But god help us if they can’t use a fork properly to eat it… the spoiled brats!
::Joking::
I think you meant to say, “ONE of the reasons Plumpy nut is such a miracle”…The MAIN reason Plumpy Nut is miraculous is the fact that it offers RAPID weight gain and doesn’t need any special conditions to keep. Also, because kids CAN eat it and keep it down, not because they WILL. The way you phrase it makes it sound like there are kids who are starving who would turn their noses up at Plumpy Nut if it wasn’t as tasty as the foods they normally like. I don’t think that’s true. Plumpy Nut is yummy, true, and the kids can handle it on their own, it doesn’t require any prep, but even if it tasted less yummy, the kids who are capable of injesting it aren’t going to turn their noses up at it because they are picky eaters.
But for purposes of this discussion, we don’t even have to take it to the listless, near death children…we are talking about hungry kids in Africa, used to their own kinds of foods being fussy eaters…the truth is, that fussiness will fade and they will eat foods that aren’t the ones they are used to when those hunger pangs hit.
Or maybe I misunderstood your point. Because it sounded to me like you were implying that hungry kids in Africa would choose to starve rather than eat foods that are outside of their comfort zones.
I would add that to the list of PlumpyNut attributes is that it is shelf stable and easily transported. It is a well designed product.
I just googled PlumpyNut*, and now I want to squeeze myself a pouchful of tasty peanut/milk paste. But you can’t buy it in a developed country.
Once again, I’m jealous of those starving African kids.
*as a bonus, I found my old kindergarten lab partner Kevin “Plumpy Nuts” Kowalski, but that’s a story for another messageboard…
So? During times of severe starvation and famine people have been known to resort to cannibalism.
Why is this “starving kid” trotted out every time there’s a mention of picky eaters? Of course if you’re actually starving you’ll eat whatever you can get. It doesn’t mean you LIKE what you’re eating – you’re eating to save your life. It’s not like people will eat tree bark and ants because they’re yummy.
What does this have to do with the rest of us? We’re fortunate enough that we don’t have to eat food we don’t like. The whole, “eat your peas, there are kids starving in Africa” is one of the stupidest arguments ever.
You sound confused. I brought up starving Africans in *response *to Sven’s statement,
**“In reality, people in food-poor areas have a predictably limited range of food they are familiar with, and are pretty easily disgusted by food outside of their comfort zone…”
**
And she said THAT in response to her own example:
** “all those people who say “people who are truly starving would not be picky eaters” are laughably wrong.”**
She stated that as if hungry Africans would turn their noses up at foods outside of their comfort zone if they didn’t have a choice. And I corrected her; no they wouldn’t turn their noses up if they didn’t have a choice. They would eat the damn Plumpy nut, despite it being something different than they are used to.
My post was quite clear that I was happy to cook my kid foods that she liked. I had no problem with her not eating peas, I cooked her spinach instead because she loved it. If she would have gotten too cute and start treating me like a vending machine/personal waiter/chef, I would snatch her back into reality and tell her she will eat what I’ve served her or she can be excused. That’s a little something I like to call excellent parenting; I’m not surprised she’s turning out to be an awesome kid.
If you aren’t really going to read my posts in context, instead of pretending I implied that starving kids in Africa are a reason to force feed kids then I won’t be surprised to see another post from you beginning with a shrill, ‘Soooo???’
Eh, in any case I was speaking more about your average “hungry” child who can be better described as malnourished, rather than cases of acute starvation. You can also include the 20% of American children who experience periodic hunger in this assertion if you like. These kids can be as picky as any other, just ask a lunch lady at a low-income school. Outside of absolute extreme situations, some certain percentage of people are going to be picky, pretty much everywhere you go in the world. Even people with fairly major nutritional deficiencies.
Even in Donner Party situations, doing what you need to do to survive isn’t a universal thing. Some percentage of people, when faced with that type of stress, prefer to lay down and die. We hear the stories of the people who choked down the bugs and survived, and we don’t hear the stories of the people who were grossed out and overwhelmed and froze up until they passed away. I doubt being a picky eater alone has directly caused many people to die, but I would bet money that it has contributed to why some people make it through these situations and some don’t.
FWIW, I’ve been boredly browsing the Plumpy’Nut literature, and taste is indeed important. For example, Plumpy’Nut is well documented as being much less effective as a therapeutic food intervention among adults, and disliking the taste is widely cited as a major reason why it doesn’t work as well for adults. For example, in a study of malnourished pregnant and lactating women in a Bangladesh slum, 78% of participants did not rate Plumpy’Nut as unacceptable. 60% of that cited unacceptable taste and 40% unacceptable smell. Similar results have been reported elsewhere. Adults, even malnourished, apparently don’t care for Plumpy’Nut, rendering it less effective at fighting adult malnutrition.
When organizations formulate therapeutic foods, taste is one of the things they measure and test for. According to UN recommendations, palatability and texture are right up there with nutritional content as a measure. Therapeutic foods are widely tested for local taste acceptability. I’m not a public health expert, but I can’t imagine so much time and money being poured into taste if it is not a major factor in the actual outcomes.
I’ve also found studies that the repetitiveness of food in refugee camps has an effect on diet, and that malnourishment is more likely in camps with a repetitive diet. In any case, I am fairly certain that if you replaced Plumpy’Nut with an otherwise equivalent but less tasty alternative (say, by making it with fish oil rather than a more neutral oil) it would be less effective at fighting famine, because people would be less interested in eating it.
