With my friends and family they usually ate later, after 6 when baby was in bed so to have seperate for the baby was much easier for them. Plus it was sitting in the freezer for them ready to be heated.

Ive seen a difference with two of my friends kids. One gets nothing but fresh food, all cooked at home and either frozen or made each day. No sweets, crisps, only water or milk (breast milk) or anything "packaged".  The other got tinned stuff and later chips, crisps, sweets, juice, anything prom a packet that you could stuff in the oven.

The first one was very calm, had a good concentration span, would settle for bed time etc etc.
The other was so hyperactive, never went to bed before 11pm, no concentration. The diet was changed after watching a TV programme and the difference in the behaviour was incredible.

I think that speaks for its self.

I don't think that I said that I didn't have four hours a month to spare - but there you go. What I didn't have was a freezer and a food processor. What I did have was a baby that cried incessantly all day for a year, a husband that worked abroad a lot and no other friends or family to help out. My children never had a bottle of anything - only me or a trainer cup with water or milk (cows - never formula). Ready made food was a life-saver at times and I'm sure that most mums will agree that sometimes you have to fall back on them. The ready made meals only last for a short time in a baby's life - maybe 6 months - I can't remember now.

Daisy

Fair doo's.
The families i have worked for as a child minder, people in my family and friends of mine have used both methods and i did notice a difference in quality but, since i have no children, maby im not one to comment.

Um...theres a world of difference between feeding mainly fresh with the occasional convenience and ALL convenience and junk food! :)

And what does tinned baby food come under?
I class it as junk food other as very healthy.

I class organic, pre-prepared, additive free baby food as convenience.

I call reconsituted chicken nuggets, beefburgers, most sausages and certainly all fast food "junk"

There is a difference.

Very interesting discussion that you have going here Thedark. Have to say that at least part of the problem is the level of advertising for junk food that is aimed at childern. Even the stuff that is reletavly healthy has to be highly coloured and there is a huge amount of research and money pumped in to these foods to make them appealing, they are high in sugar and salt which give artificially strong flavours and a sugar high. Once they are used to these Im sure it can be difficult to ween your taste buds off of them.

I was shocked when I found out the my nephew and neice on one side hardly ever sit down to a meal at home, they notmally have a cheese sarni for tea and a packet of crisps. As toddlers they loved comming to my house and would eat most preoper food, but as teenagers they are simply not interested, they hate texture and have no idea of how to appreciate or describe flavour. I just hope that one day they will ahve the courage to try some new sensations.   

When I was little 'shop cake' was a real treat!

I remember my sister spending her pocket money on 'bought' jam as she thought that it tasted better than mum's homemade :)

Daisy

My mum used to make great jam, the raspberry bushes are comming out this summer :(

My mother's was super too - but in those days when everything was homemade practically, we almost felt that we were missing out by NOT having 'shop-made' (even though the quality was far inferior) :D

Daisy

That's the point - the shop-stuff had novelty value - and couldn't you just taste the difference?! All that extra sugar, and the fantastic colours ... :D

Rumour had it that it contained mostly carrots :D

Daisy

Now here is a idea ? :)

Why not just stop serving chips,burgers, pizza etc at school ?

If kids are hungry they will eat ! :) That has alway been the way I have fed my children :) They have what we have and if they don't like it then tough ! :D

Lucy
xx

The kids on the Jamies School Dinners programme actually protested out side the canteen, banners and the lot, when the amount of processed food available was reduced. Granted these were secondary school girls, so they knew what a protest was lol.

These kids would simply wait till they got home where they had admitted they had chips and whatever every night.

I wonder why :) Anything to do with the cameras I wonder ;)

I just think give a child an inch then they can take a mile when it comes to food :)

Lucy
xx

Not to mention they were probably encouraged by the programme makers! :)

Excatly ! :)

I think alot of people have forgotten how children should be in the pecking order :D

Lucy
xx

In our house its "eat your dinner or go hungry!" :D :D

:D  We never have childrens food , nuggets, burgers etc unless we have a 'oh lets have a really naughty moment'  :) Normally at weekends if we are feeling a bit under the weather (aka hungover :) )

We cook mostly from raw ingredients and make the most wonderful meals ! Tonight we have baked spuds, carrots and peas with chicken in red wine with mushrooms , carrots (you can never eat too many carrots as the are good for your eyesight ;p ) and fresh herbs....oh yes lots of fresh garlic, about 5 cloves :D

Lucy
xx

It was never a problem when I was at school :) There was no choice - you ate it or left it :) But then we HAD to eat what was put in front of us at home - no arguments. Our parents had gone through WWII and knew what it was like to have no choice and be hungry :(

Daisy

When i was a kid it was the miners strike, we were right smack bang in the middle of it and we were supporting other members of the family who were losing money. So, the whole family would be there, roast dinner out and no-one dared leave a scrap. It was all fresh and i would sit with a big bowl of veg and munch my way through and after that was given a chicken leg to get through.

