Killed by chips and toast
 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006020536,00.html

By ALASTAIR TAYLOR
A LAD who only ate chips, toast and baked beans was killed by his junk diet — aged just 20.

...snip...

Mum Margaret, 48, said: “The hardest thing is he was so young. I’d do anything to have him back.”

(Except maybe regulate his diet when he was young enough to be trained? - Ed.)

Just eating poorly does not give you hepatitis.

Boy was up to something else.

I'm not sure of that. This was British food, after all...

Not every hep is viral. Contaminated food can inflame the liver, as can food allergies and infections from other sources. It sounds like his general health was poor to begin with, and the nutritional deficit accounted for many nails in his coffin.

on the upside, you CAN live on just potatoes!! YAY!

For a while.

You dont "try" to get your kids to eat healthy, you FORCE them. How disturbing, bleeding to death rom the gums! I feel faint just reading that!

I feel bad for mom, because no parent should bury a child. On the other hand, I think of her as a crazy lady. How can you as a parent of 6 other kids let him eat that way. Was he a miracle child? How are the other kids doing? How did the boy get to 20 yrs, without the pediatrician raising some flags? There has got to be more to that story, cause there is no way, that she has that many kids, and lets the one eat like that, and no one not question it. What happened to I let you eat what you want if you try something I want you to eat? Believe me gradually it works on picky eaters, you wear'em down after awhile. Either way sad really.

We had real battles with our kids over meals and what they did or didn't like..
It became a real fight some nights but most kids eventually get it sussed..
There's so much processed crap thats directed at kids through advertising that it is hard to keep saying no.
As a parent it was so annoying to cook a nice meal with all the right things only to watch your kid shove it around the plate,whinging that she wanted chicken nuggets or some such crap

Well what pisses Mrs. Dallas and me off is that at any given meal, one kid will like something and the other won't--but you can serve the same dish a week later and they've changed positions. It's like they have a secret pact to never eat the same thing at the same meal.

After I walked to school and back...... uphill...... both ways, etc, etc, etc, my mother put supper on the table. There was no choice and no whining. :whip:

Word to yo mama. As they say. :)

My B.I.L. an MD, lets his kid eat pastries, ice cream, and donuts because he is a "vegetarian". Seven frickin years old. This is a vegetarian that must love vegetables as much as animals, 'cause he won't eat vegetables either. Just sugar.

What a train wreck.

be-bop, SD, Ft-I.L., etc: Right on.

It *is* hard to get the kids to eat right. Frankly, I have to pick my battles. And going to DefCon 1 over the third PBJ sammich of the night is very rarely worth it.

I have slowly grown wise to the advantages I hold. Y'know "Old age and treachery will overcome Youth and enthusiasm" or words to that effect? I do the shopping. Hehehe... "What do you mean, we're out of chicken nuggets?!" "Yes, you *can* have a snack, honey. What do you want, an apple, banana or an orange? Crunchy? We have carrots. No, the Moon Pies are gone. Uh huh, fudge cookies too. Sorry. What? Not really hungry? Ok."

Which brings me to the last point. We have a busy household, and a sit down dinner must mean it's Christmas. :eyebrow: But even with the regular traffic in the kitchen, it does close at night. I am t-i-r-e-d of "Can I have a peanutbutterandjellysandwichplease, I'm hongry." at 10:45 pm. On a school night. By SonofV the Younger. He's not freakin malnourished, he's stalling bedtime. See, I can learn. eventually. So my answer has become: "You should have thought about that at dinnertime. Kitchen's closed. Loveya, g'night." Click.

*sigh*

I am consciously trying to avoid the sins of the father by not indoctrinating him into the "Clean Plate Club". I'm sure I'm making plenty of other mistakes for him to entertain his future therapists, but that tradition ends with me. And it's **hard**. F*ck, half the time I wind up cleaning his plate. Into my own belly. I know, bad habit. But it's mine, not his, so shaddup.

My god V,
I remember my dad cleaning my plate while lecturing about the depression (uphill etc) and thinking "why?"

