Snack plates for dinner

[Goodnightelizabethgoodnight]

I'm sure it's just an older generation mindset of needing 3 hot square meals a day, but my gran was shocked ( 🙄 ) that my 3 year old had a snack plate for his dinner.

Plenty of nights we do have a hot meal together but I'd say at least once, sometimes twice a week, he happily sits and eats a little snack plate in front of the telly. He's been at nursery 9-3, outdoors for much of the time, he's tired, and he just wants to chill. I know the feeling myself! So after two helpings of curry with rice for his lunch at nursery I don't think it's a problem to have a snack plate for dinner.

He's having the same snack plate today as he did yesterday which has breadsticks, oatcakes, humous, salami, smoked cheese, raspberries, strawberries, chopped cucumber and peppers. He might have a small bowl of soup after too. Tbh I think he's living the best life with his little platter in front of the telly and I think it's great 😁

Breakfast was porridge, lunch was curry and rice, tomorrow for dinner we're having chicken risotto, and the next night we're having spaghetti bolognese.

Anyone else do the same with their kids?

The protein (Smoked cheese and salami) has high salt and the salami is carcinogenic. Its for a 3 year old with tiny kidneys. Perfectly fine in moderation of course. But I wouldn't say that was an especially nutritious meal to come on mumsnet to tell everyone about. Nothing wrong with it every so often though.

The assumption that everyone has a dining table is insane.

Some people live in small houses or flats where there is no space for a dining table.

We are fortunate that our current house does, but at least two of our previous houses didn't have the space for a table, so we had no choice but to sit on the sofa or on the floor to eat.

And we sometimes had TV on. In fact, we still quite often sit
on sofa to eat and have TV on. That doesn't mean we are all gawping on the TV and not talking. My kids have beautiful table manners, no speech problems, and are bright and articulate. The older ones are teenagers now who still eat with us most nights.

And they all still bloody love a snack plate. Problem is those snack plates are bloody huge. Teenage boy appetites...

Carry on op, if it works for your family, carry on.

There are also some great children’s tv shows, on CBeebies for example, which are better than a mediocre book. My DD got read to tons and was reading very early, but excellent quality tv like Sarah & Duck, Show Me Show Me, Abney & Teal, Octonauts, Maddie’s Do You Know, etc etc. are fantastic stories and great for learning. DD used to love the CBeebies Shakespeare adaptations, ballets and pantos. No reason why a toddler’s day shouldn’t include a bit of good quality tv along with lots of other activities.

I was glued to the TV after school until the news at 6pm. No screens any other time obvs but the telly was My Precious.

@Hoppingabout

The protein (Smoked cheese and salami) has high salt and the salami is carcinogenic. Its for a 3 year old with tiny kidneys. Perfectly fine in moderation of course. But I wouldn't say that was an especially nutritious meal to come on mumsnet to tell everyone about. Nothing wrong with it every so often though.

Why can't I come on Mumsnet and talk about it?

I agree it's fine because he's not eating salami every day of his life. Every single plate any child or adult needs doesn't have to be perfectly balanced every time. That would be madness. The snack plate was eaten as part of many different foods over the course of a day including porridge, whole milk, flax seeds, bananas, peanut butter, fruit and veg snacks at nursery, and 2 portions of curry with rice.

@Hoppingabout Yeah I used to be stuck in front of Children’s BBC and ITV from about 3:30-5:30pm every night for years (with a plate of Bourbon biscuits and custard creams!) Goggling at She-Ra or Scooby-Doo or some other awful animation of dubious quality! And then Neighbours at 5:30, and Buck Rogers or Mork & Mindy at 6pm on either BBC2 or Channel 4!

A bit of good well-made kids’ TV on the iPlayer is fine and much better than the dross we were all glued to for hours every day in the 80s and 90s.

This is my experience too. Grew up with dinners on our laps because there was no room to own a dining table. We are a very close knit family and I have wonderful memories of watching tv with everyone. Hasn't affected me at all, I did well at school, went to university, and now have a fantastic career. Tv has done me no harm and I watched faaaar more than my son does.

I don't know. But your granny (apart from the hot/cold thing) may have had a tiny point?