I was never given an option of what to have for tea, it was cooking when i got in from school, it was eaten regardless of whether i "fancied" it or not. My mum wouldnt dram of buying me the very fashionable (at the time) Bernard Mathews chicken drummers, they cost as much as the weeks veg!

I definitely think the schools need to do something about the standard of the dinners.  I work in a primary school at lunchtimes and the food served is cr*p!  Those turkey twizzlers actually make me feel sick.  What annoys me is that parents are told the school serves up 'healthy' options - i have never seen any in over 4 years of working in the lunch hall.

My children didn't seem to like my homemade food as babies :), so did have jars quite a bit (not all the time though), however all but my youngest eat extremely healthily - loads of veggies and I don't really buy much processed food - cook most things from scratch. My eldest would never eat school dinners as he preferred his healthy packed lunch and he never (and still doesn't) like McDonalds, etc.  However, I have noticed my middle son who previously loved healthy dinners such as meat and veg, mashed potatoes, has started to ask for the rubbish he eats at school :(.  The cooks argue that they only supply what the children eat but my sons have told me that the fruit and veg in school is terrible - overcooked, or bruised, etc.

What I think needs to happen (and we did vote for at our school but were ignored) is for the old school dinners to come back where you had choice - but only HEALTHY choices.  Children will not necessarily eat just because they are hungry - my youngest has proved that to me, but they are more likely to try different foods if their friends are trying them and eventually that should lead to better eating habits.  I am glad Jamie Oliver has decided to do this - maybe the school 'cooks' will actually have to start cooking rather than reheating now!

Fiona

Also, I don't think giving children choice is necessarily wrong - my Mum gave us choices (as I do my children) and I will eat anything now. 

Fiona

My dad has ALWAYS cleared his plate of everything - ever since my grandad pushed his face in it when he was 8 and wouldn't eat his dinner  LOLOLOL :D :D

Likewise, Daisy. We had the same choice - we could eat it or not - but there was no alternative!
:)

Problem is that a lot of parents just aren't prepared to PAY for their child to have a decent meal at school. Yes - they will pay for them to eat at McDonalds etc - (I hate to think how many times a week some children eat at fast food outlets) - but to pay for a decent meal is totally alien to them :(  My children visited Burger King, as a treat on the last day of every term and those were the only times that they ate at a fast food outlet for the rest of the year. I'm so cruel :D

Daisy

I can't watch it, the kids (and dinner ladies) just won't touch veg.  now unlike you thedark, I love chocolate etc but everyday I do eat a veg with my meal.  I love brocalli and most of my greens.  Although I'm not keen on fruit and I don't eat my 5 fruit and veg aday I still eat lot better then some other children.  I also never ate school meals as I don't like cheep yucky fatty foods (the snob in me!)

I have worked in a fast food outlet and i saw the same family in there at least three nights a week. The family deals are so cheap and the kids will eat it so its the easy option i suppose.

Ive noticed a lot more people buying the sweeter vegetables, such as butternut squash, sweet potatoes, parsnip anything that will appeal to a childs pallet and get some vit c in there :D

I have tried that HIPP Organic baby food, it tasted ok but was a very expensive way to buy mashed carrots lol.
Tell you what is nice, Boots chocolate pudding!!!! mmmmm lol.

Chocolate is just too sweet for me, dark chocolate is ok but i can only eat one or two small pieces before i begin to feel ill.
I always make sure i have veg in the freezer and eat my 5 portion every day either on its own of with meat. I love my freezer lol.

