Can I get a sense of perspective from you? How bad is it that my DS1 will not eat any veg?

[Chooster]

I've been worrying about it for ages and I think the things I'm doing are only making his dislike of veggies worse by turning it into a big deal if you know what I mean.

He's 3.9 yrs and has always been not that interested in food generally - even as a baby. I thought most kids where like this til I had DS2 (7 months) who opens his mouth whenever the spoon comes near!

Anyway, DS1 eats; wholemeal bread, all diary products, most fruit, pasta, fish, chicken, rice when with something like chilli etc. But he wont even entertain the idea of a carrot! The only veg he gets is what I hide in things like chilli or from hummus etc.

My DH tells me not to worry about it as he'll grow into eating veg at some point but I feel like I should be doing something to encourage him. Would you just leave him be for a while or try some new tactics - and if so what!!! . He does't eat raw veg sticks or veg in cheese sauce, or when his friends are doing it either.

Thanks!

Please don't worry about it .

Try to hide vegetables in food - eg tomato sauce or bolognese sauce on pasta. Keep on offering vegetables and fruit that you are eating, but don't make a big deal out of it.

I know this sounds stupid, but how do you only offer healthy food?

I mean that ideally I imagined that my kids would eat a healthy diet and it would be OK for them to have a bit of chocolate every day, or crisps every day - just like I do. But my dd fixates on when the next chococolate or crisp opportunity will arise.

When I get home from work the first thing she says is "did you bring me a treat?"

Dh and I now have an after tea mantra:

dd1 "what's for pudding"
dh and me (over and over): fruit and yogurt, fruit and yogurt

We feel like we are in danger of making her want 'bad' food even more because we are saying no (does that make sense).

Agree with Aitch about the 5 a day being completely made-up - I listened to a prog about it the other day when this health advisor admitted that they basically pulled the number out of the air because it sounded plausible and easy to remember.

There was also a very good article somewhere the other day about how all this 8 glasses of water stuff is total rubbish, perpetrated entirely by bottled water companies.

there was some researhc doen on a woman who ate none and her vitamin levels were fine

total shiteola as per

we don't have pudding every day, i think that helps. but it's more down to my lack of organisation than any attempt to eat healthily. of course i eat biscuits and keech when she goes to bed.

I think the good things are that he eats most fruit and that he will eat hidden veg. You mention chilli which suggest he will eat food cooked in a tomato based sauce so that is also good.

I would ensure that he eats lots of fruit to partly compensate for the lack of veg. And keep putting the food on his plate. Possibly in a distinct and v. small pile! My DD is 3.9 also and has started trying things again so I am hoping she is past her fussy (not very fussy fortunately for me) phase. And she ate sprouts when they were in season which DH and DS won't so she was very pleased with herself. She has had more issues with fruit than veg but has recently taken to grapes and kiwis.

Fondant, my DS is too little for this yet, but when we were growing up we had "treat night" which was Wednesday night (as being the night furthest from both weekends and thus the one when you were in need of cheering up).

We were allowed a chocolate bar on treat night, and also allowed to spend our pocket money on one chocolate bar at the weekend.

Maybe if your DD had clear expectations about exactly when the next treat would arrive, she would be less worried about you forgetting?

I think you are right yv - she doesn't know when the next chocolate is coming along so she is always on the lookout

Have been thinking of introducing pocket money for this very reason. Wednesday night treat sounds like a good idea.

Wish you could hide 'veg' in plain spaghetti...... arrgh!

Now I know why my mother used to get so fed up with me. She swears I only lived on apples and crisps until the age of 10. I realised when I got to be a teenager that I was missing out on a whole world of food. Now there's hardly anything I won't eat.

I do wonder if kids are put off the strong taste of some veg because their tastebuds aren't as knackered as us grown-ups. Seems like loads of children don't like veg - I love veg now.

Soup is a very good idea, you could start with something simple like leek and potato, my dd was weaned on leek and potato. I do things like a shepherds pie with a mixture of sweet potato and ordinary, then lots of chopped up veg, celery, tomato, garlic, onion and such and even add lentils. Also I do a green mash which is basically potato and spinach liquidised.

I always sit down and eat the same thing too with my dd. This I have found makes a huge difference. Lead by example. I don't offer alternatives. If they don't eat it don't make a big fuss. Bribe with a desert if they finish it all. This I find works very well.

Alternatively we have dinochews multivitamins by higher nature, I also think essential fatty acids are very important so we have lemon fish oil. You could juice too a nice apple, carrot and ginger juice. This is very concentrated so they don't need very much at all.

Haven't read full thread but my friend struggles with her DD and she makes homemade pizza with homemade tomato sauce in which she secretes all sorts of vegetables and whizzes it together.

i also think that the 5 a day thing has been counterproductive in that it encourages us to think of some foods as better and others worse. now i'm not goiing to argue with you about macdonalds or even processed food, but basically a wholefood is a wholefood. if you've cooked it yourself it's probably pretty tasty and good for you. michael pollan has written an interesting book about it, all about how nutritionism is crippling our instincts for eating. he says if you don't eat anything your great-grandma (or someone's great-grandma) wouldn't recognise as food then you won't go far wrong.
also some research conducted (rather unethically) in canada in the 20s suggests that kids do eat what they need to grow healthily if they're left to it, and the research was revisited in a nursery school in the states and over the piece the children ate crazy things but it balanced out in the end. so much about food is bullshit in our weirdy fucked-up culture i think.

