The Men who Eat like Boys

Recently there have been enough of these ‘why won’t grownups grow up’ threads to warrant a site to themselves. 😆

Grow up!! 😜

I don't know anybody like this.

But sure there's an intranet article about it so obviously = men, what a bunch of backward useless c**ts

Id say the sex was $hite as well

I was precocious as a child. I reached "nutritional adulthood" when I was five. Bread and spuds were my gateways.

If his parents aren't worried about the lack of vitamins and nutrients his body isn't getting, then shame on them.

most parents are just kids themselves these days, they probably eat similar.

I have seen a few parents who "enable" it I guess. But those parents meant well at the time.

What tended to happen was that the child would not eat what was put in front of them. And the parents worried about their child not eating relented and put the less healthy option out as a replacement. Which among other things instantly signals to the child that they have to do very little to "upgrade" their enjoyment of dinner. So they get a learned behaviour.

They would ask me how I managed to get my kids eating such a varied diet. And I said simply that if I put something out and the kid did not eat it I would simply take it away again. And depending on the food quality I would even happily produce it again the next day at the same time while the rest of us had something else.

At first they were aghast like this was child abuse or neglect. The sheer horror that a child might miss a meal or a number of meals sequentially or - shock horror - might not eat at all for the best part of a day or two. Or it was somehow "unfair" to let a child go without a meal while they had to watch their siblings eat their fill.

But then they realised that missing a meal or two is actually not the end of the world or some sheer horror. They'd just never really stopped to think about it.

They thought their role as a parent was to make sure their child ate at every meal lest it die or fail to develop from malnourishment or something. Their child is sitting there refusing to eat and they enter a kind of parental panic thinking "oh no the child must eat something!!!" and chicken nuggets and chips is better than nothing at all. As if they would put the child to bed with no dinner and it would lurch out of the bedroom the next morning decimated by rickets and scurvy.

All that said though - often a big issue is how a child's relationship with food is developed in the first place. Simply dropping broccoli in front of them and demanding they eat it. And then wondering why they don't. A big part of why my children are so good with food is I involved them in the full process of obtaining food, preparing food, and presenting food from the start. I suspect the more divorced children are from the entire process - the higher the potential that their relationship with food, and specifically good foods, can be a bad one.

I have seen parents get their children eating vegetables they refused to eat before - by doing nothing more complicated than by making very minor changes to how they as a family get those vegetables from the shop. Often as a part of that by changing the language they use while buying it in small but very influencial ways. And they are easy "tricks" to learn too as a parent.

It's not even the taste. I hate vegetables. I didn't eaten them since I was 4. I actually became a vegetarian at one point. I started trying certain vegetables and discovered that i liked some and hated others. But what I hated the most was the irish way of boiling something until it's mush. And it wasn't the taste that I didn't like, it was the slimy texture.

I will eat broccoli if it's lightly cooked. Just cooked enough to warm it up but it's still crispy. I couldn't eat it the way it used to be cooked in Ireland. That made me gag.

Turns out that's one of the autistic traits I have. And it's not about colour or flavour, it's texture. And after some reading I discovered that it's incredibly common.

My nephew is similar. He's even more restrictive than I am. But it has nothing to do with taste. The foods he eats are widely different. But they do have similar textures.

Also, for a lot of people who are neurodivergent, they like things to be expected. they don't like things to change (Although I have to add, for others it's the exact opposite). And for them, food is one of the things that can give them that stability.

You're assuming that people who don't eat certain foods never tried them. Whereas they probably did try them and discovered they didn't like them.

Based on your criteria you'd exclude me but honestly I'd probably be better off if you did. I can live without that judginess.

True. But what you wrote in your previous post I think is even more true. Which is that often people do try a food - but prepared one way - and they end up with the impression that they tried it and did not like it.

But as you discovered yourself - the same food tried a completely different way - can become at the very least tolerable and ideally even enjoyable.

It's one of the reasons that when one of my own children claims not to like a food - I turn it into a game. And the game is that we take that food and split it into piles. And we prepare/cook each pile separately. And the game is that they have to write down a report on which was the tastiest and which the least tasty.

Language is also important there. It can have a powerful effect on kids. I specifically tell them to rank them from the most tasty to the least tasty. Subtly installing in their mind that they are all "tasty". I would never say "rank them from tasty to yucky" for example or as "Like and dislike".

And the result of the game is often that we discover that the kid does not dislike the food at all. There is just a way they particularly prefer it to be prepared. They like Broccoli but it has to be roasted or lightly steamed, never boiled or steamed to soggyness. They like Red and Yellow pepper but only raw and never ever cooked. And so on.

And it's quite effective. I can count on one hand now the foods my kids would actively dislike and refuse no matter how it is prepared.

I had an aunt tell me to drink a glass of milk when I was younger, I told her no but she insisted its good for me, so I shrugged and took it. Cue 5 minutes later projectile vomiting on my cousin (her son), he starts roaring crying and I just tell her "I don't think it was good for me"

She hasn't gone near me with milk since.

Lactose intolerance FTW.

Selective Eating Disorder:

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) is a fairly new eating disorder. Children with ARFID are extremely selective eaters and sometimes have little interest in eating food. They may eat a limited variety of preferred foods, which can lead to poor growth and poor nutrition.

Yeah, maybe some people have tried all the foods and decided fish fingers and waffles are just the best foods of all and that's what they'll eat...

But no, you've made an error. I don't judge people who eat like children to be boring. I've found a strong correlation between boring people eating children's foods. It's in that direction, not the other direction. Do you see the distinction?

You almost always meet people and know a bit about them before the food they eat comes up in conversation. It wouldn't make any sense to wait to see what someone eats before deciding if they're interesting or not.

I'm diagnosed autistic and was always a picky eater. I'm very sensitive to bitterness (so no coffee or alcoholic drinks) and I don't react to some textures very well. Cauliflower makes me gag! When I was single I very much ate like a child but my wife opened me up to a lot more things.

Just out of curiosity why is the thread title only asking about men who eat like children? Is it mostly men who do it?

The OP explained his reasoning and thesis in the first post I think. The assumption is that women are more likely to calorie count from a young age - and to be taught cooking more often - and are therefore somehow less prone to the "childish" diet in later years.

Not sure I buy that at all. But I guess it at least explains why the OP chose the thread title they did.

Yeah I teach all my kids, boys and girls, from a very young age. It's not something I was every shown when I was a toddler/kid/teen. I came to cooking late in life. So it's something I feel very compelled to give to my children. Not just cooking but a generally deeply considered relationship with food as a whole.

Man wants to enjoy games, sports, food - he's a child. You wouldn't say a woman being picky with her food is being a little girl. No that would be offensive. But men yeah lets go.

I remember hearing that eating disorders like anorexia are more prevalent in women than men. There's a higher prevalence in men than expected when they went looking for it, but the research had almost always focused on women up to that point and the treatment likewise tended to focus on women.

But yes, that kind of disorder is more prevalent in women. Open to correction, I'm working from memory.

yea id love to know what current research is saying about this, we re only now starting to realise female autism can differ greatly with male autism, so theres probably a lot of hidden male eating disorders out there to, obesity is also very common with these disorders, i see it a lot myself

Yeah you could do that if you like.

I just do it the way it normally happens - get to know someone, decide if they're interesting or not, later notice their eating habits. Then notice that boring people also tend to have boring food taste (in my opinion).

Yes there are, why would you make another.

…id know a few people on the spectrum, many with all sorts of eating issues, none of them are boring, all with weird and wonderful special interests….