Teenage son extremely fussy about food. WWYD?

[FussyTeenDS]

DS 15 has always been quite fussy with regard to what he eats. He is very rigid about what brands he will eat and how meals need to be prepared and presented. Trying to save money by buying cheaper alternatives is a false economy with DS as there is no fooling him. He won't eat it if it's not one of his preferred brands. He thinks Aldi and Lidl are "shit". He will also only eat organic fruit and vegetables, and he won't even drink ordinary milk because the cows that produce it are "pumped full of chemicals". He's been making comments about my cooking which I've found quite hurtful. This has included things like "I think you should get some cooking lessons Mum" and "I wouldn't give that to the dog". I don't want to make him out to be utterly horrible as he isn't. He doesn't really moan about anything else.

Should I make him cook his own meals from now on? Has anyone else got teens who are extremely fussy eaters?

I would give him a weekly amount of money from the food budget and tell him to shop for and cook all of his own meals.

Give him a budget, make him shop and cook. At 15 he should be cooking every so often anyway. If he cooks for you, remember to be equally ungrateful and insulting.

He's going to need to learn to budget, prep food, and cook for himself one day. This looks like an excellent opportunity for him to learn those valuable life skills.

silly sod. He loses all rights with the comment about 'chemicals' - he needs to listen at school. This level of ignorance for someone in full-time education is shocking. Being brand-loyal is also the sign of a sheep-like fool.

serve up what you serve up, take it or leave it. He can go hungry with that attitude.

I admire your tolerance because I'm afraid he does sound rather horrible.

My teen DS is very fussy about food. My solution is to let him cook for himself, which he does without complaint.

He is never rude about what I cook and wouldn't dream of speaking to me like your DS speaks to you. I wouldn't tolerate it if he did.

Nor would I tolerate it if my DS started laying down the law about what brands he'll eat and where I do the food shopping.

I'd let him go hungry, personally. I certainly wouldn't be giving him a budget to spend on his own food.

If he's rude then there need to be consequences.
Buy the brands you want to. When he's paying the bills he can shop where he wants.
Perhaps he could cook a couple of times a week. But then you can't moan about his food!!

Give him a food budget and let him get on with it. You'll have to be very transparent about how much you currently spend so that he doesn't feel like you have intentionally sabotaged him with a tighter budget than you would have spent for his share of food bills.

I'm sure he'll quickly realise that a certain amount of compromise is required and that his current thinking about food is unsustainable.

I think if I was spoken to like that I'd be too hurt to give them their own budget to make their own food.
I'd just completely ignore it, keep buying and cooking what I like and what the rest of the family enjoy/appreciate and he can either zip it and eat it and hopefully it'll sink in what how unkind and rude he is being or go hungry.
This will be one of those things he will probably cringe at when he's older.

I would give him a choice:

1. He prepares all his own food;
2. He eats what you prepare and he shuts the f* up about the ingredients.

If I'd spoken to my DM like he speaks to you I'd have gone hungry!

I've had fussy eaters who have thankfully become less rigid as they became adults and so were buying and cooking for themselves. I'm a bit of a brand follower myself so have sympathy there but wouldn't put up with the rudeness at all.I wouldn'tcook for someone who was rude about the food I was serving tbh. If budget dictates what you buy then he has two choices to my mind, either eat what is provided or an alternative that you sort yourself that doesn't impact the week's meals such as egg on toast/beans on toast or find yourself a job and buy your preferences with money you earn yourself.

I wouldn't give him a budget.. No rude little swine would have me bending in any which way.

Buy what you want and point him towards the kitchen. You need to nip this attitude right now before your future DIL makes an entrance. The little twat can learn how to cook for himself.

