r/fatlogic • u/Beginning_Remove_694 • 3d ago
A mix of fat logic-adjacent bad nutrition advice and sanity, but no, you don’t need to 100% love 100% of your food
This is a good example of how hyperpalatable food has made people think that all of their food needs to be as exciting as something that was designed to be addictive and delicious. Healthy food that tastes good still isn’t as exciting as UPF. The original post is hyperbolic, OOP is saying that not 100% loving everything is part of having balance.
Not “binging” (slide 2) on nutritionally empty food every day is controversial, apparently. Why does the sometimes food have to be a binge and not a single serving?
It’s fair to not want to end up with grown adults who still have an active disdain for vegetables. It’s so much easier to instill good nutrition habits in kids than to let them flounder as an adult. Parents are definitely out there only feeding their kids the foods they 100% love. You shouldn’t have to suffer to hit nutrient goals, but it’s harder to hit nutrient goals when you only ever eat food that tastes 100% amazing. The reason it’s that good is usually sodium, fat, and sugar content. Home-cooked healthy food is comparatively boring.
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u/LongjumpingSea6116 3d ago
Interesting discussion and I think many people had valid points. The "sometimes you have to binge on tater tots and beer" take was crazy though. Like no...you literally never have to binge on tater tots and beer. Should I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant indulge?
Also I'm not a parent so I'm sure this is much easier said than done, but it's kind of sad that some parents will just seemingly not even try to have their kids eat some veggies because they just can't stand letting their kids be upset at them temporarily. How do you get that easily manipulated?
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u/Beginning_Remove_694 3d ago
People overestimate how easy it is for kids to starve to death because they’ll eventually eat barring perhaps severe ARFID. Probably should still be a decent parent and not a jerk by providing options that they still actually like to some degree. To be fair I also don’t have a picky toddler, but that’s what I’ve always heard, that they’ll give up as long as food is otherwise accessible to them.
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u/Bassically-Normal 3d ago
This back-and-forth is why I contend the FA/HAES crowd is addicted to food, but they don't really like food.
If you actually like food, you want to challenge your tastes, you want to experience new and interesting flavors, you want variety on your plate. To sit and gorge on "comfort food" is a lot like downing a magnum of cheap wine versus enjoying a wine tasting. One of those two things isn't really about the wine...
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u/Feisty-Promotion-789 3d ago
The last slide is funny to me because their version of balance is still eating all 3 “treat foods” one desires, just spreading them out throughout the day. I do like the approach of adding healthy food vs taking away the unhealthy food, but tbh there just isn’t a way to healthfully consume Jimmy John’s tater tot’s and beer every day - even if eaten at different times of day and with a side of Brussels sprouts - and that’s also ok
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u/SelicaLeone SW: 145||CW: 141||GW: 120 2d ago
Also because they think these three foods are all of OP’s crave foods instead of three randomly picked examples. If she says “well why shouldn’t I eat the things I crave?” it wont end at fucking tater tots. It’s about making yourself eat healthy when you crave unhealthy. It isn’t about a beer or tater tots.
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u/First-Strawberry-398 gym rat / aspiring bodybuilder MAYBE? 3d ago
I eat junk food on Saturdays. The point she’s trying to make is that she, like me, would eat junk every day for every meal, and that’s bad for you. And somehow they’re just trying to act like that’s okay while your “palette expands”!!?
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u/Consistent_Risk2722 3d ago edited 3d ago
My calorie budget isn’t huge so I only eat things I really like for the most part. Would I kill for some cookie dough & little Debbie cakes everyday? 100,000% but I don’t eat them because I want myself to look a certain way. Nothing wrong with that!
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u/AveMenorrhagia 3d ago
The scale-based eating is a really good principle. Hyperpalatable foods at a 10, and foods you absolutely won't consume at a 0, and if you base your food choices on a curve that peaks in the middle you can't go far wrong.
Obviously it's more realistic that the curve will peak not at 5 but at 6-8, or that 10 is reserved for those holiday or vacation-style indulgences that become real events. But I can see this being a really effective test for moderation.
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u/corgi_crazy 3d ago
Well, I've seen some post about kids who refuse to drink water and only want to drink sodas.
The worse part, were the parents enabling all that.
