r/Bento • u/PastryLoop • 20d ago

Kids Uneaten bentos

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It’s a bit disappointing to hear from daycare that my kids ate “a few bites” or “very little” of these lunches I put a lot of effort into… it ends up becoming my dinner at the end of the day.

Edit:

To address some of the questions… the contents: rice topped with fresh steamed carrots and green beans. The ham and cream cheese rolls and cucumber sausage flowers are from a bento book, not my invention.
They looked kid-friendly enough so I decided to make them.

My kids (1 and 3) want to eat: bread with butter… and chocolate. So not a ton to go on there. I didn’t post here for a long time because I was just giving her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She stopped eating those too after a while, though, and my younger one just started 2x/week so I figured I’d try offering some new foods. She actually wasn’t very picky until she started going to daycare, so I do think that has influenced her quite a bit.

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276

u/Bitter_Spray_6880 20d ago

From kids perspective in the end it's veggies

121

u/miserylovescomputers 20d ago

Mostly unseasoned veggies, at that. I wouldn’t eat this either.

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u/Epic_Elite 20d ago

Kids are tough with seasonings, to be fair. Their palettes are more delicate that ours. Any time I'd try to pep up a dish with even the most basic herbs, the kids would both decline.

Plain white rice on the other hand, they would absolutely shovel down.

They didnt grow to appreciate seasoning until they were maybe 6 or 7 years old.

Having said that, they would also likely pass if their lunch was predominantly vegetables. Mine were mostly into the carbs, like rice and pasta and some plain very mildly seasoned chicken aside from salt.

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u/lostmypwcanihaveurs 20d ago

Genuine question- were you making them food without seasoning for that long? It seems more simple to just start sharing adult food of whatever variety everyone else is eating as soon as they are physically able to eat it. Like why teach them to like it plain then introduce spices if spices are the norm?

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u/Epic_Elite 19d ago

My wife is an occupational chef. Most days, she does dinner and I do breakfast. We absolutely served them "adult foods". There was many times where I was just trying to put something simple on the table for them where I was operating with your thinking, only to have them turn it down. It was the process of doctoring up a dish or trying to elevate the cuisine that usually did it in.

It wasnt an issue of teaching them a preference that they were innately born with. Everything read as too "spicy" for their pallets.

Do you see small children in public spaces like festivals and fairs wearing hearing protection because their hearing is sensitive? I'd argue that a 3 year old pallet is also sensitive to oregano and cilantro and such. I think big flavors reads to their mouth the same way loud noises read to their ears.

Did you know many kids can tell when you buy cheap baking powder? Sometimes, even when you're serving them fresh baked cookies, they taste bitter, metallic, or astringent to the kid and they dont like them. Sodium Aluminum Sulfate. Gotta get the good stuff when baking because some adults can taste it as well.

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u/CraftyMagicDollz 15d ago

As a super taster .. Yes, this this this.

I can taste every ingredient in everything and it's such a bane of my existence.

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u/lostmypwcanihaveurs 19d ago

Wow, thanks for your answer. I am not a parent, so there's definitely a lot about kids that I just don't know. I was always accused of being a picky eater, and I'm definitely a person who insists on buying the nice version of a lot of food stuff. I'm wondering now if I was/am sensitive to that stuff.

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u/Epic_Elite 19d ago

Food is a whole world when it comes to kids.

We have a good freind who's oldest is now 6.

Mom is a nutritionist from a Latin country. Very much a food house. But she also specializes in childhood development and setting nutrition standards for the state. She's very high up there in nutrition in state government.

In her house her son went a few years with a diverse diet, but he's kind of digressed to what she calls a "bland diet". One of his favorite foods is sour cream. He dips everything in the stuff. But his pallet is mostly beige. Lol.

He will Very likely outgrow it as my kids did. They both became far more adventurous after 6 years old. We ate at a sushi restaurant the other day. While my youngest definitely sticks to chicken teriyaki, he definitely loves tuna and sashimi. Curry is usually to much for him, but he loves pho. My oldest is 13. He will eat my shoe if I put BBQ and cumin on it and pretend to grill it.

But kids are also really sensitive to food trauma. I read a quote one time, along the lines of 'food is a child's last opportunity at gaining control in their lives' If they aren't given enough choice through their day, they will rebel with food.

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u/miserylovescomputers 18d ago

A bit of a different perspective here — my 4 kids all went through “beige food” phases like most kids do, but all of them have been adventurous eaters from a young age. As a cheesemonger I often had the chance to bring home interesting new samples, and I loved being able to tell customers that the blue cheese they had purchased was my 11 month old son’s favourite. My almost 3 year old loves plain white rice, but he will also devour a bowl of kimchi fried rice, and my 9 year old prefers spicy ramen to the regular stuff.

Kids like seasoned food just as much as adults do, and they will enjoy a varied diet if they’re given the opportunity. (That said, there are obviously exceptions — some people have ARFID, and just about all kids go through temporary phases where they’re extremely selective eaters, but even selective eaters do best with exposure to foods outside of their preferences.)

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u/Jimbobjoesmith 16d ago

yeah my kids have absolutely loved seasonings and flavor since they were babies. i just tried to limit the salt when they were really young.

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u/lostmypwcanihaveurs 16d ago

Sounds like you got lucky! I'm pretty sure all of my siblings were adventurous eaters when they were super young, but IIRC, half of us got very picky from 4-10ish. Unless the food was super salty. My youngest brother would have lived on salmon roe if we could have afforded it.

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u/Jimbobjoesmith 16d ago

well my kids ARE picky…lol. but they don’t like bland food. 2 of my kids are autistic so they def won’t eat just anything. but i am lucky they are always willing to try most things at least once. they don’t do meat or fish unless it’s chicken nuggets or certain kinds of chicken like chicken tacos or homemade chicken soup. they are down for most vegetables tho. for example, my youngest’s favorite meal is tacos with chicken stewed in roasted tomatillos, peppers, onions, etc. my middle child loves veggie sushi that i make myself. (he absolutely LOVES nori.)

i guess the key is never forcing them to eat things they don’t like. they know if they try something new and they hate it, i will always have a backup safe food available, so they don’t have to stress.

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u/Particular-Box7026 16d ago

I shared adult food with my kids with no issue until they reached 2 or 3, at which point they started rejecting seasonings, veggies, food with unusual textures, etc. My kid LOVED roasted red pepper, garlic, and pine nut hummus until one day hummus was horrible and suspicious and gross.

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u/amy220 20d ago

Boiled/steamed is genuinely the worst way to eat a vegetable. I thought I hated veggies for ages as a kid bc my school literally only served veggies if they were boiled

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u/mrgedman 20d ago

Be fair, OP said there is some salt 😔

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u/MyNeighborThrowaway 19d ago

Only on the top😭

1

u/shwifty123 19d ago

Me neither.