@Hoppingabout

The woman who salts her salad and doesn't know what humous is? Nah I think not. She's right about many things but this isn't one of them.

Well there you go. You have your answer. You know best all along.

Genuinely, I think unless it's pie and chips or something like it, she doesn't recognise it as a dinner. She had no idea what olives were. She's a simple woman from a working class background. She certainly wasn't thinking about salt content or nutritional value, simply "that's not his tea is it?" It's just the way it is. She didn't understand why he was constantly breastfeeding when I was cluster feeding him either. Absolutely zero judgement from me, I think she's amazing, but nutrition is not her specialist subject.

@Hoppingabout

My post wasn't an AIBU or "is my gran right?" I asked, Anyone else do the same with their kids?

I can disregard advice on watching tv and salt content because my child doesn't watch much tv and I have no concerns about it affecting his development in some way, and he doesn't consume too much salt. If you think this is me needing to "know best all along" .... ok.

So your thread is about the fact that your granny doesn't know about salt content or nutrition. Setting aside the hot thing..And the fact that she said "is that his tea" was correct objectively (as it is not a great supper for a 3 year old ) but that her motives were wrong as she doesn't understand why she was actually correct, because she's never seen an olive? Seems odd reason to post.

"Granny is right but she doesn't.know why she's right"

I suspect your thread is sparked because you secretly feel worried that your granny might have a point about the type of supper (not hot or cold) as you've admitted that one of the reasons is that you can't be arsed to cook twice a week and need encouragement from mumsnet that you are doing the right thing. As you seem a thoughtful and caring mother that worries about her child.

You are doing the right thing OP! You can't be perfect all the time and if a couple of nights off makes you a happier mum then crack on with what works for you. Just careful with salami if it's twice a week and it's a 3 year old as its carcinogenic.

If Granny is from a 'time before hummus' then it wasn't necessary to worry about salt content because the amount of processed food eaten was far less.

Even when salt is used in cooking, the amount per portion is far less than in similar amounts of processed food in most cases.

Plus obesity levels were far lower so people obviously were eating the right amount of calories. People generally did eat more fruit and vegetables than a lot of people today (the stats across the population as a whole differ wildly compared with Mumsnet) so it's quite likely her pie and chips was made with leftovers of Sunday roast, which would have included plenty of veg.

Haha people really do love to romanticise the past. In the time before hummus, most British people (especially working class people) were not eating low salt freshly made pies and veg - in fact the level of veg in the mid century/postwar diet was pretty parlous. Processed food has been around a lot longer than you realise, and was a staple for large parts of the population during the 20th century, especially canned processed food.

I can tell you my working-class grandparents fed their kids on National Dried Milk (chock full of salt), tinned mixed veg, tinned potatoes (very salty), tinned processed fish, jars of meat spreads made from the nastiest low quality remnants of the meat processing industry, instant mash, powdered egg, tinned Fray Bentos suet pies, packet soups, cheap crisps, lots of sugary biscuits, boil in the bag fish, gristly burgers and canned stews, cheap white processed bread, endless boiled sweets and Ribena. Ribena even went in the (UHT) milk. Not a drop of plain water did they consume; zero fresh salad (except for cucumbers soaked in vinegar); no fresh veg, and as for fresh meat, the cheapest possible battery chickens, gristly scrag ends and offal (eg. chewy gristly liver) were served with cheap boiled potatoes, and cabbage also boiled until all the nutrients gave up and died. People used to pour salt on their food; salt was in everything, and as for sugar, the average person took about three sugars just in a cup of tea.

Anyone who thinks the vast majority of British people in the twentieth century had lovely fresh unprocessed diets is enjoying some very rose-tinted illusions. The quality of our food is so much better these days that you can’t even imagine it! Why do you think the midcentury population all had such poor health and teeth? They ate an absolutely terrible diet and the whole “lovely fresh home grown food we were so healthy in wartime” is a complete myth.

That sounds like my dad.

He's just been here for a couple of days and I make it a mission to try to get fruit and veg in to him.

I'm also introducing him to 'new' foods. These have included salmon, a tray bake, tapas and duck.

