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The woes of feeding little ones

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
One of the sweetest moments of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman has the late Sihung Lung delivery a slew of warm, tasty gourmet meals to a little girl at school. The school kids ooh and ahh over the selection of meals she is given, even though peanut butter and jelly, and the other lunch staples we all know, are nowhere to be found.

I couldn't help but think of that as I read Faye's latest post this week, about the picky pressures of first graders. She's struggling to find foods that her son can take to school, and they can't be "soup, pasta, or anything rice related in a packed lunch, because he says his friends will make fun of him." A peanut butter gallet with pretzels wouldn't even do the trick. "They laughed," he said.

Poor kid! We've gone over kids' lunches before, but how about memories of food taunting? I remember being about the same age as the boy, and ranting up a storm when my friend put ketchup on her scrambled eggs. Me, I got taunted for eating a hunk of bread dipped in mayonnaise.

What dishes or food habits have people chided you for?


Tags: featured, food phobias, FoodPhobias, lunch, lunches

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

Chris Wilkerson

9-19-2008 @1:37PM Chris Wilkerson said... I once (as an elementary student) mixed milk with my icecream to soften it up, sometimes the icecream we got in the lunch lines were practically ice. It turned my chocolate ice cream into almost a lighter smoother texture. A girl at the same table saw me do that and was disgusted by it, she confronted me about it in which I told her Ice Cream is milk and that mixing it is not bad. She turned me into a faculty member who them stuck me in an isolation booth for the rest of my lunch week.

Kids are weird...
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Cheryl

9-19-2008 @1:47PM Cheryl said... My Mother made peanut butter and lettuce sandwiches for us and they always got a laugh. She also cooked the pigeons that we raised and made us squab sandwiches. That was horrible. She took cake decorating lessons constantly so we always had a piece of decorated cake in our lunches. Everyone thought we always had parties at our house because of the cakes. Poor us!!!
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Dea

9-19-2008 @1:53PM Dea said... One of my cousins taught me this trick and everyone i tell about it gags in disgust but it is a delicious sweet n salty marriage of ruffles potato chips with aeresol whipped cream.... I've also been ridiculed for dipping french fries in chocolate milkshakes and putting sliced banana on ritz crackers that tastes like banana bread in a bite... :)
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emo

9-19-2008 @2:24PM emo said... I remember people in elementary school used to turn up their noses at the cottage cheese my mom packed for me in a little Thermos bowl container. I didn't understand - I liked it!

Also, I liked to eat soy sauce with bananas, which grossed some people out.
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corey_harmon

9-19-2008 @2:48PM corey_harmon said... Peanut butter burritos (PB wrapped in tortilla instead of bread) - that one always got comments. But being the PB fiend that I am, I didn't let them stop me :P
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Barbara Carlsen

9-19-2008 @4:42PM Barbara Carlsen said... I ate liverwurst on sourdough w/pickles and mayo every single day of the third grade. Kids would actually gag, but I was the tether ball champ so got left alone. My mother was always trying to talk me into something else, but I was a skinny kid who's normal approach to lunch was to take the minimum number of bites required by the lunch yard supervisor before letting me out (to play tether ball, of course!). She heard through the grape vine that I was actually eating the liverwurst, so she she kept making them. I don't dislike liverwurst but I honestly never think about eating it!

By the way, we skinny chicks at the beach in Hermosa, CA lived on chocolate milk shakes/dipping our french fries!
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Maddie

9-19-2008 @4:57PM Maddie said... I think ketchup in eggs is odd, I eat my food in stages- if I start eating my vegetables, I finish them before I start eating my potatoes or meat... I have always done that and I don't even realize I do it. I used to get teased for it and I had a teacher who told me that isn't how people eat, I had to take one bite of rice, then one bite of corn, then one bite of chicken... I sat there and refused to eat anything. What really bothers me is that there are adults who punish children for what they think are odd eating habits, when really- I am happy if I can get anything 'healthy' into my nephew's belly.
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yoel

9-19-2008 @10:32PM yoel said... When I briefly lived in Korea in elementary school, I took a perfectly fine lunch (rice, 2-3 little side dishes). I guess there's a pretty fancy bento box culture, because the teacher took one look at my lunch, and asked me if I was an ORPHAN!
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Jessica

9-19-2008 @10:48PM Jessica said... I got in trouble in kindergarten for eating my dessert first. I did finish all my food, but my mother had to come and watch me eat my meal in the proper order for a week before I was allowed to eat on my own. I had a friend in grade school who would drink ketchup through a straw! She did it almost every day.
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Debsa

10-02-2008 @12:51AM Debsa said... Thank you for reminding me about this terrific movie...
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KatherineB

9-20-2008 @8:43AM KatherineB said... I lived a really ethnic neighborhood growing up--everyone was of Polish, Slovak or Italian descent mostly--a few other countries thrown in for good measure. We ALL ate food that was kind of different. So far, everything the posters here have said doesn't sound so odd to me. No wonder so many folks have food issues! Teachers, Lunch ladies---are you listening to what you're doing to impressionable young kids? lol. Heck, as long as my kid ate something I never cared how it got down his throat! IMHO, too many folks are concerned with what they consider the right way and the wrong way. Let kids explore food and choose what they like. Most adults don't eat things they hate--kids need to find out what they like and don't like. Leave them be!
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Sarah

9-20-2008 @10:47AM Sarah said... I'm scarred for life from tuna salad because of malicious 4th graders. I live in the MIdwest United States, and our school didn't turn air conditioning on in the summer. We ate lunch at our desks, and some kids teased me about the smell. Well, because I was embarrassed, I ate slowly. I missed the last garbage can round, so I put my empty tuna can in the garbage can of the classroom. Being a hot summer day, by the end of the day it stunk up the whole room. The teacher asked who did it, I 'fessed up, and she ridiculed me in front of the entire class. I can NOT eat tuna since!
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Linds

9-20-2008 @12:01PM Linds said... I was told by my brothers that when they were at school, a kid had a salad for lunch with raw mushrooms in it. One of the dinner ladies took the kid to the headteacher because he was eating RAW mushrooms! The headteacher apparently just said "yeah, they're really nice." Honestly, people get so hung up about food.

Same school also had a kid crying at lunch time because his sandwich got stuck to the roof of his mouth and he couldn't get it off!
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alkali

9-21-2008 @5:03PM alkali said... Once at the dining hall in college, my friends had a discussion about a bizarre concoction on the salad bar, which I defended as a Midwestern staple and ate as a show of Midwestern pride: lime jello with cottage cheese and pineapple chunks suspended in it.
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Suzana

9-22-2008 @12:07AM Suzana said... don't knock it till you try it, pretzel sticks, especially the long pretzel logs, dipped in ice cream, hard pack is best, but soft serve will do in a pinch, up to you on the flavor, it's nice with butter pecan, or any other flavor w/ nuts, coffee flavor's not bad. "Himself" always looks at me and says "You're nuts"!~~~this from a man who will make a meal out of cottage cheese and cold B & M baked beans right from the can. (and he LIKES the macaroni salad from store delis that has the miracle whip and pimentos in it, or in some cases pickle relish and carrots too...if I'm going to salad my macaroni, it's either oil & vinegar, or mayo on my pasta thank you...
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15 Comments / 1 Pages

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