I read Nando Parrado’s book “Miracle in the Andes” which recounts his ordeal to survive when the plane carrying him and his rugby teammates crashed into a mountain. There were definitely people in the group who were so wigged out at the thought of eating human flesh that it indirectly led to their demise. It helped that the flesh was frozen. One of Parrado’s worst memories was the realization that as the they made it to lower altitudes, the temperature was rising and their only food source was starting to rot.
Blech.
Great book, by the way. Even knowing how it ended, it was incredibly enthralling reading.
What’s stupid is letting a child turn a parent into a short-order cook and/or food processor. Eating a balanced meal and not wasting food wasn’t meant to be an argument. It was meant as a statement of policy by a parent to a child with a slice of reality thrown in for good measure. The word “argument” implies a discussion in regards to the statement made of which there was none.
There were no special snowflakes in my family or any of my friends families or to my knowledge any of my schoolmates. And just to be clear for those too dense to believe that statement implies every person in my generation did this, that was just how we operated as a general rule. I have no doubt there were parents who spoon fed their children whatever was demanded.
Probably a question for another thread, but for those of you “eat it or go hungry” types, how often do you prepare for yourself or force down food you don’t like? I hated liver and lima beans as a kid, and being forced to eat them by my parents did nothing to make me enjoy those foods. And not once in my adult life have I ever purchased, prepared, or consumed lima beans or liver. I don’t eat foods I’m disgusted by as an adult. Do you?
I do when someone else makes it. But I do take your point, which is that there are just some foods that ya don’t like. Which is why, in my home, you’re free to make yourself a PB&J with a few baby carrots on the side or something similar. Protein, fiber, veggie, and we’re good. If you’re teaching them nutrition as you go, 4 year olds can manage to throw together an acceptable “meal” for themselves. And if they can’t be bothered to do that, then we’re not really talking about a picky eater - there’s some other issue going on - control, attention, stomach ache, something. Then it’s that other something that needs to be addressed.
And if you’re really just not into food tonight, then sure, go hungry. Occasional short term fasting never hurt a healthy person.
Do I generally try to make what people in my house like? Sure I do. 'Cause I love them, and it makes me happy to see them liking what’s for dinner. Does that mean I limit my menu to the same six items over and over? No way. Best way to expand your tastes it to try new foods. So our rule is that you try three bites (the first one being a “hold your nose and gulp it down” bite, generally…it’s only by the third bite that you’re forming an actual informed opinion, in my experience) and if it’s not your thing, then it’s not your thing. And even the three bites thing is flexible - if the smell or first bite literally makes you gag, then don’t bother, for both our sakes. I’m not into cleaning up table puke.
What I refuse to do is the short-order cook nonsense. I’m not making separate dinners for everyone. I don’t do the “sit at the table and stare at the congealing stew until you cry” thing. I never force a person to eat, 'cause I think that’s a recipe for power struggles, creates picky eaters and maybe even eating disorders. But if you don’t like the stew, you know where the pantry is.
And this includes the grownups. My husband doesn’t like broccoli. When I want broccoli with dinner, I make broccoli, and give him a heads up so he can get a can of green beans ready if he wants. And sometimes I’ll make a nasty gross can of green beans as the dinner’s veg, 'cause I know he likes it, and I’ll make myself a side salad and take only a small portion of the green beans.
People tend to speak in absolutes in threads like this; reality is generally more accommodating, at least in my house, but there’s a difference between being flexible and being a doormat.
(Guests, of course, are another matter. If you let me know what you like/don’t like, I’ll bend over backwards and drive 20 miles to get you the perfect locally grown cage free organic grass fed rutabaga.)
I’m not a ‘eat it or starve’ kind of parent, but I understand the mindset because I have my limits for the picky eating stuff, so I’m going to try to answer.
I don’t eat what I don’t want to eat, because I am an adult who can make my own decisions. When I was a kid, my mom had a ‘just try it’ attitude about food. That made me try a lot of things I didn’t like, but it also helped me to be a bit more adventurous in my eating. I can go try different foods from different cultures and not gag. Even though I don’t like meat, one of my favorite memories is eating some goat for an African friend who was eager to share his family’s meal with me. So, even though I am an adult now, who can make my own choices, I was molded as a child by my mom to be who I am today as an adult. That’s what parents do. Guide and mold and make the rules.
Knee jerk response:
- Behavioral issues.
- Disordered eating.
- All of the above.
So what do you do when they refuse to get something else from the pantry themselves?
Or maybe she is pissed at her father. I can see this scenario: parents are separated. Dad has her for holidays. He’s said “you can use your phone once you have eaten dinner.” She makes bratty gestures to eat. Maybe says “I would eat it if I could cut it!” Or “FINE I will eat the potatoes. Happy?”
Let’s not be hasty…
I had to use my spoon because my tined utensil was damaged on my steak. In frustration I yelled, “Fork–got bent!”
Then that would be a case of poor parenting, IMHO.
In my experience, I’ve never seen a child that would not make their back up dinner if they were consistently taught that was an option.
Caveats of course for those that can’t actually get something themselves. My daughter (autism spectrum, sensory issues, action tremor) has a few backup options like gogurt, carrots, Cheerios, milk, bacon, ham, cheese, etc that she has to ask for as she can’t physically get these without making at least a huge mess.