Do you always tell your kids exactly what they're eating?

[Yorkiegirl]

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my mum did this to me, until I was about 8 I believed lamb, pork and fish were all chicken!, never did me any harm, and I suspect i'll do the same with my children

I had this done to me. Pink jelly was quince jelly (cannot believe I fell for that one...!) and in one restaurant in France, a beefburger was actually horse Won't be doing that one to DS.

My 5 year old always claimed she didn't like cucumber. When we were at a Chinese restaurant last summer we had crispy duck, and she was loving the little skinless cucumber batons that come with it. When I told her it was cucumber, she said "is it Chinese cucumber?" to which I, of course, replied "yes it is". So now she doesn't like regular cucumber, but loves Chinese cucumber. I always make sure I buy the Chinese kind when I'm shopping.

Oh yes, HM. She had "steak hache" in France last year. She enjoyed it, but we still don't actually know what animal it came from!

LOL Kate at 'Chinese cucumber'. Very sensible of you to make sure you buy that one [conspiratorial emoticon]! I'm sure my mum and dad did more with me (I was very fussy...still am ) - will have a think.

My DS who is 2 loves Salami and Chorizio, he calls it Pizza.

..and we do the 'chicken' thing as a general name for all meat.

My Mum used to call liver "fairy meat" in a vain attempt to get us to eat it. Not sure that it meant it was from dead fairies or what.....

My DS doesn't eat anything regardless of what I say it is so I haven't bothered!

Mine have just reached the age when they've worked out the pork is dead pig, beef is dead cow etc. I have found myself telling them that the animals died of old age, just as my mum did. Tell me the same thing, that is, not died of old age - she's still alive thankfully. I've drunk too much red wine.

I drank milk with pink food colouring in it every night for years after being told it was a strawberry milkshake. My mum still thinks it is hilarious!

I drank milk with pink food colouring in it every night for years after being told it was a strawberry milkshake. My mum still thinks it is hilarious!

Yes, I told my kids that the spinach in their pasta was chocolate (it looked brown because it was in a tomato sauce) and they ate it!!

I also tell them that roast potatoes are chips or else they won't eat them.

Tell them beef is sausage too.

I'm evil.

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DS1+2 (especially Ds2 though) love spaghetti bolognese but wouldn't touch meat, mushrooms, onions, courgettes, tomatos, all the ingredients basically with a barge pole.

When they see it cooked they ask if it's for them and I always say "No, you've just got the sauce"

The sauce is ALL the ingredients just blended down to mush. They eat tonnes of it, it's probably the only dinner I can guarantee they will eat.

For lunch today I had chicken wrapped in bacon, but ds had his wrapped in ham. He was helping me to prepare it and announced it was ham, so I went with it - and therefore saw him eat his first ever non-sausage meat!

In France this summer we were all out for lunch and my friend (a French graduate) translated the menu for his ds (4 years), who opted for the "fish fingers". When it arrived it was of course fish fillets without dayglo orange breadcrumbs as his dad had led him to believe. The boy was about to completely reject the whole lot (with the risk of ruining our meal out) so I quickly said "ooooh, are your fish fingers naughty?" "Why?" "Well, they're running around naked!" He took this, and gobbled them all up (although he did get a bit boring repeating the joke, but hey!)

yes we ahve (or used to have)
pink chicken (salmon)
yellow chicken (smoked haddock)
brown chcken (beef or lamb)

I used to get my children to eat those breaded turkey escalopes you can buy by calling them turkey fishfingers (even though they aren't finger shaped at all!) That worked and now they all love turkey escalopes and know that is their real name.
I find the hardest thing is when they realise what meat is. The other day dd made some comment that showed she realised the "chicken" meat she eats all the time might have something to do with the fluffy chickens she sees at the farm. I said no no this chicken is from a bigger bird, which is strictly true but at the same time slightly evading the issue.
My general rule is, if they don't ask, don't say anything!

My DS asked what pigs at farms were for - he had sussed milk from cows, eggs from hens "What pigs for Mummy?"
When I told him that some people ate pigs (we're veggie!) he said "That's just silly - give you a bad tummy!"
and lonelyMum - in our house, people eat chickens but hens lay eggs and are nice and fluffy.....!

Yep, I tell ds all sorts!

Broccoli are baby trees
Sprouts are baby cabbages (as he loves cabbage)
Parsnips were yellow carrots
He has cheese and tomato on toast and thinks it is pizza.

My Gran did the same to my Mum by saying that scrambled egg was cheese scumble and she fell for it for years til my Grandad told her the truth.

LOL about Chinese cucumber......my sis would only eat 'German eggs' for years and of course, that was all my Mum EVER bought!!

We were given "Goats Milk" for years, in fact we had only tasted it once.

With my ds, all meat is burger or chicken. Anything remotly yellow is cheese. Spaghetti is known as nooldes. All stick-shaped food is known as chips. I figure that the same was done to me as a kid, and I eat all my veg.

I just agree with whatever my ds thinks it is until he's eaten a bit of it and then gently correct him.

no ave neverdone this - have cajoled - very occasionally. iunderstand everyones reasons for doing this.

personally if they dont eat whats infront of them - they starve. making me fuck about after them is another form of manipulation. i dont do manipulation.

I described clams as "small moules" (moules=mussels) at dinner yesterday. But that's fairly accurate. And I did explain afterwards that they were really called clams.

And I do claim to be serving gruffalo crumble, owl ice cream, and various other silly things. We eat giraffe a lot.

But I don't exactly lie. I don't think he's entirely clear on which meat is which, but I don't think he particularly cares.

my dd is still young enough to be impressed by the word 'special' if i say its 'special rice' or 'special pasta' she grins and eats the lot. she adores her veggies right now and i dont have to fib -yet i have however said her yoghurts happen to be miss Hoolies favourite, or harry potter pudding etc etc however my older 2 (13 and 10) are now picky as hell, despite being brought up on lots of veggies (i'm veggie they arent totally now) they now like to sulk, push food around plate and mutter. i tend to ignore them! eat it or go without is a pretty good one at their age!