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?

It is probably just a silly phase. Go with expat's advice. I hope it passes.

Tell him that fussy eaters are tedious and he'll never get a girlfriend if he persists with it :-)

H Fussy. My take on this differs from a lot of the other posters. From what you've said he's not a particularly troublesome teen in general, it's just the food issue. This seems to be that a) he is rude about your cooking, b) he has some snobbery about aldi/lidl and c) he is concerned about chemicals in food.

I was a bit younger than your DS when I decided that I wanted to be vegetarian. I'd looked in to the pros and cons and made my decision. My parents treated this as fussy eating and were in equal parts furious and concerned- they worried that this was the start of some sort of eating disorder, cross that I wouldn't just do as I was told and convinced that this was just some sort of attention seeking display. It was quite a while ago and vegetarianism was a lot less common in the UK than it is now. They refused to even discuss the matter. This just meant that I didn't eat proper meals for ages as I was not allowed to cook myself separate meals.

If DS is otherwise a sensible young man could you discuss with him what his concerns are and try to work out together if there is some way that his real concerns can be dealt with without giving you extra expense/time in the kitchen? If I was you I'd look into this myself too so you can have an informed conversation. I suspect he'll find that expensive brands have just as many chemicals as aldi/lidl for most things so that might deal with one issue. It might also help if you draw up a list of your average weekly food bill if you shop your way and if you do as he asks. Then you can ask him to agree with you what exactly his main concerns are and which areas you can economise on to afford more expensive foods that are important to him (eg shop at Aldi/Lidl for basics and organic milk/meat from elsewhere).

I suspect that if this is just fussy eating he'll not be keen on all the extra work involved in helping plan and budget. If it's a genuine concern you'll have shown him that you take him seriously and hopefully he'll respect you for that.

But after you've had the 'I'm willing to discuss how we shop if we do it sensibly' talk you need to make it clear to him that being rude about your cooking is not acceptable.

Hope this ramble is of some help- and good luck

I think I'd go a step further than getting him to cook and shop for himself - I'd get him to plan meals, shop and cook for the whole family for a week. He'd have the same access as you do, to store cupboard staples and the freezer, but he would have the same budget as you do, to buy the food for the week.

And when he put his first meal on the table, I'd be very tempted to ask him, "Now, after all the effort you have put in to the planning, shopping and cooking, how would YOU like it if I said this wasn't fit to feed to the dog?"

Food is 100% chemicals, except for the trace elements. What he is babbling about is additives.

The more processed the food, the more additives there are. But not all additives are bad. So the more fresh veg he can eat (yes, even from Aldi, where they actually pay some attention to seasons) the better. He needs to stay off the sweets, cakes, biscuits, 'diet foods', 'health foods' and all the other shit. He also needs some awareness of food miles, which means he can't have what he wants all year round.

If he's prepared to do all this, the babble about chemicals may be a little more valid.

but with the rudeness I really wouldn't bother. Serve what you do, take it or leave it.