Feeding kids and food waste

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I plan the menu. I present it to them, and compromise. I post the menu. We don’t waste food. Sometimes, we have half a cabbage or turnips left over, so I’ll say ok we need to eat those before we move on with menu. They have the option of suggesting how to incorporate those leftovers.
When I try a new recipe, they get to mark it as “approved”. Not everyone like the same things, but there is give and take.

This is a great idea! Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t do kids dinners, they eat what we eat or they don’t eat. I do try to incorporate at least 1 item I know they’ll eat but otherwise I’m not catering to them.

Not exactly answering the question. What do you do with the food they don’t eat?

I don’t get it. Don’t serve them the dinner if they don’t want it. They can see what you’ve made for dinner. Ask them what they want and how much. If they don’t want anything, ok fine. They can have a PJ sandwich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand this problem. Kids eat when they’re hungry. If they’re not, it’s because you’ve taught them you’ll throw away leftovers and make or buy something new. If you want to stop throwing away food, eat the food and stop throwing it away. This isn’t rocket science.

So what do you do with the leftovers on their plate? Put it in the fridge? Tell them they HAVE to finish it?

NP, I serve family style. My kids take a small portion, or none if they don’t like the food. If they do like it they take another portion.

I don’t keep what’s been on their plate, but because they only put a little bit at a time, and they only put things they want to eat, it’s not much.

This. But I will say, my third child is picky. She often doesn’t want what I’ve made. Though I do try to have at least one component I know she will like. I have zero problem with her eating fruit and cheese for dinner or a scramble egg every single night if she wanted. It just isn’t a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand this problem. Kids eat when they’re hungry. If they’re not, it’s because you’ve taught them you’ll throw away leftovers and make or buy something new. If you want to stop throwing away food, eat the food and stop throwing it away. This isn’t rocket science.

So what do you do with the leftovers on their plate? Put it in the fridge? Tell them they HAVE to finish it?

NP, I serve family style. My kids take a small portion, or none if they don’t like the food. If they do like it they take another portion.

I don’t keep what’s been on their plate, but because they only put a little bit at a time, and they only put things they want to eat, it’s not much.

This. But I will say, my third child is picky. She often doesn’t want what I’ve made. Though I do try to have at least one component I know she will like. I have zero problem with her eating fruit and cheese for dinner or a scramble egg every single night if she wanted. It just isn’t a big deal.

I cook dinner and put in on table. This is dinner and I am not going to scramble an egg so eat or go without. Picky eating is fostered by indulgent parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand this problem. Kids eat when they’re hungry. If they’re not, it’s because you’ve taught them you’ll throw away leftovers and make or buy something new. If you want to stop throwing away food, eat the food and stop throwing it away. This isn’t rocket science.

So what do you do with the leftovers on their plate? Put it in the fridge? Tell them they HAVE to finish it?

NP, I serve family style. My kids take a small portion, or none if they don’t like the food. If they do like it they take another portion.

I don’t keep what’s been on their plate, but because they only put a little bit at a time, and they only put things they want to eat, it’s not much.

This. But I will say, my third child is picky. She often doesn’t want what I’ve made. Though I do try to have at least one component I know she will like. I have zero problem with her eating fruit and cheese for dinner or a scramble egg every single night if she wanted. It just isn’t a big deal.

I cook dinner and put in on table. This is dinner and I am not going to scramble an egg so eat or go without. Picky eating is fostered by indulgent parents.

Yes and no. I have one kid who had an extremely limited palate even as a baby ... would not touch solid food until a year and even then refused to try almost everything. At 11 he's finally become a reasonable eater but it's only recently that he has started trying everything. He still often doesn't like many foods, to the point of gagging -- although that has decreased a lot. He's working on it and in retrospect we probably should have done some kind of feeding therapy when he was younger, but oh well. Whereas my other kids have always been much more open to trying food and in their case, any pickiness is for sure because of indulgence rather than natural tendencies.

In any event like others, we also make only a family meal, although I make sure that most of the time it contains at least one thing that the kids don't completely hate. For example, if I'm making cauliflower curry, which I know they dislike, I'll serve rice or another grain I know they will eat, or I'll have some extra vegetables or fruit or nuts on the table as part of the meal. We also rarely cook anything that doesn't do well as leftovers. I send leftovers as the kids' lunches or eat them myself as my work lunch. If I am making something that doesn't do well as leftovers, like scrambled eggs or fish, I pay attention to portion sizes so we don't have waste.

