Me too. Apparently I was taken to the doctor who was told I only ate treacle (Golden Syrup actually) butties. “So feed him those” said the doc. I have made up for it since.

nothing boils my piss more than a fussy eater. Kids/adults/whoever…

My parents were both very young during the war, and of course rationing was in and grandad was probably drinking and smoking a fair bit, so money was tight, so any food they had got eaten and finished.

We were brought up the same, i always finished everything, still pretty much do. The missus calls me Mr Yummy because she says everything I eat i seem to enjoy! ps. i’ve never been fitter and in better shape than i am at the moment.

Some tough love needed IMHO.

The problem with encouraging that is that when he goes to school he won’t be able to do it and may suffer.

Our kids eat well (age 2 and 4) as we have a no snack except fruit policy. In between meals they don’t have any crisps, cakes, chocolate, biscuits, toast, etc. We have lowered the fruit bowl to their height as They are allowed to eat fruit or carrots/cucmebers/peppers at any time. We notice when cousins come round, the cousins almost always bring a bag of snacks which they all devour, they then don’t eat supper, hence starting a cycle of don’t sleep as well, more grumpy in the day etc.

We don’t scowl if they don’t finish their plate and they always have a yougurt before bed.

OP – have you tried any of the Annabel Karmel recipe books? They have some great ideas in there.

We do the secret vegetable pasta sauce quite a lot. Her three cheese sauce is good too.

I think that there’s a lot to be said for the traditional italian approach of several separate small courses, including the vegetables being a separate course, i.e. antipasto, pasta, meat/fish, vegetables and then fruit to finish.

If someone doesn’t like one of those courses, they can simply wait till the next one, and if it’s a child then repeatedly seeing adults enjoy a course consisting solely of something they have previously rejected or decided they do not like, may prompt them to eventually try it again (unpressured and without prompting), since there is nothing else on the table on offer during that course.

I suspect that a lot of the households where children are forced to clear their plate and the parents take pride that they themselves are not fussy and will eat anything, are like that because the parents are crap cooks and have learned their behaviours from their own parents who were similarly crap cooks. For them, children not eating something is a personal slight on their poor cooking and poor taste in food, resulting in these sorts of comments:

This attitude is awful. It’s also utterly self-centred. I could not care less what boils your piss: this is not about you or what you want. We should want children and others to enjoy their food and take pleasure in sitting down to meals.

Rationing in World War 2 is often used as an excuse by many for this attitude and approach to food, when the reality is that standards of cooking in the UK for much of the 20th Century were simply woeful, and the legacy of that is still present today in many households and in the food industry (appalling cheap takeaway food and rubbish ready meals).

The other aspect of serving food groups as separate individual courses, is that you cannot get away with poor cooking: if vegetables are a dish in their own right, then the lazy unimaginative approach of boiling them to death, as if for part of a meal of meat and two veg, won’t work.

Taste receptors differ throughout your life – salty, sweet, bitter and sour. At a young age the sweet receptor is strongest which is why most kids have a sweet tooth and don’t like vegetables. But they grow out of this usually.
My oldest is okay at mealtimes, the youngest is a nightmare. They have their favourite meals (sausages, lasagne anything with baked beans), but we don’t give them those too often and try and vary their meals.
The best way i know of to get my kids to eat is send them to a gran. They’ll always clean their plates if a gran has cooked it, even if it is the same as something I make them that they turn their noses up at.
My sister took her youngest to a nutritionist due to her very bad eating habits. According to the expert – everyone eats the same meal at the same time and nothing else if offered if she doesn’t eat it. Don’t make a fuss if she doesn’t touch it and give her a set time limit to eat it (half an hour I think it was)

My aunt (by marriage) hated mushrooms as a child, as did her sister. She was forced to ‘clear her plate’ of everything at mealtimes. She told her parents she would be sick if she ate mushrooms – they said she would have to eat the sick off her plate as well.

She ate the mushrooms, was sick, and was forced to each the mushrooms and her own vomit until the plate was clean.
She’s a bit funny with food now.

I feed my 3 and 5 year old a balance of proteins, carbs and veg. Sometimes they don’t eat it. I don’t really care. My best friend ate only white bread and martmite till he was 10! He’s a food writer now…….

Forcing your children to eat anything is wrong. Requesting that they try things is good. It can take a child 17 tastes or times to ‘like’ a different food remember.

Wow lots of good advice on here.
With our kids I’ve always insisted that we don’t make anything special for anyone – there are too many of us. I also hate seeing food wasted so I do like to see plates cleared.

Having said that, if a child doesn’t like something we ask only that they have one mouthful of that thing in case their tastes have changed. In order to get clear plates we make sure to make first helpings small. We’ll never say no to seconds. We also avoid snacks between meals other than cut up apples etc if they’re being really active.

I think it’s probably best to have clear rules, so the children know what is expected, but then as parents you are free to bend and break them when necessary to keep meals a lovely family time.