My dad was born before WWII so definitely no hummus or olives in his childhood, although he did apparently receive a banana as a present from an uncle in the merchant navy.

I always say if you like it eat it, if you don't then leave it. It can be interesting seeing what he does and does not eat.

Lol some of the pearl clutchers would hate me, my ND son mainly eats snack plates and watches tv regularly while eating to decompress from nursery. Ooh scary tv

Rationing and the guidelines in the war apparently meant that the UK population has never been so healthy as at that time..limited sugar salt and fat. All of which we all eat loads of now.

it improved some people's health only because poorer people actually had access to enough food and good food - so could increase their vitamin and protein intake.

That’s largely a myth: people were thinner because they ate less food and were more active, but they also smoked a lot and did not actually eat a good diet at all (for example, it was quite routine before the fifties to have all your teeth pulled and replaced with dentures early in adult life, because tooth decay through poor diet was rife).

They didn’t actually have access to good food at all - that’s an enduring but misleading myth. That’s why processed foods/drinks like Ribena and rose hip syrup were actually popularised during and after the war as vitamin replacements (made from surpluses of blackberries that were one of the few industrially grown fruits). They were marketed postwar precisely because children’s diets in particular were so deficient in vitamins and fresh fruit/veg. Dried milks and sugary powdered drinks like Horlicks started to be fortified for the same reason. Large parts of people’s diets were bread and animal fats like dripping/lard. Fresh veg and fruit, even if you grew it yourself - and most people didn’t - was also only available seasonally (people forget that fresh food was not flown in from overseas year-round like today). It was turnips only for months for large parts of the year!

@Hoppingabout

So your thread is about the fact that your granny doesn't know about salt content or nutrition. Setting aside the hot thing..And the fact that she said "is that his tea" was correct objectively (as it is not a great supper for a 3 year old ) but that her motives were wrong as she doesn't understand why she was actually correct, because she's never seen an olive? Seems odd reason to post.

What? I can't make head nor tail of what you're talking about.

As for being healthier, she and my dad grew up on a diet of fish and chips, pies, and pasties. Barely a vegetable in sight. Just the way it was. I think you have romantic notions of how the older generation ate.

Some info from Ribena’s own website below! The reason the government distributed these processed syrups free (which were chock full of sugar), was because children weren’t eating fresh veg during the war and malnutrition was rife. Health visitors continued to distribute rosehip syrups through baby clinics during the war and right up into the 1970s: these were nearly pure sugar and inadvertently responsible for a lot of child tooth decay in the wartime/postwar period.

“Ribena was invented in Long Ashton by Dr Vernon Charley, at H.W. Carter & Co, which manufactured a wide variety of products. The Ribena brand name was first used in 1938 and comes from the Latin name for blackcurrant: ‘Ribes Negrum’.
The blackcurrant syrup, that was first developed, contained Vitamin C and was first sold to hospitals and maternity homes. During the war, the firm was responsible for practically all the blackcurrant syrup produced for free distribution to children by the Ministry of Food. This was followed in 1941 by the commercial development of rosehip syrup. In 1944, the Ministry of Food allowed the firm to revert to the sale of Ribena under its own name, and very rapid developments then took place, especially in the expansion of the contract system of growing blackcurrants for processing.”

The history of processed food is actually very interesting: it was widespread throughout the post-1940s era, and was often extremely cheaply made, with a lot of fats, salts, sugars and additives that are not permitted today. The practices that led up to BSE in the 80//90s were rife throughout industrial farming from the 60s onwards, for example. We have much better diets in general today, and fresh food is readily available year-round.

*should be blackcurrants in my post above, autocorrect changed it to blackberries! (But AFAIK, blackberries were used in Vimto.) Of anyone is interested as to why blackcurrants in particular - apparently they are one of the few fruits that freezes and processes easily for mass production and transport! People mixed Ribena into water and milk; but also used it neat - mothers were often using early formula milk and national dried milk for children, so it was both mixed in to that but also (especially in the case of rosehip syrup) it was recommended that babies’ dummies be dipped in syrup for weaning purposes (you can quite see how it caused terrible tooth decay).