Food Choices In The Family- It Is Still Complicated

By Eric Hartwell 

It was hard enough for my wife to cook for my children and me when the boys were little. We always allowed the boys to choose what they wanted and to decide what they did and didn't like to eat. Also, she doesn't eat meat and I do not eat fish so things, as you can imagine, are pretty complicated.

The thing with small children is that although you want them to be free thinkers and understand about choice you still want them to eat a balanced, healthy diet. So you do have to guide those choices to a certain degree.

So you develop a fair idea of their likes and dislikes and you put a lovingly prepared nutritious meal in front of them and they say "I don't like that." Their palate is growing with them and their likes do change because of this and of course because little Sammy at school doesn't like it so now it becomes taboo in our house.

My wife usually ended up preparing four different meals to suit everyone. In our parents' day a meal was made, put on the table and everyone ate it. There was no choice. This may be because the whole meal was hand prepared. Nowadays we have convenience foods, pre-prepared vegetables, packed sauces and fast food restaurants all meaning less time is being spent preparing our meals.

Now my boys are older their food choices are fairly well established making meal choices a bit easier but we still make at least two meals at each sitting, one with meat, one without and still make the odd mistake and hear those immortal words " You know I don't like that"!