have been know to cook 4 different meals in an evening to cater for allergies, baby food and fussy partner so it's not that I am lazy.

can i ask why fish fingers 100%cod are crap?

we dont eat them cos kids are too old - but i love them - which is sure indicator of crapolaness.

fish fingers used to be cut with potatoes and starch etc

but i dont know, now they seem to be 100% fish

i would still rather buy a bit of fish tho...

I think most parents here reject true crap - but honestly you'd drive yourself nuts thinking too much about how food arrives on your plate.

And a family's circumstances have a huge impact on how they can eat. I'd love to buy organic this and that - the fact is I can't afford it. I'm stretching to potatoes, carrots, milk, dried fruit and bananas at the moment. There's no way I can afford an organic chicken.

And working with 3 kids under five seriously impacts on the time you have (been there, done that).You do the best you can and if that means a ready-meal once or twice a week then that's the way it has to be. And I'm not clapping my hands with glee.

i agree organic chicken is expensive

free range chicken is a middle ground

Corn fed RSPCA marked is the best we do at the moment :/

chicken is chicken is it not - 2 chickens for £6 in tesco - as long as you know full well chickens have had shit short existance and stoodin their own shit for months.

its still chicken isn't it?

the very point i am making is that the organic and free range lables attached to good food are not always the same argument.

freerange doesn't mean its organic...

organic doesn't mean its had a nice life - just that it wasn't fed chemicles and shit. it could still be in a box in the dark.

you can buy an organic chicken

doesn't mean it had a nice life ......so dont get mixed up.

That sounds interesting niceglasses.
I am suspicious of the whole 'food as a miracle cure for all ills' movemnet myself.
A lot of what is peddled in my local health food shop (what a 70s concept eh?) is full of cheap fats and sugar.

Arguably however it seems more resonable for a company selling organic/whole food to trade off its wholesome image than a company selling chopped/dhaped/reformed/added water meat products wouldn't you say?

I would love to know when and where the concept of the 'fussy eater' arose (and as always,I am not referring to children with autism and so on.)

me - i dont buy either. i buy a pack of chicken breasts - with lable "good for you"

which must mean its better than the ones that say just "chicken"

organic chickens maynot ever see sunlight - they are just not fed shit to make em fat.

they read the "sun"

I'm not sure there are free-range chickens in my local supermarket anyway. TBH I haven't looked because the likelihood is I couldn't afford those either.

Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture became Consumer Culture/J Heath & Andrew Potter.

'tis good man.

Fussy eaters probably arise from us having too much choice.

We didn't have a choice of school dinner when I was small - one main, one pudding and you ate it. Same at home, whatever was on the table was it. Eat or go hungry; the only alternative was bread and butter.