Oh man, it’s so hard for me to wrap my brain around people that don’t like fatty meat, but I’m around them a lot. On the plus side: more for me!
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Daddy died, but that’s okay because a guy on the other side of the world lost both his kids today. shrugs
Perspective is fine. Using other peoples struggles as a justification to lower your own standards is ridiculous. Besides, it seems like people are acting like I said feeding your kids chicken nuggets is bad. I said feeding them chicken nuggets EVERY night is bad.
Let me just add: Well done to all you parents who are making ends meet and doing the best you can. So what if they eat junk occasionally?
And again, this is where we agree to disagree.
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IMO, parents should be cooking far more meals for their children than retreat to fast food. How do you expect your children to feed themselves when they are on their own, if they are not active participants in the preparation of a good number of their meals at home.
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I agree with this. Although I might not have the most knowledgeable say in this, I can say that this is true. My mom cooks dinner most nights, and I’ve learned a ton from it. I wouldn’t doubt a good amount of the kids at school would be clueless with this (but I can’t say anything really since I don’t actually know)
I had a bunch of responses to everything in this thread since my last post, but I’d like to zero in on something I find interesting. Several of the other posters have previously mentioned food scarcity as children in other threads.
Just speaking for myself, I remember going hungry because rats got into the pantry, too much month left at the end of the money, the church pantry had a family limit, whatever.
It was actually a factor in why I got into the food industry. No matter what else I had going on, I could eat.
So when I see your posts about how your parents won’t buy you the right food, but still make you dinner, or people without children saying it’s easy, I think you guys are missing the key points presented here.
Cooking for yourself is stupid easy.
Other people in the mix is a whole ‘nother ballgame.
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It was actually a factor in why I got into the food industry. No matter what else I had going on, I could eat.
It’s interesting how these stories manifest. My log details my own food issues/anxieties, and with that my recent obsession with cooking. Kinda like exposure therapy: you obtain mastery over that which once ruled over you. Be curious how many share something similar.
And, similarly, how those who went hungry make it a point for that to never repeat itself for the next generation.
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That was kind of my point here. We’ve all met athletes, but most of us haven’t tried to compete in the NFL.
Anyways, I don’t mean to gang up. I think we have a bit of a disagreement over a key principle, but it’s honestly a side of the table we’re all on (in almost any endeavor) until life forces us to think otherwise. I do think you’re coming at things from an outcomes-focused mindset, and I greatly appreciate that.
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From a pure nutritional viewpoint this is a fair statement. From a parent with a child who is medicated for ADHD, dangerously underweight, whose medication causes low appetite. I would be the happiest parent alive if my son would happily eat nuggets for every meal. Having to chose between medicating and your son so he is able to cope with school and life or stopping medication so your son will actually eat something is not easy.
It’s easy to judge parents with broad statements but sometimes you need to walk a mile in their shoes.
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Exactly this. Like, I am fairly well off right now and have a home gym with all the recovery equipment I could ever want/need (Sauna, Cold Plunge, leg/hip/arm compression, red light, massage gun, cups, etc).. do I also use it, no? Why.. Well, I have to wake up at 5a to get 3 kids ready for school. I have enough time to cold plunge and maybe do an exercise for 10 minutes to get blood flowing. Drop them off at school. Why don’t they take bus? Well, they did.. until one of my kids told us they were getting bullied and got punched by a kid much older. So, now I drive them. Which means I get to office later than I want to and can’t go on lunch break to gym. I then get home from work and get kids through dinner, then get baby to bed. Sometimes that’s easy and I lift. Other times it takes until 930. By then, I could go workout.. but it’s 930 and I’ve been up for 16.5 hours at that point. I’m better off forgoing a session, so I can get rest. So, I lay in bed. Could I read? Well, no. I wear hard contacts and I only get 16 hours out of them, before I can’t see much anymore. So reading isn’t possible. I can quasi watch tv, but I need captioning on, since wife and baby are asleep.. that doesn’t work, because I can’t see.. so what do I do? I fall asleep.