Now, I cringe at the morsels left behind by the inchling, and I gobble them up wondering "how did I become my father?"

Yeah, if he's not hungry I don't force it, but we're pretty crunchy granola at my house. A homemade cookie (a fraction of the sugar called for) is about as nasty as his treats get. He doesn't have any idea ice cream exists, he has only seen two short animal/nature videos in his entire life.

When he gets older he can watch all the tv he wants, after he's mucked the metaphoric stables.

On the other hand, The menu is limited to what we are eating, when he was just a millimeter, we'd just grind up our dinner in a mill and give hm that. Those were some long ass salt free months...

He seems to like food well enough and both of us are making an effort not to make "food" become anything more than pleasant time spent as a family.

Check with us in a few years HA!

In a pitched battle right now over homework.

Food is entirely off the radar as a bone of contention.

My God. It has taken 17 minutes to do 29.4 * 76.

He called me a jerk under his breath, and I gave him his last free pass to not be killed. When I guide him Socratically, he's able to answer all the questions about which two numbers are to be multiplied, he (mostly) gets the answer right, he knows where to put the answer, he knows what to do (mostly) with the carry digit, addition is easy for him (mostly) but ....

Arrrrrrrggggghhh!!

Just take the next two numbers and work them. Then move on to the next two numbers and work them. Then move on to the next two numbers and work them. Ok, I see a pattern here, but he can get sidetracked sooooo easily. Between the letters D - O - G he'll be off chasing the cat. Just stay on target. (head pounding now. I need a tylenol.)

Sorry for the off topic post. Ok, here you go: doctor said, PBJ? No upper limit. Let him eat them. Great. One fewer things to worry over. Sheesh.

This has to be the universal question of all parents*. In my case it's my seemingly unending lectures about the fact that my little monsters seem completely incapable of the absorbing the concept that they have to CLOSE THE DOOR when it's 30 degrees outside. (That's 30 F, smartasses.)

*Maybe nonparents too, but I only ever get those twinges when I'm trying to get my kids to do or not do something I used to not do or do.

PARENT ~ Sometimes it's easier to just let kids have what they want to avoid whining kids.
DOCTOR ~ Sometimes it's easier to tell parents to let the kid have what they want, to avoid whining parents. :lol:

Regular meals are an impossibility in our house so it's become buy what you want them to have and "Root hog, or die."

Ahhh, the "Clean Your Plate" club. Hard habit to break, thanks Grandma.

There are still children starving in China, aren't there?

I never got the starving children in where-ever routine. I got the "there is no other option" routine. I wasn't forced to clean my plate, but if I didn't eat my dinner and I got hungry, I could have hot milk with bread dipped in it. Period. My mother was Swiss and didn't believe in American food. I would be amazed when I went over to my little pals' homes and they had stuff like cookies or even peanut butter. My Mom refused to buy sweets (my Dad would sometimes sneak them home), soft drinks, peanut butter, or cold cereal. I had to eat either oatmeal or soft boiled eggs for breakfast and I DID have to eat breakfast, I got a thermos of soup and some fruit for lunch, and dinner was usually hamburger or pork chops, rice or potatoes and a veggie. No dessert. Like it or go hungry.

The kid in the OP would have died of starvation by age 3 if he'd grown up at my house. :headshake

There shouldn't be, I remember sending the food I couldn't/wouldn't finish on my plate, so that should have taken care of that, right?

This thread is bringing up soooo many food issues for me. At my house you had to eat with your arm around your plate, guarding it, if you will, because my father would say, in a booming voice, "NOT GONNA EAT THAT?!!" and before you could even begin to formulate your response, he'd have your dinner forked and in his mouth.

My father sired three girls. He was a big man.