Im not trying to condemn anyone for feeding processed baby foods here, im just saying that its just as easy to take a few hours and create your own. Being so busy with the dogs i buy a shed load of veg and blanch it, freeze it into portions and then i have my daily portions ready for me, it so easy. I also understand that not everyone has a chest freezer, and many members of the BARF club with chest freezers have theirs full of dog food. Ive done the barf thing and had to use two freezers!!!! :O

i work at a secondry school as a midday assistant and are school offers a big range of healthy food but we also offer junk food we have cut chips down to 3 days a week! but the biggest proplem we face is not getting the kids to eat healthy it is to get the local government to give us enough budget so we can employ the dinnerladies foe more hours to enable us to stand there and prepare fresh healthy food instead of ppening pkts of convience foodand togive us the budget to train our dinnerladies on making various healthy meals. our budget is givin to us my thease officials providing oure kitchen is doing well so the cook is frightened of takin the junk of the menu and the kids going else were or not having lunch then oure budget will go down and we definatly wont be able to give the kids decent meals.as aparent it is also my reasponsabilty to make sure my kids eat decent healthy food at home and not just blame the school dinners

sorry for my spelling i think i need to do english lessons in my sparetime!!!!

At our school the kids have fun days on a Monday and Friday where they get burgers chips etc, the rest of the time they have healthy food cooked from scratch at home my kids have to help with the cooking so they do get a say on what we eat, once a week we have unhealthy food but neither like veg but eat lots of fruit.

I think also that if you get children interested in where their food comes from, ie, grow some in the garden and then let them cook, with supervision of course, they are more likely to eat it. We also go to our local farmers market twice a month and because all the produce is natural and has just come out of the ground, my daughter loves to help me wash and prepare it and has even said how differently is tastes from the supermarket stuff.

I was shocked when Jamie showed the kids some vegetables and most of them, if not all, didn't even know what a leek was, let alone anything else :( absolutely criminal :(

My daughters best friend thinks that spaghetti grows in the ground :( and her parents always feed the kids different food from them as "the kids don't like grown up food", (kids of 8 yrs) like spag bol, garlic chicken, risotto etc

Whenever we go out to restaurents people always comment on how well behaved she is and how adventurous she is with food. Most places don't like kids in them for the simple reason, the kids don't know how to behave, don't like the food and have never been made to sit properly at a table with their parents and enjoy eating together. We always eat dinner together, no eating from trays in front of the TV. And now I'm starting to feel very old :P Its not like it used to be in my day.......and all that :rolleyes:

Children can be really strange  :) My son ate everything until he was 2 (around the time that I had my daughter) - then he became a nightmare to feed for a couple of months. Eventually he got back to eating more normally. However, he wouldn't eat any sweets except chocolate (hoorah), only chocolate cake - no other. He would only eat meat plain - no sauces. No crisps, chocolate bars. The only fruit he ate was kiwis and strawberries - but he would drink orange juice. He ate enough vegetables that they weren't a big problem. He would go to birthday parties and when I went to collect him the mother would say 'He didn't eat anything !! ' :D :D His saving grace was that he would eat ANYTHING that came out of the sea :D When we went to visit my mother on the IOW, he would go winkle picking and eat the lot :) For several years we had holidays with friends in Croatia  when it was his birthday. They wouldn't get a birthday cake for him - they gave him a lobster for himself - with the candles stuck in tomatoes :D

This lasted until he was in his late teens - since he has been at uni and has a girlfriend his eating has become somewhat normal :)

Daisy

Edited: to say that this whole 'fussy eating ' thing was a total shock to us, as we eat everything and have a good varied diet :)

I haven't even heard of turkey twizzlers but they looked vile.  Personally, I have always cooked from scratch because I couldn't afford not to when I first married.  My eldest son hated chips and I had to take him off school dinners because the school were concnerned that he wouldn't eat anything and he got a packed lunch every day until secondary school that consisted of a bowl of salad with either freshly cooked chiken breast or some sort of fresh fish, some fruit and a natural yoghurt.

My kids wouldn't stay for tea at anyone's house either 'because they only ate freezer food'.  The're all mid to late teens now and still eat healthily although they have been known to participate in the odd fast food feast.

In know this sounds harsh but parents who feed nothing but that crap are technically abusing their children.  (and notice I said nothing but because I'm sure, like everything else, in moderation it's not too bad!)

Andi

Go to the following http://www.feedmebetter.com and sign the petition. They are after 50,000 signatures and have 44,500 already. My son has packed lunches because I will not have him eating the junk they serve up in his school. At least with a packed lunch I know what he is getting.

Julia