These types of variables are impossible to provide blanket statements to. Most people have similar types of days.
Mind you, I own a company with four offices, have a wife and four kids. The fact I’m in decent shape and train at all is way better than 90% of people. It’s very easy to nitpick people’s lives from the cheap seats, while your mom makes you dinner every night.
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Dr. Nick explains the standard diet of 80’s and 90’s kids in the rural midwestern neck of the woods I grew up in.
”Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop Tarts.”
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From my observation the standard diet dropped further from the '50’s and '60’s to the '80’s and '90’s than it has from the '80’s and '90’s to today. I would suppose rural USA is farther behind the diet of urban and suburban USA by quite a few years
Oh how my wife has eaten those words so many times. From breastfeeding, to pacifiers and yes eating habits. My kids are 7 and 8 now. Daughter eats chicken nuggets and bread(biscuits, bagels, dinner rolls). My son eats fruit all day long. If we dont stop him he’ll rip through 3lb of grapes.
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Well, I’m jealous.
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Thats a great way of saying that. I’m gonna keep this and use it too. 
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Oh it continues into teenage years… but we are wise men and we say nothing
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Just to completely clarify my point because it seems like me saying “No time? I don’t buy it” was recieved as “all parents are liars and are making bad choices”. As soon as one user jumped straight to “he’s throwing shade at parents who feed their kids chicken nuggets” when I never said that was a problem, but doing it EVERY night is - things just got distorted quickly. Adults can eat however they want, but kids can’t live well on chicken nuggets and chips every night. That’s just basic nutrition. And honestly, I don’t think “no time” fully explains it. A lot of it comes down to the food culture we’ve normalised. Convenience first, ultra-processed, and routines that are easy to fall into when life’s chaotic. I’m not attacking parents in different situations, I’m saying the system and the culture make the default options pretty poor, and kids end up paying for it. The “socially scrolls Facebook all evening to see if that selfie got any more likes so here’s another microwave pizza” kind of person quick to palm off their kids are the ones I was trying to describe, and part of that culture that needs solving. Perhaps I’m wrong to do that though, education certainly plays a part. The point I was trying to communicate was far more nuanced and never the “hey you feed your kids nuggets so you’re lazy” comment it got taken for.
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Fair!
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If this was me, I’ll clarify that’s not what I was implying. The conversation went from individuals and their individual diet, which I agree that “not having enough time” is usually not an excuse for them. But then the examples of parents feeding their kids food started popping up as examples of being lazy, so I wanted to point out those two scenarios have different factors.
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I didn’t see your comments as saying this and I don’t disagree with the intent of your statement, but I still stand by my comment.
For some parents saying I don’t have time isn’t an excuse it is just a function of how busy life can be when you have a job, kids, training, voluntary work, a house to maintain, cars to maintain, family and friends who need help, a neighbor with a broken lawnmower. You name it, life is sometimes extremely busy. And yes if we made our kids dinner our 100% top priority of the day then of course we would find 12 mins to cook something nutritionally balanced, but life doesn’t work like that. Often we think about what to cook for dinner about 15 seconds before we start cooking it, only to look in the fridge and find it empty. Most parents will have something frozen in the freezer that they use to just put food on the table so their kids can eat. Some of the more organised ones will have bulk prepared and frozen nutritionally balanced meals that they can heat up in a pinch. Only for many to then have kids decide they no longer like the particular food. The choice then is for them to go hungry or eat something else. Something else for my son last night was literally 2 min noodles and a protein smoothy. It was hardly gourmet and not exactly meat and 3 Veg, but I was still happy to see him eat.
As I said at the start I don’t disagree with the intent of your statement and I am sure there are parents who say they have no time, when really it is education and discipline that they are lacking.
Funny thing is my wife and I both love food and love to cook nice things, but as adults with 3 kids, the most dreaded time of the week is deciding what groceries to buy and what we will cook for dinner this week. It straight up gives my wife anxiety just talking about what to cook for dinner, or what we are buying this week. If we could to afford to outsource one thing it would be this.
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