Smug fruit shoot feeders - don't you ever worry about 20 years down the line?

[welliemum]

Lots of people here talk about feeding their dcs crap food as a badge of honour - it's a weird kind of street cred.

"My kinds eat junk food - so shoot me, ha ha"
[subtext: I am a laid-back cool person and people who fuss about junk food are so up their own bums it's unbelievable]

But.... there's a big worry out there about obesity, about additives in food, about the way bad eating habits often have their beginnings in childhood...... and the concerns are likely to get stronger with time.

Don't you ever worry that 20 years from now when times have moved on, one of your dcs will read your light hearted comments and actually feel a bit that you seemed so proud of feeding them crap?

Whereas what I'd hope for with mine is to be able to say, "Well, you did sometimes eat rubbish at parties and I wasn't all that happy about it, but I let you because I didn't want you to feel left out. I didn't stress about it too much because I knew you ate well the rest of the time."

[subtext: I was never a perfect parent but I did my best to find the balance between feeding you well and not being obsessional about food].

I think 'cool' is about not being paranoid and allowing your children a little freedom - hopefully they will make their own decision to eat healthily/study hard etc. I always try to let mine know that they have choices to make. Otherwise what will happen when they are 18 and go off to University? If mummy has regulated their lives too much they'll run wild and do stupid things.

Ummm, I'll search around right now and see if I can find one to link to, but I've seen this quite recently on food threads - people saying something about healthy eating, and then quickly qualifying that by saying that of course their dcs eat burgers as well.

I do feel very sorry for people whose parenting ideas are completely out of step with society, so they have a choice of either making their children weirdos or of bringing them up in way they believe to be wrong - that's a real rock and a hard place.

We could start a new thread linking whether or not people allow junk food and what age they allow computer games!

welliemum, some of what you see might be aimed at sparing the feelings of posters on the Special Needs threads. Children who are on the autistic spectrum often eat a very limited diet, and for some strange reason will eat McDonalds when they won't eat much else! (although my DS3 breaks the rules even here and won't touch McDonalds fries )

Nope, I can't find an example of what I meant now. Bother. Maybe I just made the whole thing up.

But it's interesting that others don't see the "badge of honour" thing, whereas it's something that really bugs me about mumsnet food discussions.

I hope no-one has been having a go at parents of special needs children regarding healthy eating - that really would be beyond the pale.

I meant to say, Caligula - it still puzzles me how people who knew smoking was bad, couldn't see that smoking in a car with children might not be ideal either.

OK, I must go - dd2 is finally back in bed and I must follow! It's after 1am here and I'm falling asleep as I type.

Thanks for a really interesting night-feed... although I'm sorry to say that WelshBoris never did return to demonstrate giraffe circumcision, which is terribly disappointing.

I don't think it's a 'badge of honour' to let my children eat crap occasionally - quite the reverse - the ones with the badge are those who are so proud of the fact that their kids eat nothing but lentils.

Organic lentils, obviously

Night wellie.

welliemum are you in Oz?

can somebody please explain to me what is so dreadful about a fruit shoot? (or am I going to be thrown off MN for having to ask?) I realise it contains some undesirable additives but then so does loads of the food kids consume, basically anything processed has nasty things in it. Are fruit shoots a lot worse or something?

Depending which sort you get they either have loads of artificial sweeteners or sugar.

But honestly... there are worse things.

took dd out for lunch today she chose herself tomato mozarello and pesto panini with side salad then melon and grapes ate every last bit of it and washed it down with 2 fruit shoots she is 3 and has a healthy appetite! the food was all healthy so what was wrong with letting her have a fruit shoot

oh ladies what a fuss, i've been away from MN for ages, love the profiles i'm going to take pics in organic veg section at waitrose, tis is a class war ,i'm feebly middle clas socail worker and have seen babies born addicted to heroin no a joke, stop worying, be happy your kids eat anythin and more excercise will make them eat anything organic free from or loads of chips whatever they'll be happy i you dont make an issue of with them ta for listening rant over xxxx