How Long Can They Desire Mac and Cheese? =)

wow! I think you are doing great to have them eat as many things as they do! I would say to just keep introducing different kinds of meats and maybe they will take one day. My mother always jokes my sister only ate PBJ until she was 10. But she wouldn't eat anything else! So I think you are ahead of the game. From what I have heard, it sounds pretty normal. Do you eat meats?

I remember eating the same things all the time when I was little too. I think we ate hot dogs like crazy! I would say not to worry.

For the past month I've been asking my husband what he wants for supper. And his response is almost always mac & cheese. He actually went to the grocery store for me when we ran out. I'm hoping it's a phase...

haha. I'm 33 and I'd eat it for every meal :o) So would my kids. It's good stuff.
We don't have it in our house anymore though because eat all natural now and it's full of stuff that we don't eat.
J.
Mom to 4 and soon one more through another adoption

Just be careful to continue to offer the other foods. My niece went through a similar phase and would only eat pasta. My sil started only ever making pasta and stopped offering fruits and veggies after awhile. My niece is now 10 and she doesn't eat meat, the only veggie she eats is carrots and the only fruit she really eats is an apple every so often. She has a lot of dental issues and is sick alot and i think this has a lot to do with all of that.

I'm 27 and mac/cheese is and has always been my favorite thing to eat. My daughter is 6.5 and loves it just as much as I do.

My dad used to put ground beef in with the Mac and Cheese.. you could try that.. It looks a little gross maybe throw some veggies in like someone else suggested. Could try to make some home made Mac and Cheese so they dont get too much sodium in their diet which the box stuff is full of.... good luck.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, as everyone else has said kids go through phases. I went through a mac and cheese phase while I was pregnant :-).

You could try making the mac and cheese his dessert if he loves it that much. Give him a smaller but more healthy meal and let him eat mac and cheese for dessert. There's no rule that says dessert has to be sweets, after all - just something they really love to eat, like mac and cheese.

The meat ideas are great too. Hot dogs and hamburger are easy additions to mac and cheese.

L.

If you ever get do concerned, try making it from scratch,(mine love it with Velveeta cheese), and Alternating the noodles. NO, i am not talking about the shape, but the Grain. Due to drastic increase in food sensitivities, there are now many alternative grain pastas available. These grains, like Quinoa, Buckwheat, and Bean Pastas have a higher amount of protein than wheat, and also have naturally occuring vitamins and minerals, unlike Wheat - which has to be fortified, and who knows if that fortification really works.

My favorites: Ancient Harvest Quinoa and Corn noodles (similar to a egg noodle), Orgran Buckwheat Spirals, Tinkiyada Brown Rice noodles, and Orgran Rice and Millet noodles. There are also a lot of pastas made out of beans. You can deceptively have your kids still nosh out on Mac-N-Cheese without as much guilt :o)

M., Mom of 3 and Cookbook Author of 8 Degrees of Ingredients, www.EightDegreesofIngredients.com

Kids go through food jags, but its important for you to keep offering the healthy foods so you aren't catering to htem, making them picky.

Put veggies and meats into the mac 'n cheese, cook it as normal, then add the cooked meat and cooked veggies and stir together.

Oh there was a time when I thought my child would turn into a fish stick, chicken nugget, pb & j sandwhich and then even mac & cheese.

My second child refused baby food "dinners" and lucky for me Chefboyrdee had just come out with the cups of things like chicken rice and spegt.

Sounds like you have it all under control. So long as they are healthy and it really sounds like they have a great balanced diet I say who cares.

I don't think you have anything to worry about! =) Sounds like they're not picky eaters and get a great variety of other foods, and that's good. I think my son would live on p.b. & j, or grilled cheese sandwiches of I let him! I think all kids go through "phases" where they would rather eat one food in particular then anything else. I would say your kids are totally "normal" kids and like many things, they will grow out of it.

My kids loved mac n cheese. Now some of them don't like it at all. My youngest daughter is now 16 years old and she still loves it! Every birthday I ask her what she wants for her birthday dinner and she requests mac n cheese and hot dogs! So I guess to answer your question, they may never outgrow loving mac n cheese. :-)

Other than the high sodium and fat content of Boxed Mac and cheese- I wouldn't be too worried-Although too much pasta can be a precursor to diabetes. We wear out our pancreas over time by eating too much "white sugar" or starches. My son's hang up is Peanut butter. He's 7 and we have a system. If he has peanut butter for lunch, he doesn't get it again for supper- I just won't fix it. But if he eats a hot lunch at school- I will do peanut butter for supper. My theory is meal time is NOT for fighting, and it really sounds as if your kids are eating well. Remember they can't eat it if you don't fix it.

its probably not a concern right now...but just be careful for their future. Mac and cheese has A LOT of calories...for 1/2 cup there is 410 calories. (now we don't count calories for kids...but as adults you know that our metabolism isn't quite so great!)