OMG! You too? Is that a Swiss thing? With sugar sprinkled on it? The momster used to give me that when I was pre-school, if I was still hungry before bed. Kinda like "comfort food". But I never heard of anybody else doing that :yum:

Yep, its Swiss! The momster in my case would sometimes allow me hot milk with honey in it, but same idea. Oh, and sometimes, if I was very lucky, I might be allowed a cup of Ovaltine. Usually it was hot milk and bread, though. I think the first time I ate a french fry, I must have been15 or 16 when I bought a plate of them at the local Woolworth lunch counter (don't tell the momster! ;) )

You must go here and read the lyrics to Alan Sherman's "Hail to Thee Fat Person' routine.

OMG! I'd completely forgotten the woolworth's lunch counters! How strange!
Esp. their grilled cheese.:eek: :yum:

When I was a lad my dad took me to all the places in NYC that he sensed were "going out" so I could experience them before they were gone. I really appreciate that.

Horn and Hardart's Automat, Zum Zum, Chock full of nuts coffee shops, Schraft's, and when we moved from Chicago to NYC he insisted we ride the train, pullman cars, dining cars, it was great. I have only fleeting memories of it, but when I see old movies with x country train scenes, it comes back to me.

LOL! I did get to hear from the Momster how hard she had it growing up in a little Swiss village in the 30's during the world wide depression. "We got a single tangerine in our stocking for St. Nicholas Day!" (December 6th, when Swiss kids apparently got their goodies handed out ahead of everyone else). "Do you know how much I treasured that single tangerine?" blah, blah, blah! Tangerines aside, the kids in Switzerland were getting all the hot milk and bread their little tummies could hold, so the author of that song was eating for one country too many! ;)

Bread and warm milk was common in the UK too.

OK, back to the OP, sounds like this kid had serious mental health problems. If they managed to bring up 6 other kids to eat reasonable diets, then it can't all be down to the parents. It sounded to me like he would have happily starved if they hadn't given him what he wanted to eat. For most families, the "food battle" is resolved by them getting so hungry they'll try it and find it doesn't kill them. Doesn't sound like this was the case here. Admittedly, they don't sound like the most nutritionally clued-up family either, but I don't think this can have been the sole cause of the boy's dietary problems.

Someone asked why the pediatrician didn't say anything. Children in the UK visit the regular family doctor, not a pediatrician. There are no regular examinations after the age of 2 -you just go when you're sick.

The British health system may be partially to blame, but when it comes to the food, let he without sin cast the first stone, so unless you're an expat I suggest you take a look at your own nation's diet first. (It sucks ;))

OK, so me, wife and the ankle-biters are at the local all-U-can-Eat (at my request). We let our 5 and 6 yo get their own food and "help" them make good decisions - fries and mac-'n-cheese are fine but maybe some carrots and broccoli would be good too. So, they choose some of what they want and some of what "their body needs" to fight germs and grow up strong and smart, blah, blah, blah.

A nice looking family sits at the table next to us: mom, dad, grandma, grandpa and l'il "Mary" who we guessed was about 4. As soon as they sit down, mommy asks Mary if she wants an ice-cream and of course she says yes. She swallows it whole. Then, mommy asks, do you want a brownie, darling? She knocks out a brownie like a starving vulture wolfing downing fresh roadkill. Sorry to be graphic but while the family is having pretty normal food, l'il Mary is on a fastrack to being a 300# diabetic. Grandpa, sensing that Mary's diet could use some balance, suggests that Mary have some real food. Mary freaks like her legs are stuck in a crocodile's mouth while mommy scolds grandpa and reassures Mary that she can have ice cream and brownies anytime she wants to. Grandpa slinks.

I make a mental note to relate our observations in this thread.

You're very lucky to have a Dad that had his shit together. :thumb:

*aside*
In the latest GEICO commercials, a friendly little gecko (with an adorable British accent) tempts us to buy his insurance by comparing it to free PIE AND CHIPS.

sounds like a British problem to me, monster. ;)

I did a lot of research before I was born ;)

You're right, though I am reminded of that quote supposedly by Mark Twain about how ashamed he was of how ignorant his parents were when he was younger and how surprised he was at how intelligetn they became as he got older.

