Food Glorious Food

Of all the things my daughter and I argue about, the subject that crops up the most is food. I don't want to give you the impression that we're forever arguing, but it is true to say that whereas my wife and I only fall out over two things (sex and money - and I still maintain she's charging me too much) I, and indeed we, seem to disagree with our littl'un about a vast range of matters. Is it suitable weather (in the middle of October with the wind howling outside) for her to wear a short skirt (doubtless foreshadowing many a teenage argument beginning with me saying, "You're not going out dressed like that")? Who is going to tidy up the toy-room? How many stories should be read at bedtime? Why are there underpants on the floor? When can you be certain you have enough gerbils? Chocolate consumption, brushing hair, doing homework, getting dressed.... The list seems endless (but only because it is) but of all those many topics, food is the main one. And by food I mean the continual uphill struggle to get her to eat some!

I'll readily admit that I probably wasn't the most cosmopolitan of eaters when I was a child (we'll draw a veil here over the "me as a toddler - Dad - Jaffa Cake" stand-off of the early 70s) but to make up for my lack of variety, what I did like I was happy to eat by the cartload. So although I may not have had much of a repertoire beyond meat of some sort, potatoes, and gravy, I was quite happy to have that combination most days, and would happily pack away vast quantities of the same (and again, we'll draw a veil here over Mrs Curnow's attempts to get me to add a picture here of a young, Sumo-esque Andrew).

But our daughter sadly fails on both the variety and the quantity counts, with the result that each and every mealtime ends up as a battle of wills. There are so few things she likes - and although it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we definitely did pick up the right baby from the hospital, somehow her genetic make-up insists that she doesn't even like fish fingers. I mean, how do you reason with somebody like that?! (Totally off the subject, but at this very moment, "somebody like that" is galloping up the hallway on a cardboard tube, and giving us a running commentary into the bargain, so I fear sanity may be a thorny subject all round.)

I suppose inevitably the eating habits of a child, just like any other behavioural patterns, are used to judge/praise/condemn/browbeat/depress the parents. When they are still babies, children are regularly summonsed to the local health centre for measuring and weighing, and in her time there Miss Curnow had the rather dubious honour of being declared both overweight and underweight (although obviously not on the same day). It's not just the Health Authorities who pick away at the fragile confidence of the new parent either - after all, that's what families are for. My Mum initially, I think, felt that a single visit to Granny's house would quickly cure little Miss of any reticence or fussiness at mealtimes. It has to be said, mind you, that I'm not really sure on what basis she thought this would be the case, since she was always happy... well, I don't know about happy, but she certainly always did produce something different for my good self when I was going through my 'fussy' stage (which was approximately the first twenty-five years). That didn't really turn out to be the case, and although my mother-in-law's method of cajoling something-good-for-her down Miss Curnow's throat by the prospect of its being quickly followed by something more Cadburyesque did meet with some success, I can't help but think that causes as many problems as it solves.

Incidentally, or perhaps very relevantly (it's so hard to tell sometimes) my Aunt at time of writing is still, I suspect, of the opinion that a couple of mealtimes with her would quickly cure Miss Curnow of what ails her (although again, my Aunt used to have baked beans with Roast Beef when I was young, so her credentials may be a little suspect). However, she is shortly to become a grandmother herself, so whether the altered perspective that offers might, erm, alter her perspective, we will have to wait and see.

Of course it would be wrong of me to give the impression that the world and his wife (and various people with the surname Curnow, plus my in-laws) are concerned about my daughter's eating habits, while me and Mrs Curnow aren't. At Curnow Towers we've been through the "eat it or you're going to bed" stage, the "eat it or go without" stage, and of course the "just eat it!!!!!!" stage. Any trick you can think of, we've tried it, but only ever with intermittent success. It worries me more at some times than at others, and I have to hold my hand up and admit that we now seem to have settled into something of an uneasy status quo, so that rather than forever trying new, ingenious and potentially-doomed attempts to introduce her to new food groups we give her something from her select elite so that at least we can be sure she will eat a little of something each day.

