“They Ate It All Up!” The Unbelievable Truth About Nursery Food
Sorry, my child ate broccoli?
If you’ve ever listened to the end-of-day nursery report with a feeling of scepticism or the concern that they’ve mixed your kid up with another one, you’re not alone. “We had a good day Mum!” Apparently, not only did my kid share toys with everyone, but she also ate everything on her plate, vegetables included?
Now, I am not doubting the incredible women who look after my child every day. I’m sure that you know that there is a staffing crisis right now, and no wonder. The average salary for a nursery worker in London is, according to TotalJobs, £21k. The London Living Wage is £13.50 an hour or £25,300.60 over 51 weeks. Why is nursery so expensive then? That’s a topic for a different newsletter. Either way, our nursery workers are incredible humans.
And yet there are posts all over Reddit and Mumsnet accusing their nursery of telling fibs about how much food their ‘LO’ (little one) has eaten.
I get it. When I get a report at the end of the day that my daughter (two-and-a-half, more independent than Kelly, Michelle and Beyoncé and a noted hater of vegetables) has not only eaten “very well” but also that she has eaten vegetables, fruit, and also tofu and pea risotto, joloff vegetable and red kidney bean rice served with tomato and cucumber salad, I’m obviously thrilled but also like, really?
At home, my daughter will currently eat three things: fish fingers, beans and sausages. It’s Brexit on a plate. During a bank holiday weekend, like this one just gone, my anxiety goes into overdrive. Three days without a good amount of green veggies and fruit. Can one bite of apple over a weekend sustain a child’s fibre intake until she gets back to nursery? How long does it take a two-year-old to develop rickets and/or scurvy? Why will she eat a varied diet at nursery but not at home for me?
The biggest test came when I saw butternut squash soup on the nursery menu. There’s no chance they’re getting this in her, I thought. For starters, my daughter has never eaten anything orange in her life (barring the aforementioned beans). She loathes carrots, throws sweet potatoes across the room and cries if I try to give her an orange. Secondly, she’s wary of any food that isn’t separated into specific solid chunks. Soup, I thought, is where nursery will meet their match.
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And yet, not only did she eat it all up, she came home with zero stains on her top, trousers, shoes or socks. Even her hair was soup-free. Nursery, I decided, is just magic.
And yes, it is. But there’s very real and practical reasons why the magic works. Kids just eat better when other kids are eating around them. One study, published in 2016, measured what happened when scientists showed 3–5-year-olds videos of other kids their age eating a pepper over a period of a week. Overall, the kids who watched the video (versus kids shown no videos, or a video of something other than a kid eating a vegetable) ate more peppers on day seven, suggesting that once they’ve seen another kid eat peppers, they want a piece of the action too.
Registered dietician Kacie Barnes has further calmed my fears with her excellent post on this topic. She explains that things like routine (ie, not grazing throughout the day) is another reason why nurseries have success. “Teachers at daycare likely set clear expectations and boundaries for behaviour they want to see at mealtime.” She writes. “When it is very clear to your child that this is mealtime, it is not playtime, and there won’t be another opportunity to eat for a few hours, they know that this is when they need to fill up.”
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She also states that, unlike at home, the food offered is the only food. “Usually, daycare doesn’t have a pantry or cabinet of snacks that your little one can freely walk into and choose something else besides what is offered. At home, they may know that if they whine enough or go get something from the pantry, that they don’t have to eat what is originally offered. Usually at daycare, the meal is the meal.” Who would have guessed trying to offer my daughter a big long list of decreasingly healthy things to eat with a growing sense of desperation would have had a negative impact? Stop looking into my soul Kacie.
So yeah, I guess the takeaway is that nursery is regimented, and that works, because it has to. That phrase about herding cats has nothing on taking charge of a room of 2–3 year olds for ten hours a day – regime and strict schedules are almost certainly the only way to get through. At home, my loosey-goosey approach probably means my daughter gets full, but over the course of a weekend, and probably not always with the optimum level of fruit and veg.
But, in the interest of keeping the motherhood guilt train from veering off a cliff, I’m going to let it go. Obviously, I’m not going to give up trying to feed my daughter fruit and veg on the weekend, but I’m also not going to give up everything to adhere to a super strict schedule that means we’re all on edge. If I can get some broccoli in her mouth, great. If it’s another fish finger, at least I’ve bought the ones with the least salt and the most legit fish in. She’s growing, she’s happy and there’s lentil salad on the nursery menu tomorrow. She’ll have a good day and eat it all up.