Posted on 08/10/2010 12:55:47 PM PDT by MissTed
I would be tempted just to cook a big meal with plenty of meat, and be sure to have several sides of fruits/veggies/salads when they come. Eat the meat in front of them.
Picky eaters are generally boring people, not aware that they are missing much of the adventure life offers, while burdening those close to them.
probably yes.
when I was a kid, I only ate elbow macaroni for dinner, for about 3 years.
My mom would have cooked me a meal at 3AM if I said I was hungry.
I eat what I want now, as an adult, and since I do the cooking around here, it is no skin off anyone’s nose.
I do cook complete meals for my family, I just don’t eat any of it.
Amen and yum yum!
that is funny. I am a pickie, and have a highly developed sense of smell.
Which is a curse!!! Ranch dressing and garlic both make me nauseous.and Chinese food....
If they still turn up their nose at that, well, that's it. No snacks until the next meal (and it's a long time until Breakfast).
Occasionally, they'll still turn up their noses at what they ASK for. At that point, I say "Tough". Mrs WBill used to worry; I told her "They're not going to starve between Dinner and Breakfast. When they're hungry, they'll eat." Especially since the *real* reason behind their being finicky is usually because they've got something else that they'd like to be doing (outside to play, etc), other than sit down at the dinner table.
The boys are both growing like weeds so I guess it hasn't hurt them yet. My youngest has figured it out, usually he works on his plate with little coaxing. Oldest still hasn't gotten it yet, but he will.
We have children that are wonderful eaters and that was always our rule too.
You have to try everything.
The only exceptions I made were when I found something I knew a child truly didn’t like. My oldest son HATES mayo and mustard. He hates mayo to the point, he didn’t eat ice cream till he was 3 because he feared it was hiding mayo. I would never make him try something with those ingredients. I would tell him that is why he didn’t have to try it.
Children should be served healthy food, try everything,be respected with true dislikes, and never lied to about what is in their food. It is job as parents to do those things, if they don’t eat what I put before them at a given meal that isn’t my problem.
The only problem we have now, is my kids have tastes for foods that are expensive. Mac-n-cheese and hotdogs are cheap. Oysters, curries,dim sum, good cheeses, and sushi are expensive!
If they get hungry enough that pickiness will resolve itself.
If it is only one or two items, you are right to respect this aversion.
As a child I was not a picky eater but I **hated** canned corn. My parent insisted that I at least “try it”.
Well....As an adult I developed a violent allergy to corn that manifested itself in idiopathic dermagraphism ( a form of hives). My mother who was then in her eighties would occasionally apologize for making me eat corn as a kid. She felt really bad about it.
I point out that I am not Cajun, and live nowhere near the coast. I’m not Mexican either (Tacos!) or Italian (Alfredo) or Chinese (potstickers) or southern (BBQ) or etc, but I appreciate new flavors...
my SIL and I stop speaking over her picky-eater kids. My children ate everything and if they didn’t eat at a meal, so be it. I knew they would be certain to eat at the next meal, no snacks.
She spent hours and hours a day feeding her children. Dinner was at least a two hour affair for her very skinny 5 year old boy. Begging, pleading, promises. If he didn’t finish 8 0z of milk at every meal, she would force pudding down him after dinner. She hid food in his toys hoping he would find it and eat it.
I told her parents, my inlaws, it was nuts. That if the child didn’t eat enough food to sustain himself he needed a doctor. If my SIL spent this much time feeding a kid who didn’t have a medical problem, my SIL needed a psych doctor.
Her kids are still poor eaters but are both early 20’s now and seemed to have survived all right. I still think she is a nut, thus we only speak when we have to.
Frankly, I dislike going out to eat with her, simply because I can't stand to listen to her order: "I would like a salad. Please take out the tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, and onions. Serve the ranch dressing on the side. I would like a steak. Done "medium", but not too pink. I'd like french fries on a separate plate, done extra crispy...."
And so on. I (as well as the waitress is too, I'm sure) an thinking: "Geez, if you're that particular, stay at home and cook it yourself."
He still doesn’t eat mayo, cheese and mustard and he eats everything. I also figured he was better of without those things anyway. He has been living in China all summer and we joke about how happy he is without any cheese.
Sounds like half of The Fox and the Stork.
LOL! I made my children try everything at least twice also. My youngest had such a hatred of mushrooms that he picked every tiny piece of mushroom out of a tuna casserole made with cream of mushroom soup. He would accumulate a pretty good sized pile of little pieces of mushroom on the side of his plate. He still hates mushrooms.
I'm allergic to crab, shrimp and lobster. No hives, they just make me ill a few hours after eating them. Every year for at least eight years my parents made me try one of them to see if I was no longer allergic. Without fail I would puke a few hours after eating. I think that was overkill on my parent's part.
My kids are the same- the have developed a taste for better things.
But expensive foods are usually higher in nutritional value, though.