On Woman's Hour today they were talking about fussy feeders, which included teenagers. I wasn't really listening, but here's the link anyway.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0713zf5

Firstly, he sounds very rude.
I have 3 D's, 2 of them now adult, and none of them would speak to me like that. Nip it in the bud now- it's not acceptable.
As far as the fussy eating is concerned, it sounds like he is worried about chemicals in his food. I can understand that he would prefer organic food if that is the case. However, whether he gets it presumably will depend on your budget. How does he know if the food is organic or not - does he help with the shopping?
As far as Aldi and Lidl are concerned, well that's just snobbery ( apart from their cereals, which to be fair, are not very nice). Their other products are no more or less chemically than those from any other shop. They are way cheaper though.
I'd be asking what is he prepared to forgo to buy the luxury food he says he wants? Less pocket money? Fewer snacks or outings? Cheaper/ fewer clothes, games and activities? As my dear old granny used to say, "he who pays the pipercalls the tune." I think you should make this clear to him.
I don't know if you have ready meals, but if you do, stop them and get him to cook from scratch- much healthier!
In fact, I'd suggest that he takes over some of the cooking anyway seeing as he doesn't like yours! If he's interested in the contents of his meals, you may find he's happy to do this -I mean meals for the whole family, not just himself.

He'd be shopping for himself and cooking all his own meals. Why isn't he now? My 10-year-old can manage the basics. By 15, I'd expect her to be making entire meals and cleaning up after herself.

expat you should open a 'no-nonsense' school

badly needed in some cases!

does he know that 'organic' does not mean 'flown half way round the planet?' Is he informed about eating seasonally and reducing food miles? Does he actually know what a chemical is?

sounds like a lot of Paltrow-science to me.

house, not restaurant. His call.

I wouldn't pander to him, he could take what you're making or leave it. If he really despises one meal then I'd perhaps bung something easy in the oven for him, but that level of fussiness and insult towards you and your cooking? Terrible.

Like another poster said, he'll need to learn to budget and cook for himself anyway one day so why not start now. Give him £25 a week and tell him to feed himself for a week, I'm sure after a week or two or that he'll be asking to go back to normal. See how easy he finds it to buy luxuries like organic and branded products with that, £25 is perfectly adequate for 1 persons food shopping and it might give him a bit of a wake up call. Perhaps suggest, before he goes shopping, he might make that money last further in somewhere like Lidl

'expat you should open a 'no-nonsense' school'

He's fifteen, Small, and obviously still doesn't know how to make himself a meal and bitches about what is prepared for him. I don't think it's 'no nonsense' to teach older children how to do basic life functions like cooking and shop. There's a thread going on Active right now, 'What did your parents not teach you that you wish they had' or something like that, and the top ones are all life skills like budgeting, managing money, cooking, etc.

I absolutely agree with you expat
you have a great way to put into words what many of us think.

(my 9yo makes a mean mac&cheese)

Mine started with putting the oven on. Then things like a frozen pizza. Learning to boil water, then make a cup of tea, fry an egg. It's not calculus. They go to the corner shop with their own money and pick out what to buy, hand over money, take change, count it out. DD2 is older than DS so does more but he can put on the oven and do some basics and they both cut veg and fruit.

15 is not too young to shop and buy food, cook, etc.

I agree with you expat, one of the skills I wish my parents had taught me was how to cook and budget money because I came to uni without a clue and had to learn it all the hard way. Much better to teach kids early on, IMO

Give him a weekly budget and a flowerbed which he is free to turn into a vegetable patch and leave him to it.

I agree may be start with teaching him one simple meal that he can cook for the family once a week and expand on this

With Youtube you dont even need to teach him, he can learn how to cook the basics

Sometimes it takes a few hours to prepare and cook, but only a few minutes to eat - this is a lesson in itself

Home made baking is good, it still amazes me how dough rises and doubles in size before it is cooked

You dont need much room to grow veg eg radishes, salads and you can grow potatoes and tomatoes in tubs & hanging baskets

You could set a challenge, work out how much this type of meal planner costs www.hellofresh.co.uk/ and see if you can buy and cook it yourself cheaper

My friend is a chef who is cooking with 2 year old grand child
Good bonding time too

Good skills for university or adult life

TBH, if he weren't moaning so much to you, criticising what you cook for him and going on about Lidl and Aldi being 'shit', I'd try all the 'teaching' and such. But given his age and his attitude, I'd go with a short, sharp poke with a stick. Give him £25-30 on say, a Wednesday, tell him to sort himself out and mean it. He won't starve.

I don't know a teen around who doesn't know what YouTube is.