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It’s no wonder kids today develop a pallete for processed food. When I was away with a young couple last weekend every meal we had their little girl was offered something different from the freezer, whereas we were eating fresh meat and vegetables.
Her mother kept saying she won’t eat this and she won’t eat that but the child was never asked. When I used to come home from school my mother cooked one meal and one meal only for all of us if you didn’t like it you went hungry and it was rarely something from a freezer covered in batter or breadcrumbs and saturated in fat.
I’ve witnessed my sister-in-law cook three different meals in one go for her family. No mother is going to give her child something they really hate but how much effort does it take to find something that you all like and actually looks like real food.
You’re quite right Rose. The same applied when me and my brother were kids. Mum cooked a meal and you ate it. There was none of this, cooking seperate meals for everyone.
I have to confess though to doing the same sometimes. For example if me and the OH want a chilli, the kids can’t eat that because they really don’t like spicey food, so I’ll cook them something else. If I’m doing a roast though, they do eat that, and they do eat vegetables. They don’t get chips/chicken nuggets/dippers/burgers etc every night. In fact they are lucky if they get chips once a week.
I know what you mean by kids menus though. All they get offered is chips and nuggets. It’s no wonder we have an obesity problem in the UK. Apparantly lots of kids are obese by the time they start primary school, hence one of the reasons M&S has started up it’s *plus size* range of uniforms for kids.
Oh god this brings back memories!
My mum made one meal, if you didn’t eat it you went without, and if she thought you were just being picky she’d tell you you’d better eat it or you’ll get it again at the next mealtime…even if that mealitme was breakfast! and how often did we hear the words “there’s children starving in Africa would be glad of that food”.
A few years back my sister and her family came to stay, they didn’t have much money so the visit was their holiday and since they couldn’t afford to eat out I did all the cooking. By the fourth day I called a halt to cooking 4 different meals each evening and just told them what was for supper – home made cottage pie and steamed vegetables. When my sister said that her daughter wouldn’t like that, I told her that she’d better sort food out for her then hadn’t she, this wasn’t a cafe and I was on holiday too…so off she went to Tesco, coming back with a Pot Noodle for her daughter and some heavily processed ham and cheese strings for her son. I refused to feel guilty about the fact that they weren’t eating properly, the food was there, it was up to them if they ate it or not.
The pot noodle was made and turned onto a plate to look like a proper meal, the kids ate happily. Then my neice came into the kitchen to watch me cooking. It was quite obvious from the questions she was asking that she’d never seen a cottage pie that didn’t come ready made, and when she tasted it, it was obvious from her face that she liked it but she didn’t dare admit it, leaving my sister declaring “she likes Pot Noodles so that’s what I let her have, she has them 3 or 4 times a week.” :shock:
What I don’t get is that both myself and my sister had exactly the same upbringing, ate exactly the same food, if anything she can cook better than me when she tries…so why doesn’t she? Surely it’s harder work and more expensive to cook 4 different meals each night even if one of those “meals” is a pot noodle?
I often used to find children would eat something in someone elses house they wouldnt eat at home and it’s probably because they didnt have the choice.
@bat wrote:
You’re quite right Rose. The same applied when me and my brother were kids. Mum cooked a meal and you ate it. There was none of this, cooking seperate meals for everyone.
I have to confess though to doing the same sometimes. For example if me and the OH want a chilli, the kids can’t eat that because they really don’t like spicey food, so I’ll cook them something else. If I’m doing a roast though, they do eat that, and they do eat vegetables. They don’t get chips/chicken nuggets/dippers/burgers etc every night. In fact they are lucky if they get chips once a week.
I know what you mean by kids menus though. All they get offered is chips and nuggets. It’s no wonder we have an obesity problem in the UK. Apparantly lots of kids are obese by the time they start primary school, hence one of the reasons M&S has started up it’s *plus size* range of uniforms for kids.
Children need a certain amount of fat in their diet and many wont understandably eat hot and spicey food but with the huge choice of food we have these days as you say batty chips and convenience food should be a once a week treat.
When I started secondary school in 1986 for the first two years we did Home Economics or Cookery as it was known.
We were taught to cook, taught about nutrition etc.
Then in the 3rd year it got replaced with Food Technology which is all theory and no practical.
We spent more time analysing food labels and designing them rather than prepping and cooking food.
At the same time, the McDonalds, KFCs and pizza places started opening up everywhere.
Now my generation are the ones with the fat, obese primary school kids who get driven to and from school because they and their parents are too fat to walk- is it any wonder?
Meal times in our house …… nightmare!!!!
I was raised in a home where all meals were cooked from scratch – never frozen …. nothing tinned etc!!! Very much ‘old’ school …
When my daughter was diagnosed yrs ago with diabeties …. although the menu didnt change drastically … the ingredients had to – low sugar/low fat everything …
No sooner had we adapted to the new routine ….. an elder daughter declared she was veggie … has been for over 4 yrs now …
Initially – it was a case of her having what we had with no meat or a quorn alternative …. in time we managed to compromise on most things so that all four of us could sit to the same meal – and still gettin all the goodness we needed from it …
That said …. it was hard goin .. lookin up recipies – working out how to get the same tastes minus sugar/animal biproducts – I didnt really have a choice as I wanted both the girls to get a good balanced diet … personally for some I have to agree with the other posts – its laziness…
Sod that … I’m all for good old fashioned home cooking!!!!!
Rose – in your reply to Bat you state that “convenience food should be a once a week treat” I think this is where half the problem lies. When I was growing up it was all home grown, home cooked and you didn’t dare leave it and a treat to us was having a morning at the park or a trip to a different beach…..food wasn’t used as a treat.
It’s far to easy for people now to say “oh be good and I’ll take you do McDonalds for a treat” and before you know it, it’s what the kids expect and it’s “easier” on the adults to give in than deal with the fall out of a screaming child.
It’s how society sees “treats” that has lead to the diet becoming so bad. If you constantly praise a child by giving it “crap” then when you don’t give it the “crap” the child is getting the signal that it isn’t being good and plays up.
Most people wouldn’t treat their animals they way they treat their kids but they just can’t see that feeding them badly is wrong because somewhere along the line the whole idea of food being there as fuel has gone out the window.
I don’t see what’s wrong with convenience food – obviously some is better quality than others, but then home cooking of ‘real’ food can be dire if the cook is no good.
On the whole, convenience foods have the same ingredients as home-made food – it’s not like it comes from an ICI chemical works or nuclear power station or something”
I do lot of cooking from scratch and I have grown my own vegetables in the past but it’s much easier to buy the stuff at Sainsbury’s
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