And I find I DO NOT gain weight as fast when I eat good healthy (expensive) quality food. And I eat less of it to satisfy my hunger- so the cost turns out to be similar.
OMG ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely. A genuine dislike isn't "picky", IMHO. My kids dislike cheese (except Mrs WBill's homemade Mac and Cheese, go figure). Since she and I do the cooking and we rarely eat out, it's easy to leave it off.
Have you ever made pizza without cheese? I look at it and say "Bleah". The kids absolutely love it, it's one of their favorites. So, I bake one for us "All the way" and one for the kids consisting only of crust, spices, sauce, and whatever toppings we have around. Works out fine.
My favorite thing to do is try something I never had before... I wish I could think of something new tonight, in fact...
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YUM
My Mom was mostly like that too except after I threw up on the table trying to eat the brussel spouts she tried to make me eat.I just can not swallow them no matter how they are made.
LOL - I did the same thing with asparagus. Nasty, nasty stuff.
Every obvious solution to this was tried. Various doctors and psychiatrists who claimed that they could help him were not able to produce any improvement.
(I knew you all would be interested)
My oldest was the pickiest eater too. He would visually inspect and then smell his food before he ate it. Mostly ate biscuits and Kraft Mac n Cheese. The child has only had antibiotics 4 times in his life and never an ounce of fat, very athletic.
He joined the Army and in one of his first letters home he wrote.......”Remember when I was a picky eater? I don’t even know what I eat now..mystery fish or meat, I’ll eat anything you put in front of me!”
Your son sounds like he’s a better eater than I was. I remember seeing(just seeing it!) a glob of watery, runny ketchup when I was a kid and being skeeved out to the point that I swore off ketchup AND tomatoes for years after the original trauma. Then one day I was just fine about it, able to eat ketchup and tomatoes without cringing. I was lucky it was pretty much just a condiment that grossed me out for a time, it could have been grilled meat or seafood or something else truly good.
Yeah, I bet the native parents of really poor areas don’t have to worry about the young-uns being too darn picky.
Freegards
My list.
Mushrooms, onions, peanut butter, shrimp.
I do like sushi for some reason, so go figure.
We once hosted one of my husband’s single soldiers for Thanksgiving Dinner. The guy wouldn’t eat anything I made. He didn’t “like” turkey. The gravy was an “odd color”. The homemade rolls smelled “too much like bread”. (I think he meant that he could smell the yeast.) The scratch vegetable chowder “had onions in it”. He ate the crust of the apple pie, but not the filling. He actually gagged once. I’ve never been so insulted.
As soon as the meal was over, he left.
I told my husband, “At least we now know why he’s single!”
This is the first and only time a single soldier has behaved with nothing but respect and gratitude. I’m glad that I kept hosting dinners.
My elder daughter at 26, still has problems with Brussels sprouts (Barbie cabbages) although she is an adventurous eater and cook too. I had her try the sprouts the way I make them. She deemed them passible. Kroger has some pretty mild frozen ones. I heat them in the microwave then add butter and Pepperidge Farm seasoned breadcrumbs. My husband and I love them.
I’ve had them that way too and still can’t swallow them.For me they come under the more you chew the bigger they get.ICK!
“In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled Picky Eaters: When Waffles and Fries Are All You Eat, ViLaLuz wrote: Since when is a personal food choice a medical condition? Sheesh.”
I guess one could say that shooting up heroine is a personal choice. There are, per se, few health consequences that stem directly from it. That whole resulting endocarditis and spiraling addiction thing, however....
Same thing goes with a diet of little more than processed carbs and fat. The man is a fool, and his body is paying the price for it, no doubt.
I’m with you
When my two were growing up, I made a decision to just not make food a big deal. I made it, served it, and they ate or didn’t eat. Either way, food was there. I would offer to make up a plate of leftovers if anyone was a bit uninterested.
No real snacks in the house for anyone after dinner. If my girls didn’t eat, I just didn’t make any kind of deal about it. I wanted NO control issues over food like I had when I was growing up and my dad would FORCE scrambled eggs in my mouth.
Go figure, when there are no control issues over foods, kids tend to try different things, especially when they get hungry!
I like your approach. It sounds like a win/win to me. The kids get good food put in front of them and if they don’t honestly like it, they get another nutritious alternative and not coddled to by giving into them with junk food and junk snacks after the fact.
I’m not such a hard butt in that I believe that you have to eat everything placed in front of you or else. I know there are foods that kids and adults honestly do not care for and that’s fine by me. On the other hand, I believe in nutrition for children too and not feeding them a diet of boxed mac-n-cheese, pop-tarts and frozen pizza because they won’t eat anything half-way nutritious.
Omg ! That’s my favorites
I try to keep salt to a minimum - high blood pressure. Actually my amateur gourmet wife informs me that one of the Indian spices she uses is actually a mineral resin of some kind (?).
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