I've been stewing over this for a few days now. A friend of Emma's has been making comments to her recently about the food I give them for afternoon tea when she comes to play. "Why does your Mum always give us fruit for afternoon tea?". Well this week it got worse. She didn't want to come to our house, prefering to go to another friends house where she knows she will get chips and chocolate. Now I love chips and chocolate too, as do my kids, but in our house, you gotta eat the good stuff too.
We eat fruit for afternoon tea because the kids dont like it in their lunches much. So I usually put a platter of cut up fruit out as soon as they get home from school. My kids have little bits of fussyness with fruit - Bear doesnt like bananas and Dan's not a fan of grapes and Em is allergic to kiwifruit. After compulsory fruit eating, there is always something else, it may be some home baking (muffins, scones, slices, biscuits), or crackers, sandwiches, toast, crumpets depending on what activities are to follow and what time dinner is going to be. I dont think that this is unusal food to offer after school. Do you? (Of course this food is put out only once lunch boxes have been inspected to make sure they ate all their lunch - if not, they must finish that before they get anything else).
I have been reading a few other blogs recently where people are struggling to find food that everyone likes and my kids have fussy friends and to be honest it just plain bothers me. We deal with restrictions on food daily, yet we all eat the same dinner every night. If dinner is not eaten, they cant complain about being hungry later, and there is no pudding or milky drink on offer. Again they have fussiness - Em cant stand stirfry, but will happily eat all the veges raw with the cooked meat and rice/noodles, Dan doesnt like mushrooms, so he picks them out and passes them to his sisters, Bear just knows she has to eat it and usually does, she's not big on meat, so I only give her a little bit.
My kids are really good eaters (I mean really good, they think brussel sprouts are awesome and Em always picks them up and begs for them when we go to the vege shop....or is that just plain weird???) as are most of our extended family, yet my kids seem to have lots of fussy friends. Em's friend I mentioned above, never eats when she comes to my house, yet I can usually tempt the other kids fussy friends with fruit of some description. There will always be things we dont like - I hate sausages and processed meat like salami and a little bit of fussy is fine, but there is a boy in Dan's year at school who doesnt eat anything except those frozen chicken nugget things in the shape of chips ( he even took them to school camp.......).
What is going on in the world when here in our first world economy, we have kids refusing food and copious amounts of uneaten food thrown away. http://www.sustainability.govt.nz/rubbish/food-waste
In America there is an obesity problem which is spreading around the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1082739.stm
Yet in Africa there is a famine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/696803.stm
The children in Ethiopia and Somalia are again dying because there is no food to feed them and they are going at a 1000 a day into refugee camps where they recieve about a cup of some kind of gruel or rice. The droughts have killed off their livestock and their crops and the prices of food at the markets are too high. Here are some pictures of what life is like in East Africa at the moment. http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/gallery/2011/jul/08/east-africa-drought-in-pictures
We have banned the phrase "I'm starving" from our house, if it is mentioned they get a lecture about life in third world countries. When they refuse to eat their dinner, we tell them again about the children in Africa who would love their dinner, and how it would probably be more food than they got in a whole day. Em and I saw a documentary on the news recently about the children going to the Dabaab refugee camp. She was horrified by the skinny arms and legs and misshapen bodies of the children.
I dont know what we can do about it on a global scale. Those mega corporates have a lot to answer for I think. But I feel a little better knowing my family is appreciating the food that I give them, that we dont give in to all the prepackaged hype food that kids just have to have and that we have minimal waste (by modern standards, but I know we can do better).
Getting off my soap box now..... Just had to say something though.
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