I ate the same meal as my kids every day. It made me rethink their diet
I read recently that self-respecting parents place great importance on eating the same meals as their children. Not just sitting together and sharing mealtimes, which is of course good for children’s health, improves school grades and whole family wellbeing – which is very important to me – but consuming the same dish at the same time.
I read this shortly after my husband Mark had cooked curry for me and him; macaroni cheese for one child; plain pasta with grated cheese and olives for another and noodles for the third. I felt like I’d missed the memo. In our home, getting our children to eat is our bar for success. But one meal? If we create a venn diagram of taste, pretty much the only overlap is a Sunday roast (and even then Juno, three, won’t eat the chicken so we substitute with sausages for her).
Astrid, nine and Xavi, seven, have been trialling a gluten-free diet after frequent complaints about tummy aches (I know I carry the coeliac gene, though I don’t have any symptoms) but their taste has become more varied over the past few months – they’ve started tasting our milder curries and declaring them good, though they’ve never committed to a full portion. Juno, three, doesn’t like chicken or pizza but loves chips.
And somewhere along the line, probably when Mark was feeling dejected to find the thousandth family meal he’d spent time cooking was largely uneaten, he started asking the children what they’d like for dinner. Even though this often ends up in extra cooking, it means less food waste and fewer empty tummies at bedtime asking for more food just at the point we all need to sleep.
So, when I suggested to Mark that we try eating the same food, he – as the main chef of our family – looked appalled by the idea. I offered to cook more frequently and we eventually decided to experiment for a week.
On day one, Mark put chicken in a slow cooker with tomatoes, onions, garlic, stock cubes and home-grown basil. My only task was to cook rice.
The children all went swimming and when they came back they were starving. All five of us sat down and ate. I mean, actually ate. Astrid declared it delicious; Xavi cleaned his plate. Juno had hers with no big chicken pieces in it. But there were no requests for a different meal – it was just… simple.
On day two, we had a vegetarian friend of Astrid’s joining us, so I made pasta with a tomato and marscapone sauce – fairly uncontroversial and everyone ate well.
I had anticipated rejections and requests for variations – this was all going so much better than I had expected that I went all out on Wednesday and cooked a roast. I was feeling pretty smug when I commented to Mark as to how our experiment was life-changingly positive. “I think this is just pretty normal for most families,” he replied. A less generous-spirited person might have reminded him of his initial reluctance to change our eating habits, but I am not that person.
The only downside was that Mark and I were only eating what the children like – so I was starting to really miss fish, which I haven’t been able to tempt the children with, unless covered in breadcrumbs, since they were toddlers.
We also had one meal rejection when I was determined to try the children with an authentic curry. Mark said he thought it was very unlikely to go down well, so I waited until he was away with work and introduced them to masala dosas, my favourite South Indian meal of seasoned potato in a lentil pancake, covered with vegetable curry. Xavi loved it but Astrid took a couple of bites and told me she wasn’t hungry after all and Juno asked for pasta instead. But at least they’d tried it. I ate my dinner and then made pasta for Juno and Astrid so they didn’t go hungry, and hoped this wasn’t the start of a slip back to multiple dishes.
We’ve continued eating the same meals since, it makes no sense not to. Our experiment has become our lifestyle and I find it hard to believe how much extra cooking we – mainly Mark – was doing previously.
It’s also made me more conscious of the children’s diets. They run around a lot more than I do on any given day, but even so their preference for carb-heavy pasta dishes makes me feel very sluggish. We’ve avoided any completely beige meals but I’m hoping I can get them eating fish in the near future – Omega-3 is so important for young brains. My gateway as a child was cod in butter sauce so I’m completely open to disguising the fish itself with delicious sauces. They eat vegetables and snack on fruit, especially berries and satsumas, but I miss a wider variety: a plate of crudités isn’t going to hit their 30-a-week, nor mine. But I figure we can work these things out gradually now we’ve laid the foundations.
Most of all, though, sharing dishes has served as a very good reminder to me that my children are constantly evolving. Just because they have preferences one month – whether that’s certain dishes to eat, clothes to wear, games to play or authors to read – that is no guarantee that they will like, or dislike, the same things by the next moon. And I can’t know whether their tastes have changed unless I keep exposing them to things to which they profess a dislike. Not in a pressurising way – I’d never force my children to eat something because I still feel nauseous at the memory of being expected to eat school liver – but by adding a side dish of beans, lentils, fungi or fish. In that way, they’ll keep trying more tastes – and I get the variety I crave.
The multiple dishes situation was borne out of a need for full tummies and if we hadn’t started experimenting with one-dish-for-all, we might have continued for a lot longer. So far, my children don’t show signs of having especially adventurous palettes – I’d presumed they’d all be eating sushi by the age of five – but I’m hardly giving them a chance if we stick to pasta every night. I remain optimistic that in a few months time we’ll all be going out for curries.
