over 30? you grew up eating what adults ate. now kids eat chickn fingers. pizza. mac n cheese

[laundry_queen]

36. I agree and disagree

Yes, we got crap for our lunches. Ugh, I HATED bologna and processed cheese. BARF. Breakfast was always cereal. Rice Krispies or cheerios or shreddies because those were the kinds without added sugar. However, no protein to be had. No wonder I was so hungry. And no one drank water. If you were thirsty, there was juice or milk. We had mac 'n cheese quite often, but my dad, trying to be healthy, would crack in a raw egg at the end before he put in the cheese powder. It was disgusting. And we ate out a LOT. My parents and sibling played a ton of sports so we were always on the go. Lots of McDonalds, concession food, buffets with the team after a win etc. So, I would say I didn't eat a very healthy or varied diet. When I was a preteen my mom started to get militant about eating healthy but her version was to serve nothing but raw vegetables for supper once a week and to buy only low-fat items.

I think, however, there IS a new parenting trend where people cater a little bit too much to their kids' food dislikes. I have an aunt who does this with her kids, will fix 3 meals, one for herself and one for each child because they all like different things. She will take 20 minutes to make her kids a snack because she'll start something and one kid will change their mind, "No, I don't want that now" and my aunt will put it back and ask them again what they want, and start another snack...sometimes she'll do this 3 or 4 times before her child makes up their mind. That just does not happen in my house, but I know many parents who do this.

My 2nd daughter hates broccoli, but I still serve it. If she doesn't want it, she is told she can go grab another vegetable and eat that, but she must have a vegetable. That seems to work for us. Or my youngest sometimes will decide she doesn't like a food she's tried many times before and I'll say, "Okay, you don't have to eat it all, but I want 5 big bites before you can go." And she'll do it. And then I make sure I serve it to her again the next time, instead of acting like "Oh, I forgot you don't like this, you don't have to eat this." Um no, she DOES have to eat it. And toddlers have to have food served to them something like 13 times before they'll try it on their own...so many people don't know this and make a big deal out of trying to get their kid to eat something new. And if the kid doesn't, they make a big deal out of their child hating new foods, "Oh, little Johnny is SUCH a picky eater! We've tried EVERYTHING" or worse, I know parents who seem to fabricate allergies. "Little Jane can't eat strawberries. She's allergic you know." "Oh, she's had allergy tests?" "no, they won't do allergy tests, she's too young. She once ate a strawberry and 3 days later had this rash. I just know it was the strawberries." It's like they enjoy having to work around their kids preferences and "allergies" because it makes them feel like better parents or something. My brother has a serious life threatening allergy to fish, and this whole, "Baby Suzy was acting strange after eating peanuts, she must have a peanut allergy" thing is so annoying. I've seen what a full blown anaphylactic reaction is and it's not "acting strange". And by withholding those foods they *think* their child may have an allergy to, they may be inadvertently creating an allergy. I just find it frustrating to see. It's like they feel left out if their kid isn't allergic to anything.

My youngest is actually quite good with many kinds of foods that the rest of the family doesn't like. Why? Because of her childcare provider when she was little. Our childcare provider was the best and was a vegetarian who cooked a large variety of really healthy meals from scratch every day for the kids' lunch. My daughter learned to love olives (no one in the family will touch those), tomatoes (I'm the only one who loves those) and even spicy foods. Her caregiver said if she balked at a food, she would just point out to her that everyone else was eating and liked it, and that she should give it a try. Peer pressure worked every time, LOL. I wonder if smaller families overall means kids don't get that experience of seeing everyone else enjoy a food, so it's not familiar to them, so they avoid it. Hm. Anyhow, yeah, I do think things have changed in some ways, but we sure did eat a lot of crap when we were kids too.