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...

God, I was SO smug about 'fussy eaters' when I just had ds. He eats almost anything. Must be down to the way he has been fed I would preen. Then I had dd. She will NOT eat certain foods. She just won't. The only recognisable vegetables she'll eat are carrots and corn on the cob, and maybe some broccoli if HEAVILY bribed. I have resorted to liquidising vegetables in a tomato sauce to get them into her, something I was HUGELY scathing of.

I think the concept of fussy eaters comes from - fussy eaters.

I know a butcher who says that free range chickens have been farmed with the window open

I love all the "we didn't have fussy eaters in my day". Really? I can remember loads (not me which is why I remember I thought they were daft).

Agree becky.

fio i think there is a strong movement against anti chicken porn in the press.

I'm 40, and I've always been a fussy eater.

My eldest is fussy, but my younger two will eat or at least try most things.

pml, sounds like a confession.

Oh I was fairly fussy too - and stick thin lol. Loved bread and butter though

I don't feel good about feeding my children this stuff - that's why I started this thread - I did feel genuinely guilty at feeling them second rate stuff.

At the same time I question whether there is really any need to feel bad about it, when seen in the context of mostly good food being cooked/eaten in this house.

have'nt read al the threads - but can see from both sides. I have a DD who up til recently ate only tinned hotdogs - who knows what's in them, campbells tinned meatballs - ditto and pizza!

However thanks to Miaou's thread I have been cooking home made soups this week, and with help of crusty bread and buter, and the hotdogs or other sausages I have been getting more decent food in to than ever before - I truly thinks it's all about compromise and give and take.

many yrs ago when I was a child, we didn't have the huge range of products or exotic recipes that abound today - it was meat, potato and 2 veg every day - so we cetainly were not bombarded with the choice available today - or the fast food outlets on the high st.

So less chance to be noticably fussy.

I do NOT feed shite cheap chicken here as I genuinely think battery/cheap chicken is an abomination, in fact cheap meat in general is a horrible thing

but I do give them sainsbury's pasta in cheese sauce OUT OF A PACKET - sooo salty and crap

also: Eazy Fried Onions in a tin

I also have Dolmio white lasagne sauce in the cupboard for super fast turnaround
Baked beans - yes
oven chips - yes but not the ones with 'coating'

WHY ARE WE ON HERE JUSTIFIYING OUR FOOD CHOICES/

GET OVER IT

I think I'll have a fish finger buttie for my lunch...mmmmmm, yummy

stop
we all do the best we can
and if we arent today then we will another day

god I am not justifying my choices

but honestly those Eazy fried onions are fabby

emkana do you wonder if you would have felt so guilty i fyou hadnt been an mner

and i dont get the "my kids only eat nuggets etc" how would they know they even exist if you didnt buy them?

or am i lacking experience as my 2 arent even at school yet

I don't think fussy eaters are fussy because they are given too much choice I think the opposite is true in most cases.

cod your post there was very good

i agree

I find it interesting that people seem to think that fussy eaters have only emerged since we had so much choice. As a child, I was the ultimate fussy eater.

I refused to eat any fruit/veg, that is any, bar apples, and the occasional banana.

I went through a stage where I would eat nothing but dry shreddies. (and I was about 5 at this point).

And my mother pandered to this.

And even at boarding school, where choice was not given, and where I was since the age of 5, I would eat bread and butter. Was happy to go without.

So yes, fussy eaters definitely existed, but I think people didn't talk about it to their friends/family, and the internet didn't exist back then, so people just weren't aware of how widespread it was.

Fussy eaters are a new invention? Well my family will be suprised! Also isnt Aloha another one who always professed that she was a very fussy eater as a child (no pasta and many other things). I ate or drank no cheese, potatoes, milk, vegetables, cakes, ice cream or cream and very little meat. In despair members of my family (such as aunts etc) would still attempt to spoon feed me when I was over seven. Icontinued in that vein til I was 9 when I started to eat all around me and now have no partic pickiness at all except dont like cold food and dont like milk much. And that was over 30 years ago...

Of course there were fussy eaters but nowhere near to the same extent. Like iota we had meat and two veg pretty much everyday. In the 60's pasta was 'foreign food', and with parents brought up in war-time the idea of refusing good food was an abomination!

I remember loads of fussy eaters as a child. my sister never ate a vegetable (or many other things). now she's a vegetarian health obsessive.

there were fewer hot and spicy foods around in many of our childhoods. We didn't have pasta, curry, chillis, anything with spice or garlic, no tofu, all sorts of things which children might be fussy about now didn't really exist in the bland food many of us probably grew up with. maybe children are fussier now because there is more challenging (and interesting) food around?

Message withdrawn

Exactly Pruni. I don't even think I do feed my kids shit.. I think I do a "good enough" job "most of the time" but because I am not the most confident of people anyway, and at the moment am struggling more than usual, when I come on here and read the Chicken-Vagina Monologues of the Ranting Food Puritans, I just feel crap about myself, despite the fact that I am doing my best and go on the defensive.

My DH does the vast majority of the cooking and is a great cook but the reason he cooks is because he doesn't work and the reason he doesn't work he because he has a disabling and painful medical condition. Subsequently, sometimes he is not well enough to cook a nice healthy meal from scratch (as he usually does) and we have something I throw onto a oven tray courtsey of Birds Eye or similar, after I've shot into the house at tea time, hungry kids in tow and me feeling stressed as hell because I've just been dealing with difficult/elderly/borderline alcoholic father, or some other high maintenance member of the family.. (there are several!).

My point being, that we are ALL dealing with different family issues, and those of us who give a toss (MOST of us!) are all trying (and succeeding!) in doing a 'good enough' job of feeding our kids, depsite many of being on a tight budget as well. And try as I might to let the judgemental opinions of the lentil-weaving, holier than thou, my-kids-wouldn't-recognise-a-nugget-if-they-rained-from-the-sky brigade, I can't always shake it off.

So end up posting something along the lines of 'Oh yes, I ALWAYS feed my kids CRAP.. they thrive on it.. so UP YOURS!'

This is about the only downside of Mumsnet I feel.

Right back at the bottom of the thread...Boboggglipopo...you paid £3 for two tins of hoops?
I suppose they are an exotic imported delicacy in France?