Kid Food

I'm going to take a break from gender/class issues and write about food instead. Unfortunately I'm a picky eater especially when it comes to meat because my mom did most of the cooking growing up and she wasn't that good at it. I've tried to broaden my horizons as an adult and have succeeded to some degree. I now eat and enjoy Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, beef, and all sorts of stinkily delicious Korean food. I still won't eat lots of things unless forced to in the name of good manners and believe my eating habits have a lot to do with how I ate as a child. We sat down to a home-coked meal most night and ate very little processed food. I also grew up in NYC and was taken to all sorts of restaurants so I liked spicy and/or somewhat odd food before joining a Korean family. Still, I can't eat chicken without cringing thanks to years of simultaneously burnt and raw drumsticks (yes, it's possible). All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I think a person's attitudes about food and their food preferences are shaped by their families. 

This is why the idea of "kid food"; bland and/or processed things of questionable nutritional value that are marketed towards children annoys me. I love Reese's peanut butter cups, Oreos, DD breakfast sandwiches, and other junk food. I imagine Ms Frog may come to love similar tasty abominations and that doesn't bother me. I'm not one of those parents that is the junk food police as long as these things are a treat and not a major component of her diet. Plain buttered noodles, hot dogs, and the ubiquitous chicken nugget are not things I think a child should be eating at every meal. There are exceptions and I understand that parents of children who have fallen off the growth curve or have sensory issues just want their kids to eat something. 

However, the growth curve is a normal distribution so most children will fall within one standard deviation of the mean height and weight for their age and gender. Neurotypical children who are growing normally ought to be eating what their parents eat in my opinion. Here's where it does come back to class. It's hard to know what to feed a growing body if you don't know what to feed yourself, can't get to a grocery store, or don't have time to cook because you're working multiple jobs to survive. The lack of access to good food, information about what to do with it, and an economy that allows hard-working people to live in poverty is a crime. That is a subject for another time, but my judgement on the issue of kid food is tempered by the knowledge that the above is the reality for lots of families. Consequently, my frustration is directed at people who have the means and the knowledge to make what I consider to be the right choices. Food is an easy way to experience new things and connect to people from different cultures. Someone raised on a diet of kid food makes it really hard for them to be adventurous later on in life and might cut them off from these experiences. Then there's the whole childhood obesity thing. Habituation to highly processed food makes eating healthy harder later in life and contributes to the epidemic of children with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and other highly destructive and costly diseases. 

I guess I question why someone would put up barriers to healthy eating and enjoyment of food when they don't have to. I'd like to hear the other side of the story because maybe I'm not understanding something. Do your kids eat a different meal from you? If so, why?