God that sounds like a totally OK diet to me op.!!

My Ds1 eats for england -anything and everything - DS2 however will not voluntarily eat ANY of the following - Veg, fruit, milk, I have to hide and then spoonfeed EVERYTHING apart from the junk he loves.

I have to tell him veg soup is 'sportacus soup' to get him to even let it come near.
I have given up worrying too much. He usually has one meal he likes and one meal I hide stuff in per day. He is big , active and glowing with health so I'm not too worried yet - he's 3 in April so I am hoping he will grow out of it!!

I'm not quite sure how a child can make the right food choices you have to present them with something in the first place which means if you think no veg and plenty of processed meat and carbs and sweets is ok they will too. Mind you they could start eating flowers in the garden to get their greens if really pushed.

ah well to be fair that was the trick, of the thirty or so foods on offer (things like sheep's brains, cod liver oil as well as veggies etc) they were all 'healthy' in the 20s. obviously if you sat them in front of a pic'n'mix counter and said 'here's dinner' the effect wouldn't be the same. .
here's an article on it, it's very interesting imo.

Thanks all!!! Sorry it took me a while to come back - I got distracted by DS2 crawling for the first time .

Sounds like this is a fairly common issue, although its surprising how many of DS1 friends at nursery seem to eat any and all veg - at least thats what their mums tell me .

I also agree that the 5 a day thing can cause some anxiety. DS1 is no where near that although I am trying to stock up on the fruit part.

I tried veg soup ages ago and he seemed to like it - well, he ate it. But then started to gag when he was eating it but was desperate to get the the promised land - i.e pudding . My DS is the same as yours fondant in that he has an amazing desire for chocolate and biscuits and is constantly on the lookout for the next treat.

I have tried most things suggested but the one thing I haven't been doing is just keep offering the vegetables. I've tended to offer other types of dinner as I'm often so keen for him to eat something. He could honestly go all day with only having had a bit of toast sometimes.

I think part of my anxiety comes from the fact that I hardly ever made homemade food for DS1 when he was a baby but all DS2's food is made by me - just a change in attitude from me nothing more. And deep down I wonder if I've caused him to have a dodgy attitude to veg - anyway, whenever I say that my DH thinks I'm a loon.

My current plan is to keep offering and see what happens. He's also been having a lot of fun recently with a game of 'stealing food from Daddy's plate' which he finds hysterical! So I may join him in this game and see if I can persuade him to steal a carrot of Daddy's plate . Just hope I'm not promoting a lifetime of kleptomania

Our girls like nothing better than nicking our food - it's the best possible way to get them to try something!

And I did the whole smug annabelkarmelpureeorganicveg into little ice cube portions thinking I would have wonderful eaters - yet my DD's are seriously fussy eaters so don't worry about that! I think it depends on the child, not the cookbook!

DS1 will eat no fruit.
Drinks orange juice daily.
The only veg he eats are peas, carots and sweet corn.
He loves pasta and noodles, devours roast dinners.
eats all the normal rubbish too.
He is a strapping fit boy with bags of energy.
Don't make an issue of it.

Yes well I think that Annabel Karmel is where I went wrong .

I did the whole pureeing butternut squash thing with dd1 and now, like you chooster, I end up begging her to eat a chip - "too cold", or a green bean - "too fudgy".

With dd2 I did baby-led weaning, which is a polite way of saying I let her fend for herself. DD2 got nothing chopped up, same food as us, she had to manage gigantic lumps of pasta etc. Now she is a great eater.

Personally I think it's probably just the way they are. But I would def recommend blw to anyone wanting a good eater, and burn the pureeing books....

My two are the same. DD2 eats sprouts and cabbage and DD1 retches if she has to eat one (one!) pea. I think we are a bit obsessed with the veg eating deal. They'll survive.

but green beans are too fudgy, fondant.

Yes, even me and dh laughed at that one, and have been using it when watching Masterchef

My mate has theory - and its a theory that I am kind of liking - that toddlers and small children are programmed not to like vegetables [esp green things] because way back in time when we were all hunter gatherers it would protect them from inadvertently eating something poisonous.

Apparently I subsisted on a diet of eggy bread, raw carrots and plain boiled rice until I was about 5, so I am quite tolerant of the dcs picky eating. I just keep offering up the veggies and sometimes they eat it, sometimes they don't.

that's one of the possible explanations for neophobia, mazzy, where kids refuse to try anything new. it normally starts around the time that children become more physically independant and some shrinky types think that it's a safety mechanism against them gorging on poisonous berries etc.

my ds2, 4,5m told me catergorically that if he ate fruit he would DIE
I have to admire his fortitude and strength of character, and I did grate some carrots in to his rice this evening and hide it under a lot of ketchup manis

liked the experiment, bit of a chore to lay out 30 different food choices at mealtimes though