And to be honest, it's only really Tea that's the problem (or Dinner, depending on what you call it). Breakfast isn't a battlefield, since we usually manage to slip a bowl of the cereal of the moment under her defences before she's fully aware of it. Weetabix was the number one for a very long time, but has recently been supplanted by Coco Pops, which can make the impressive boast, for those of you who don't know, that they are so chocolatey they even turn the milk brown. If truth be told, she'd gleefully knock back breakfast by the bowlful if we acceded to her demands to purchase "Cookie Crisp" - easy prey to the advertisers art, my daughter has seen this product advertised on numerous occasions on numerous (but mainly cartoon-fixated) TV channels. What it actually is, is small chocolate chip cookies in a box, but because it has the words 'breakfast' and 'cereal' on the carton, my littl'un assumes it must be good for you. Liberal I may be, but even I draw the line at chucking half a packet of biscuits down her throat first thing in the morning.

Lunchtime too isn't a problem, particularly during the week. She doesn't have a hot meal at school (and to be fair it would be hypocritical in the extreme for either me or Mrs C to claim that school dinners are nice since by the immutable laws of nature they just aren't) but she does have the ever-dependable packed lunch. Currently on about her seventh lunchbox since she started school three years ago (this one is of the Barbie variety, incidentally, which means it is overwhelmingly pink) Miss Curnow has four ham sandwiches (crusts surgically removed), two yoghurts (and two spoons) and a penguin (yes, the biscuit) for lunch every day, and bar the odd corner of bread (and a disgustingly sticky bag containing empty yoghurt pots, lids, and spoons) the lunchbox always comes home of an evening emptied.

Which brings us back to Tea, or Dinner, or even 'the evening meal' if you want to avoid finally deciding on a proper noun. My daughter's repertoire is, as I think I may have already conveyed, fairly limited, and in fact rather than expanding it seems to be slowly collapsing on itself like a black hole. Chips have already fallen by the wayside I'm afraid. Actually I never much cared for chips when I was a kid (and by "never much cared for" I actually mean I would never, ever, ever, eat them, nope, no way, uh-uh, OK, I will starve then, fine) and in fact an Aunt once said that if I ever did eat them I should let her know and she'd send me the money to buy some. If I ever find myself in dire financial straits, I like to think that I always have a small portion of chips to fall back on...

So what then will Miss Curnow eat? Those of you worried about how much longer I am going to ramble on need not fear, since I could probably list the things she will eat on a very small piece of paper indeed. Rice, spaghetti, ham, raw carrot, eggs (boiled) at a push, Bernard Matthews' Turkey burgers (she's never actually proclaimed them to be bootiful, but she will eat them), chicken dippers, mince, and... well, no, that's pretty much it on the Tea/Dinner front to be honest with you. Obviously there are also various combinations of the above, which more or less gets us through the week, but it's all rather dire. In fact I even feel a twinge of guilt now, admitting how very few things she will eat, since by extension it's revealing the limited success (aka massive failure) that we as parents have had on that front.

Mind you, I don't think anybody who's seen her would say our littl'un is wasting away. She's not the overweight baby that she was (allegedly - and to Mrs C, outrageously, so let us never speak of it again) but equally she's not a poor frail skinny thing, lacking the strength even to lift her fork. Maybe on the appetite front she's just a late developer? It does worry me, intermittently, if only because I remember, from my own childhood, that I tended to shy away from going on trips or outings because I was concerned that there wouldn't be anything I liked to eat - or more to the point (since I didn't really mind going without) that there would be something I didn't like that I would be made to eat.

Conversely though, in this modern world there are other things preying on the back of my mind which make me wary about going too far in forcing our littl'un to EAT!!!!!. At every turn there seems to be some newspaper or documentary or even just an advertisement designed to terrify us (I can't be the only one who has seen the advert that starts with the charming tagline "There are more germs on your baby's highchair than on the kitchen floor" - although how they can possibly make that claim without some serious tweaking of their survey, or indeed just plain lying, I don't know) and the prospect of teen years blighted by anorexia or bulimia has popped into my head more than once. Which adds another dimension to the issue, that of trying to cajole/nag/force Miss Curnow into eating 'properly' while at the same time not giving her a complex about it.

Whether or not we have succeeded in that at least, it's a bit early to say. The proof of that particular pudding will, alas, be in the eating. Or not as the case may be.