Oh sure.....my parents were pretty dumb when I was a wee'un also. :lol:

"I was young and foolish then. I feel old and foolish now."--They Might Be Giants

Don't watch TV, but pie and chips is good (meat and two or more veg in a reasonably low fat pastry, what more could you ask from takeaway food?)

They Might Be Giants!

Birdhouse -excellent track, even made it to the UK!

Same kind of history here (as if twins wouldn't know!), except the first pizza I ever had was as a junior at the University of Colorado, when some dorm mates and I went to the student grill in the (then) brand-new Kittredge Complex. They also explained to me what an enchilada was, so I tried that too and got completely hooked on college-student junk food ;)

I have a Geezer Lunch Counter story too. When I was a senior in high school in 1962, we had a class trip to Raleigh to visit the museum and planetarium. The group was divided for lunch and I ate at a Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Raleigh. Almost immediately after we got home, it was on the news that this same lunch counter had experienced a sit-down protest by negroes (as black people were all called in those days), and the police and media were all over the place. My family just about had a fit that we had almost ended up in the middle of that. I didn't understand all the horror about it, I was actually very sympathetic to the black people's efforts to be able to use the same facilities that we did, even though public schools in North Carolina were still segregated at that time. We were very fortunate in the long run, because integration was accomplished almost painlessly in my state compared to the terrible things that happened in the "Deep South".

Oh, man! The Kittredge Complex! That was swank back in the day! If you had to live in the dorms, that was THE place! Remember the Alfred Packer Grill? Speaking of strange eating habits! OOh, and the sub sub basement of Norlin Library! What a bizarre spot. Were you at CU when the flasher used to hang out down there? Yep, we're both geezers alright! ;)

Of course I was there! The Alferd Packer grill was where we hung out inbetween classes, but in those days the Sink Burgers were to die for. My classmate was Paul Danish, although I didn't know him personally, and he is the one who named the grill after the notorious Colorado cannibal :D The Kittredge Complex had just opened and I lived in Hallett Hall, so we decided to walk over and take a look at how the better half lived. That pond was brand new, didn't even have any plants yet, and some guy tossed one of my friends into it and hurt her feelings so we went home again. And I used to work in the basement of Norlin Library, when I could stay awake after being up all night, that is ;)

Do you remember when Joe Coors was a Regent and he tried to strong-arm the University into letting him sell his beer in the Alferd Packer Grill? The fanciful rumor was that a pipeline would be built to supply the campus. The students hated Joe Coors more than they wanted to have beer on campus, an astonishing development considering the temprament at CU in the '60s, and demanded that the University reject the proposal. That was when I began boycotting Coors beer and never bought another drop of it even 40 years later. The students rightly felt that a man who stated that the National Guard should shoot student war-protestors without a second thought, yet wanted to have exclusive access to the same students' beer money, was a hypocrite of the worst order. This hatred of the Coors family as opposed to their beer still runs so deep at CU that the University refused to name the stadium after them even after million-dollar contributions over many years, and it was only recently that they reached some sort of compromise on that. I think they allowed the Coors name on the extension built in front of the stadium, didn't they?

Tonchi, beer-wise, that was one hell of a loss you inflicted on yourself. My mother still lives in the west-of-Denver area, and Coors gets better the nearer you get to Golden. I keep checking on this during my very occasional visits back there.

I'm not the sort who would boycott Coors just because the guy said he's not even slightly broken up about the antiwar movement taking casualties -- that lot was entirely too sympathetic to the cause of one of humanity's most lethal totalitarian abominations to get even a moment's support from me. The antiwar movement was composed of Communist dupes -- talk about being profoundly stupid! I had this figured at age nine -- what were people twice my age doing being hoodwinked?

We see here the reason I never logged any time as a hippie.

