"Doing this will make it harder to feed my kids. So don't."

I will feed my kids what I want to feed them, thank you.

I’ve never met Adam McDowell, I don’t know him, but I really don’t like him.

In an article for the National Post entitled “Death to the chicken finger”, McDowell discusses at length, how children’s menus at restaurants are horrible unhealthy things. He goes on to say parents post-1980s give in too easily to their fussy kids and the menus need to be ditched, in order, to expand the variety of food kids eat.

I have two things to say about his piece.

1. You’re wrong,

and

2. Shut the hell up. Unless you have a fussy child you have NO idea.

Claiming this whole fussy eater thing is recent and part of the new generation of parents (seriously can we not do anything right) is absolute BS.

My siblings and I (all examples of the 70s and 80s children he references in the article) were all fussy, particularly my brother and younger sister, and guess what Mr-adults-should-have-sophisticated-palates, they still are.  Except now as adults they simply avoid the foods they don’t like because they don’t have an authority figure forcing them to eat something they hate.

You don’t need a wide and varied palate to be healthy. My partner is quite healthy (read: complete and utter health freak) and basically lives off chicken, steak, rice and veggies. He hates the flavoursome foods I like and we eat different dinners 90% of the time. He is so healthy it almost makes me want to join him, but let’s face it: cake.

But what I really want to say to Mr McDowell is this.

You just don’t get it.

You don’t get it because you don’t have a son like mine. And just to show you what it’s like in my house here are a few examples of his diet:

He doesn’t eat lollies, ice cream, or any cake with any form of icing.

He doesn’t drink cows milk or juice or fizzy drink (never has). He ONLY drinks water.

For a treat he does like chocolate – plain milk don’t-add-any-other-weird-crap-to-it chocolate. I truly believe this is genetic. My nan, my mum and I all love plain chocolate. Just plain, nothing else.

He does like tomatoes, cheese, apples, watermelon and vegemite sandwiches.

And he likes chicken nuggets, ahh the dreaded chicken nugget. Some days we manage to get him to eat a coated chicken tender and sometimes it's nuggets from a box.

I get spoken to about his food ‘issues’ all the time and let me tell you something:

WE’VE TRIED.

We’ve tried offering new foods, we’ve tried (and I hated) giving him no option and he simply went without and went to bed hungry – for a week. And yes we’ve even tried bribing him. Nothing has worked.

This child never had baby food from a jar. I made everything from scratch. I had those little freezer containers and made meat and veg and chicken in cute little tubs and he was even fussy back then.

The kid is fussy and, if my family history is anything to go by, it probably won’t change as he grows older. He is tall and a healthy weight and the dentist said his teeth are perfect.

That is what matters, and that Mr. Dowell, is all I care about.

Pass me the kids menu, I'm taking my family out for dinner.

Do you think kid's menus should be healthier? Or are they just fine the way they are? 

Like this? Try:

“A nutritionist looked inside my kids’ school lunchboxes…”

“Stop labelling kids. Just stop it.”