I also draw up the menu on Sundays and post it on the fridge so everyone knows what we're having. The kids are welcome to make suggestions although I rarely take them as to the food - I may take them as to the preparation. If it were up to them we'd eat steak and pasta every night. But if I am making chicken or fish, and they request it grilled instead of baked, I try to accommodate that if I can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand this problem. Kids eat when they’re hungry. If they’re not, it’s because you’ve taught them you’ll throw away leftovers and make or buy something new. If you want to stop throwing away food, eat the food and stop throwing it away. This isn’t rocket science.

So what do you do with the leftovers on their plate? Put it in the fridge? Tell them they HAVE to finish it?

For dinner they don’t get dessert unless they’ve eaten everything. I never make them finish their plate but my kids love dessert which means there is never leftover food on their plate. Dessert is often times fruit, btw, it doesn’t have to be straight sugar.

For lunch yes it goes in the refrigerator. They get a snack at 3 and if their lunch isn’t eaten they have to eat the rest of that before they get their snack.

[Anonymous]

What we do probably doesn't work for all, but it works for us and we are kind of rigid about food waste. We meal plan and post the weekly menu every Sunday. If we are making a recipe that will use, for example, half a bunch of cilantro, we will plan on another meal that will use the second half. By Sunday morning, the fridge is usually pretty empty outside of eggs and condiments.

We sit down together to dinner every night around 5:30. We never did an after-school snack tradition (they can eat fruit/crudite or sometimes pick at the dinner prep ingredients), and we never offered an alternative meal. Sometimes when they were little they would skip the meal and then just load up at breakfast the next morning. (My middle still doesn't love dinner). We do not serve anything anyone hates, but that is usually like 1-2 things per person, and some things, like heat, can be adjusted after dishing out the mild portions, or served on the side for people to add in.

The kids are 6-13 and I / they pretty much know how much to put on their plates at this point but we've had the same dinner routine for about 12 years now. They can also go back for seconds. If it is a dessert night they do have to finish their main course to get dessert. But we are all relatively flexible eaters- this is a not a traumatic thing for them. I don't cook a lot of fish - not my forte, so we mostly enjoy it at restaurants - and most other meals are fine as leftovers.

For Christmas I had my older kids create two weeks of meal plans each for me. It took them forever - they said it was the hardest thing they had done lol. But that gave them a lot of perspective about what goes into family dinner! Some weeks we will also order Home Chef - in those cases I will let them help pick out recipes to order.

[Anonymous]

Depends on how old your kids are.
If they are 2 to 4 years old, then I'd serve small portions and they can ask for more. So, that means if they want an apple, they get half an apple - because otherwise they'll take 3 toddler bites out of an apple and then throw it away - or refuse to eat it hours later because there are bites in it. THAT made me CRAZY - so I would just cut the apple in half and they could take their 3 bites out of it, but at least i only through away half an apple.

For dinner - I'd make dinner, and then lunch the next day night be leftovers. I'd normalize that leftovers aren't "leftovers or junk" - it's food and that's what we are having for lunch (assuming it's not liver or some other things kids hate!)

And I'd serve 5 chips - if you want more you mayhave more but if I give a 3 year old 10 chips and they eat 2 and toss the rest - ARGH! That makes me crazy!

Buy yogurt in big tubs and then put a spoonful or two in a bowl - they may have more if they want. But that's better than buying individual yogurt cups when kids can NOT eat the entire thing - that's an adult single serving not a young child's.

[Anonymous]

To be honest, if my budget was tight enough that I couldn’t afford wasted food or wasted food meant that my children would literally go to bed hungry, then I would serve them food I know they would eat.

As it is, I have the luxury of being able to waste some. If my kids don’t like something I make, then they eat more of one component of the meal or have a sandwich or load up on breakfast the next day or sneak in a bowl of cereal or a glass of milk before bed. If my budget were such that it was literally dinner or nothing, we would probably have very little variation in what I made.