Okay, good food that's good for you... I do have a little trouble enjoying my vegetables, to the point where I might as well mostly eat fruit. I don't dislike the vegetables the way I dislike cooked beef liver -- the stuff needs to be seasoned up as Braunschwieger, though chicken livers for some reason aren't nearly so objectionable -- but there's a real tendency to leave them off the plate unless I can do fatty/cheesy veggie bake things with them -- that includes quiche. I'll go out of my way for a good Joe's Special, and its spinach must be fresh. Canned spinach is how to mess a Joe's up.

Blech, UG! Anyone who thinks Coors is a drinkable substance should have his head examined. The stuff is beer flavored water and the beer flavoring leaves much to be desired. I'd rather drink the water from the pond across from the Hale Science building on the CU campus. I have drunk Coors smack in the middle of downtown Golden, and I can assure you the quality of the stuff showed no improvement. I remember very well the outrage over Joe Coors' remark and the resulting boycott. It was not difficult to avoid the stuff since I preferred Tecate, anyhow.

So you were 9 when Kent State happened? And you think its valid for American kids who were exercising their constitutional right to free speech to be shot dead by members of the Ohio National Guard? A US citizen has every right to climb up on a soap box in the middle of town and yell, "I love Osami Bin Laden!" As the saying goes, I may violently disagree with that person's sentiments, but I'll fight to the end for their right to express them. You keep posting about democracy and totalitarian governments, and you don't have a clue. Are you sure you're not really 9 now?

Tonchi, I shouldn't be surprised that my non evil twin worked at Norlin. I was a student assistant on the circ desk there. When the library would stay open all night during finals week, I'd volunteer to help staff the desk all night and then stumble bleery eyed over to the Packer grill for a cup of coffee before hitting the exam hall. I did a lot of last minute cramming at the Norlin circ desk between the hours of midnight and 6:00am.

Yep, the Sink was THE place for burgers and Tulagi's was THE place to go hear bands like Dusty Drapes and the Dusters. I was friends with their drummer, Brian Brown. I got thrown into the fountain in the courtyard outside the student union and attended a rally in that same courtyard when Jessie Jackson came to make a speech when he was running for president. Some UG type actually yelled "Nigger" at him and the hapless bigot was saved from mob justice only by the presence of campus security who whisked him away from the enraged crowd.

You gotta come back to Colorado when you escape Fresno and do coffee with me (or drink a beer that's not Coors ;) ). Say, did you know that Alfred Packer was Swiss?

I just wish they'd quit digging up those poor folks' bones ever couple of years, trying to prove the dirty deed one way or the other. My archaeology publications follow the latest analysis with great glee and Mr. Packer is defamed again. I do, however, always appreciate the quote from the judge on the case: "Mr. Packer, there were only 7 Democrats in all o' Hinsdale County and you just ate 5 of them!" :yum:

UG, eat your broccoli. It's good for your colon, which has become soft from drinking the diluted stump water which Coors sold for beer. Because of laws allowing 18yo students to buy the lighter brews on "The Hill", a generation never developed any taste buds. I've toured the Coors plant several times, in the days when the draft beer was free, and the "free" part was its main appeal. Even if I hadn't boycotted Coors for his radical right-wing opinions, I would have boycotted him for the disgraceful way he treated his Mexican employees. He treated them to slave-labor conditions and lost a major lawsuit for discrimination. Joe Coors was even too radical for Ronald Reagan, and that is saying plenty; he was quietly brushed off when he tried to claim an abassador position as a payoff for his monetary support.

Mari, we definitely have a date to drink SOMETHING one of these days at the ol' alma mater ;)

You're on! :beer:

Shall we meet halfway in the town of St. George in the parched state of Utah? The first round of soda pop will be on me!

UG, BTW, is beyond even the help of broccoli. May his fondness of Coors be for him what Al Packer was for the democrats of Hinsdale County! :D

I like broccoli, particularly with cheese and quiche-y stuff -- and Mari, you're just someone who doesn't know any better. Sure, Joe Radical has every right to mouth off -- and he's still damned stupid, busily proving it, and damned stupid is much too stupid for me. Only the colossally stupid or immoral support a totalitarian system against a democratic one.

Nor is Coors the only beer I drink, you big teases.