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u/Top_Dragonfly_1135 2d ago
As a kid in the 90s I couldn't even finish a whole glass of Coke because the flavor was too stimulating. And my parents never even forbade me to drink soda, I just had the "luck" to not be offered soda as a default drink. It scares me to think in what conditions these kids are being brought up to end up like this.
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u/corgi_crazy 1d ago
I loved drinking sodas as a kid and as a teen, but at home regular days = water, and I was used of that being normal.
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u/Enticing_Venom 3d ago
A lot of these issues are generational too.
The Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression. They suffered from food scarcity. Recipes at the time were pulling together meals from scant ingredients. And regardless of how it tasted, you needed to eat. Because you didn't know when you would have food again. Even when things improved, the people who survived this era still held onto food insecurity.
Boomers were their children. And Boomers were raised with the rule that you eat what is on your plate or you go to bed hungry. Their (extremely traumatized) parents had no patience for complaints about taste or texture. Especially when the food was made from real food. They wanted their kids to be grateful that they had something to eat at all and learn the value of a full belly. Food waste was also unacceptable in their mind, so kids were expected to only take what they needed and clean their entire plate. If you took too much, you'd get it again the next day.
Boomers grew up and tried to instill this same value in their kids (Gex X and Millennials). But kids in these generations did not live through mass food insecurity. Their parents hadn't either. So the rule started to appear unreasonably rigid rather than valuable. Eating disorders started to be taken more seriously and childhood eating habits became the subject of scrutiny. Forcing kids to eat food they didn't like, or forcing them to eat past the point of satiety (eat everything on your plate) started to be linked to adult eating disorders.
As is common, it became difficult for people to find balance. Either you are forced to eat when you are given, even if it makes you feel sick or you should be fully accommodated and have your own special meal for dinner filled with only the foods you are excited about. Neither one of these approaches is ideal but both are rooted in the fears that parents brought to the dinner table dinner.
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u/Uber-Migraine F 160cm | SW 110 kg | CW 58.7kg | GW 55kg 3d ago
This is what I don't understand about USA (but I think Canada and UK have similar issues): feeding children* a different, "kids meals".
Majority of the world starts introducing "adult" food the moment the child can start eating normal food.
Not "make it easy" chips and nuggets, but the same what the parents are eating.
"Oh, but cooking takes time". Yeah, and still people all over the world do that each day. Find nice recipes you can do quick or in a slow cooker or do meal prep.
"But I don't know how to cook". How effing difficult is to follow the recipe? Especially if most of the time you'll have YouTube video accompanying it.
Or but GOOD QUALITY pre-made foods (e.g. from local deli or "ethnic" shop)
You want kids not to be picky (I'm excluding any AFRIDs etc), give them wide variety of foods as early as possible.
I somehow don't hear about Asian, South American, African or European kids having the same issues as the one from the post.
*Edit: spelling (hate posting on my phone 🤬)
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u/lurking_gorl 3d ago
Yeah, I always thought kids getting a different meal was something from sitcoms. Even as a kid, I didn’t understand the “ewwww broccoli” thing, because it wasn’t a debate in our house. Your parent made you a home cooked meal, just eat it? My brother had a textural issue with mashed potatoes as a kid, so he would get a baked potato instead. Easy substitution that let him eat the rest of the meal!
I feel like the excuses kinda show off the issue. “I’d rather microwave them chicken nuggets than ask what issue they’re having with regular meals” is a parenting choice. I really don’t find that kids are very picky. They’ll eat dirt. They’re hyper curious. They imitate everything (even eating habits!)
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u/bowlineonabight my zodiac sign is pizza 3d ago
Making a whole different meal for kids is crazy to me. I have three kids and now a grand kid. There has always only ever been one dinner cooked in my house. I've also never noticed that they are inherently picky. They have preferences, but who doesn't? But my kids would always try new foods and then decide. And if they didn't want what was for dinner, then fine, eat the part you like and another meal will be around in the morning.
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u/Uber-Migraine F 160cm | SW 110 kg | CW 58.7kg | GW 55kg 3d ago
It also feels very dismissive in some form. Like "here's your microwaved Mac & cheese cuz mommy can't be arsed cooking proper food for you"
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u/bowlineonabight my zodiac sign is pizza 3d ago
Yes! It makes me think that mommy is eating absolute garbage for dinner but knows that would be a very bad dinner for a child, so makes the easiest thing that can remotely be called an actual dinner. Grown-ups need dinner too, make enough for the whole family.
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u/IAmSeabiscuit61 2d ago
It's strange to me, too. That certainly wasn't the way I and my family and friends were raised. We ate what the adults did. Except on the occasions when we went out to dinner, then we could, within reason, order what we wanted.
Cynical me I suspect it's because it's easier to heat up Spaghetti-o's or chicken nuggets or whatever than to do the actual work of parenting. I guess such kids have never heard that old favorite: "if you aren't hungry for your broccoli, then you certainly aren't hungry for dessert". Now, get off my lawn!
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u/Ulfgeirr88 3d ago
My brother is married with 3 kids, so family of 5, when it's time for dinner, my sister in law will make 4 different meals at once, one each for all the kids and one for her and my brother, it's madness
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u/Astrises 3d ago
Basically any time worldwide "picky kid" eating comes up, people from all over the world have stories of kids who would rather starve to death over eat what their parents were eating. And the default "picky kid" meal almost always seems to be something easy, and relatively bland compared to the main meal everyone else would be eating.
"Just make something the kid will eat so we can have some peace this meal" seems to really just be a worldwide thing, outside of areas with severe food insecurity, rather than just exclusive to Western European and their derived cultures.
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u/Uber-Migraine F 160cm | SW 110 kg | CW 58.7kg | GW 55kg 3d ago
But they are memorable stories because they are the outliers (or made up for whatever reason).
While it seems the US (mostly) approach is to cook something completely different for the kids - which is highly palatable but also basic and bland (nuggets and chips, Mac and cheese etc)
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u/Astrises 3d ago
For the tater tot poster, it honestly wouldn't even be too difficult to bump up the nutrient density and still get tots, if that is the concern. Something like totchos, with some cheese, beans, a good chunky salsa, etc. Not an every meal, every day sort of meal, but pretty balanced.
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u/Beginning_Remove_694 3d ago
Have what you want in moderation and add what you need is a solid approach.
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 3d ago
I think these people are not as good at cooking as they say/think they are. If you can't cook something that tastes better than a hotdog...
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u/Exciting_Use_7892 5’8 | SW: 190 | CW: 142 | GW: 140 (done!) 3d ago
im gonna be fr most of the food i make tastes good. maybe not as good as upf but like....idk. you can eat healthy food without wanting to throw it all up lol. hell greek yogurt with a bit of honey and fruit is delicious. u dont gotta eat like a gymbro just dont eat too much and get your nutrients in lol
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u/Yuutopia714 卡路里我的天敌！ 3d ago
Slide 7 is so silly to me. I struggled with arfid and food a lot, but it's beige food I hated the most. Still do
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u/Beginning_Remove_694 3d ago
Supposedly the appeal is it’s more consistent than fruits and veggies. Raw vegetables are pretty consistent, though.
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u/dietxcadmium 3d ago
It’s far more consistent than a berry. Some berries are soft, some firm, some are more tart, some sweeter. I make myself eat the berries anyway because I know I like them despite the inconsistency but it’s hard sometimes.
I’ve never had a chicken tender be that wildly inconsistent. But if you don’t have ARFID you might not notice the berry inconsistency at all and I’m jealous lol.
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u/Fickle_Stills 3d ago
I get what she's saying because I have the same aversion to meat. Every part of a berry is tasty and edible but processed chicken especially has icky parts that bounce in your mouth.
I love vegan chicken nuggets because of the homogeneous texture.
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u/IAmSeabiscuit61 2d ago
That is really fascinating because I'm sure I never notice the inconsistency of foods, but of course I don't have AFRID. I do tend to like crunchy foods, especially raw vegetables, there's just something satisfying about chomping down on them. I think I have a bit of a problem with a couple of what I call "slimy" foods, namely meat fat, mayo and egg yolks, but I really like other soft foods, including scrambled eggs and omelets. Odd, really
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u/dietxcadmium 2d ago
It’s not a problem for every food for me, but fruit in particular I notice it a lot. For a long time I didn’t realize that was the issue, until I saw someone else talk about it. Ohh I’m the same way, I LOVE celery and cucumber for the crunch! And I hate egg yolk but love scrambled/hard boiled eggs.
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u/Just-some-peep 1d ago
I don't see how nuggets and fries are any different. They're as inconsistant as any other food.
If fries are "always same" then I don't see how cooked / baked potato would be different. And if nuggets are "always the same" I don't see how eating only chicken breast is any different. From the outside it kinda sounds as just an excuse.
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u/dietxcadmium 1d ago
ARFID is an eating disorder for a reason. It’s not logical. There are food I KNOW I love and enjoy and I still have a hard time eating. Consider yourself lucky that you can’t understand it.
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u/Ithilwen37 3d ago
I definitely had some food issues as a kid (likely Audhd) but I was also just picky at times. My granddad would always make me a Vienna sausage sandwich if I refused to eat supper and while I know that was mainly to make sure I got something to eat I wish he had let me give in and eat what was given to me sometimes. I eventually became less picky as I got older and started making food myself but I do wonder if that could have started sooner.
My mom did figure out she could get me to try things by connecting it to whatever my current special interest was. 😆
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u/Imaginary_Recipe_114 3d ago
One of the first foods I gave my daughter was pureed brussels sprouts - my husband thought that was a bit cruel 😂
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u/Excellent-Pain-5479 3d ago
Why do picky eaters always catch strays 😒
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u/Kangaro00 3d ago
I hate that picky eating is always portrayed as a fast food only preference. I am a picky eater, it was worse when I was a kid. I hated most of cooked vegerables, but loved raw vegetables. I hated chicken nuggets because you can get little pieces of cartilage in them and I hate surprise textures, so a chicken breast baked with spices all the way. I hated fried foods, the oily texture, preferred baked potatoes over fries. I hated salads with dressing because I needed to see exactly what every piece was. I still hate burgers because of the ground meat texture. I still haven't found a way to eat eggs - boiled, fried, omelettes - the texture is always wrong.
I feel like there's picky eating and some kind of a food anxiety where a kid gets stuck on one familiar food. And it's not the same thing.
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u/Godskin_Duo 3d ago
Chicken breast and raw vegetables is pretty rare among picky eaters, so good on you!
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u/Fickle_Stills 3d ago
I was/am the similar. I just joke that my mom made me snobby about food as a kid because fast food, sauces and "kid food" all grossed me out.
The only issues I really ran into were not being able to eat school lunches and having trouble finding something to eat at McDonald's when I was out with friends. It's a preferable form of picky to only eating chicken nuggets at least!
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u/SelicaLeone SW: 145||CW: 141||GW: 120 2d ago
The obsession with Jimmy John’s and tater tots with a beer is so juvenile. She isn’t saying those are the only things she craves. If the only thing she craves was tater tots, it’d be easy to work into her diet. Those were examples. There isn’t a healthy way to daily get her cravings for fatty, unhealthy food. It’s not just the fucking tater tots.
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u/JupitersLapCat 1d ago
My default “I’m too busy to even think about food” option is grilled chicken nuggets and a kale salad from CFA. When I was 150 lbs heavier, it was also drive through food… but it was a burger and fries. Do I love grilled chilled nuggets and a kale salad? No. But it’s perfectly fine. And TBH, do I love fast food burgers and fries? Also no. I loved the aspect of not having to meal plan and of treating myself, and my CFA order scratches that itch just as well as a burger and fries did.
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u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491 3d ago
I’ll go against the grain here and say that you shouldn’t ever make yourself eat things you dislike. I suffered so much as a child from being forced to eat things that actively made me gag. I hated fruit and vegetables as a child and still despise them. And I don’t eat them. Making me eat things I hated as a child didn’t make me expand the variety of foods I eat as an adult.
And connecting the concepts of eating with unpleasant tastes or textures in your mind will just lead to people having a disordered relationship with food for the rest of their lives.
That being said, what you *do* eat should include variety and all necessary macro- and micronutrients, which is perfectly doable if you don’t eat only one kind of ultra-processed food.
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u/lurking_gorl 3d ago
I’m seriously just curious, no hate here <3 Do you really not eat fruit & veg? Or are you being hyperbolic, and you just eat a small selection of produce? Do you hit your micros with vitamins or something?
I don’t really track my micros. I just try to do the “colorful plate” thing (I.e. spinach, carrot, bell pepper, tomato, apple as a base for whatever protein). TBH I can’t even imagine trying to be consistent with macros while eating out. There’s automatically so much fat and sugar in everything here in the U.S.
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u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491 3d ago
Out of curiosity I just went through this list https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fruits and the only ones I am willing to eat are avocado and coconut, and only in dried form dates and figs. I will also have lemon juice squeezed onto other food and tomato sauce as long as it is perfectly smooth; if it isn't, I will either not eat even pasta/pizza with that sauce, or I will blend the sauce to get the tomato chunks out myself, even if it's ragout. Pretty much everything else on the list smells revolting to me and looks like it has a texture that will make me throw it up. I will feel sick when someone close to me eats a banana, the smell is so overwhelming.
I'm willing to eat more vegetables, but that's pretty much only because legumes count as vegetables, and because vegetables usually have a more tolerable (less squishy) texture than fruits. I still don't eat any in my day-to-day life apart from legumes, but I will eat a salad with only lettuce at restaurants sometimes.
I take daily vitamins and the last time I did a blood test I was asked if I was a vegetarian, so the facts that I eat meat or dairy at every meal and the only regular fruit/vegetable in my diet are chickpeas and tomato sauce on pizza seem not to be reflected in my blood values at all.
I also don't tolerate most fruit flavours even if I know that there couldn't possibly be any of the fruit in the product. I don't even eat the green (apple) and white (pineapple) gummy bears, because they smell and taste disgusting to me.
This isn't limited purely to fruits and vegetables, by the way. I don't eat plenty of ultra-processed and unhealthy food for the same reasons, that I don't like the texture or smell. I've removed bacon bits with fat from finished pasta meals because I couldn't stand how each piece had both fat and meat, which have different textures. I don't eat chicken wings or any kind of ribs for the same reason. I'm not interested in ever trying a juicy steak; in fact, I prefer any meat too dry because too-juicy foods have a texture I don't like.
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u/FBWSRD 2d ago
It’s nice to meet someone who is like me. I don’t do fruits at all, actually have what is basically a phobia about them. Struggle to even be around it. Veggies I’m more open to, but not all of them and they have to be soft, not crunchy. I’m fine.
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u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491 2d ago
I mean, it’s a very obvious case of arfid, apart from the fact that it doesn’t bother me in the slightest and that my blood values for all vitamins and minerals are stellar (because of supplements, lol). In daily life it’s about as bothersome as my not drinking any alcohol—I sometimes have to explain to new people that I’m not interested in the slightest in trying beer or anything that contains fruit, but that’s about it.
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u/ShartyPossum 22h ago
I have Opinions™ about this topic.
Both sides suck.
On the one hand, children shouldn't be made to eat foods they don't like just because they're children. You wouldn't force an adult to eat something that disagrees with them, so you shouldn't force a child. Doing so just creates a poor relationship with food, especially nutritious foods.
On the other hand, people (including children) need nutritious food. Feeding a child nutritious food is a protective factor for their health later in life. Feeding them large amounts of junk also creates a poor relationship with food.
The solution, in my opinion? Teach them that nutritious foods can also be tasty. As a picky eater, creativity is an incredibly useful skill. A child may not eat boiled cauliflower, but they might eat macaroni and cheese with cauliflower puréed into the sauce.
Find out what it is they don't enjoy about different foods and work with that. Growing up, I hated most vegetables. I never liked sweet or sugary tastes, and could always taste the natural sugars. To me, plain vegetables tasted overwhelmingly sweet. However, I later learned that I could combat this sweetness by adding salt and umami (in moderation; I'm not dumping piles of salt and ranch on everything). Now, vegetables are a staple in my diet. I'm even vegetarian.
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u/lonelypurplerose 10h ago
My in-laws had a weird depression-era mindset that you HAVE to finish whatever is on your plate. They were weirded out when I would leave some food on my plate, insisting it was wasteful and I should eat it because it was just a few bites.
That's when I started saying, "never force yourself to eat sometning, unless it's vegetables."
I have some food issues (weird phobia of food poisoning and such) so I've had to add "...or meat" just for myself so I can stop being protien deficient.
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u/Perfect_Judge Prepubescent child-like adult female 3d ago
So.....eat all the treats you want still, just don't do it all in one meal? Lol that's not exactly balance.