Yeah, pretty much all kids go thru this phase. I don't know if there's any explanation for it, but I would say most kids pick one food that they love and eat it all the time. It's good that your kids will eat fruits and veggies, tho. That's good. Mine won't. I'm struggling with that. As long as they're eating other things, too, let them eat the mac and cheese as long as you can stand it. Eventually they'll start asking for other things. Always offer other things, but don't be too discouraged if it's just mac and cheese that they want. And it's not really unusual either for kids that age to dislike meat. I'm not really sure why. My son (4) will eat chicken nuggets and sandwich meat, but that's about it. My daughter (18 m) is a little bit better, but she won't eat fruit or vegatables. Not even bananas! Which I find really weird. Anyway, all I'm saying is don't stress about it, your kids are totally normal! :)

If you find an age where they stop wanting mac & cheese, please let me know. My 4 1/2 year old twins would eat it every night if meals were left to them. They are also at the age where they don't want to eat meat - the only way I can get them to eat chicken is if I make chicken fingers (there's a really easy recipe on the Bisquick box). Having been vegetarian for a number of years myself, I'm not too concerned about the not eating meat thing.
Overall, I'd say your kids sound like they get plenty of variety in their diet and there are some good protein sources on the list you made. You might consider making your own mac & cheese for the kids, instead of the boxed variety. That way you can use whole wheat pasta instead of the enriched stuff that comes in the packaged variety, and there will also be less salt in it. I have two ways of making homemade mac & cheese for the girls - the first is just cooking noodles and then throwing cheese chunks or shredded cheese in the pot until it's all melty and gooey. The other thing I do is cook the noodles, and then pour about half of them into a casserole or 13x9x2 pan. A handful of cheese squares on top of the hot noodles, and a shake of parmesan, then another layer of noodles, cheese squares and parmesan. Then I pour milk over it (I think about 1 1/2-2 cups) and top it off with some paprika, and bake for 30 min at about 350. I could eat that every night myself, and the girls love it!
If you want the exact amounts/directions, I can send you the recipe - I found it in a Betty Crocker cookbook.

Is there really an age when that desire should go away??? I hope not, I LOVE mac and cheese, especially homemade with the Velveeta Cheese YUM! I can assure you that Cheese has enough Protein in it to replace meats. And I have a feeling that their desire to not eat meat is a texture thing. My 3 yr old rarely eats meats herself. We have worked on it, and she will eat chicken breast, pork chops, shrimp, and some burger now. I have mixed meat into my mac and cheese. I make Cheeseburger Hotdish, which is just Mac and Cheese with some burger in it. I also have made Pizza Hotdish, which I use mozzerella cheese, tomato sauce, burger and sometimes pepperoni. I add Italian Seasoning to it for that pizza taste. Chicken breast cut up in Mac and Cheese works too, as does shrimp, though she ate hers in a stir fry. We joked that she was going to be a vegatrian at 1, because she loved veggies, every kind, but never meat. So just be patient with them and slowly introduce the meats in a hotdish or however. They will come around, on their own time. good Luck!

A life time. My youngest child is now 30 and mac and cheese is still her favorite. The cheep box stuff. Just enjoy your children you seem to be doing a good job with nutrition. Don't forget mac and cheese is easy to fix and easy to clean up. take advantage of those 2 facts while it lasts.
R.

I still love it and eat it all the time at 27, so the desire may not ever go away. My kids love it too.....and you have to remember that kids go through those phases where they only want to eat one color, type of food, or shape. You might just have to wait it out and keep making the mac and cheese :)

Eh... Don't worry about it. My daughter is 6 and is still in love with the stuff. It's a comfort food. The only thing that should concern you is how processed the food is, I have changed my daughter's mac and cheese over to whole wheat mac and real cheddar cheese brands, sometimes I cook it completely homemade which she just loves - and so do I (and I'm 42 yrs old)!

I just read Raising Your Spirited Child, and in it, she talks about something I've seen in my own kid and not understood--that he has a hard time with meat textures. My son will eat meat, but he prefers it in spaghetti, or chopped up chicken in a chimichanga or shredded in chicken and rice--not whole chunks, and he really has an issue with the texture of shrimp and things like steak or roast. He loves beans, though, so we try to keep him up on protein and iron through other ways and hope he'll outgrow it--because, like yours, he eats a great diet other than his aversion to meats.

Have you tried putting meat into the mac and cheese? Making it more of a hotdish than just mac and cheese? My kids have all decided that one food was all they wanted to eat for weeks/months on end. I just kept offering the other stuff also, and they eventually started to eat it again.

We're going through a similar situation with our 20-month-old, only it's with peanut butter and jelly. That's just about all he wants. He just decided that he won't eat mac and cheese at all. (He had it for lunch the day he got a stomach virus, and I think he remembers that.)

Anyway, my mother told me that when we were little the doc said that the only way her kids were able to have enough protein and not be anemic was because they ate so much PB&J. Like you said, I don't think you need to be concerned about variety because your kiddos seem to get a lot. Kids go through periods where they only like one food. I still remember what I ate every day when I was a kid.

Also, it's really common for kids to reject meat.

Hi L.! My response is not going to be very popular...but there are a couple of possibilites why they want Mac n Cheese all the time. Sometimes when we crave something we actually have an intolerence to that particular food, such as wheat or dairy, we have a tendancy to crave it. Also, Mac n Cheese is high in MSG (it is listed under many different names to keep the manufacturer legal) and MSG is addictive. When I eat fast food or macaroni I just want more!
My son loves pasta with butter and I have started letting him have it a couple times a week. I just inform him of what his choices are and leave pasta out of it! Good luck!

My name is Amy and I have a 3 1/2 year old son who loves mac and cheese. He to would eat it for every meal of the day. Whenever I say what should we have for lunch or dinner - the answer is always mac and cheese. He won't eat meat either unless I tell him he can't have any dessert until he finishes or at least eats some of his meat. I think it is a stage they go through and I wouldn't really worry about it. I also have a 11 yr. old daughter and she still likes her mac and cheese; just not as much as my son! I think it's like the McDonald's faze they go through, all they ever want to do is eat at McDonald's! Sorry I don't have any suggestions for you but I really wouldn't worry about it. Sooner or later they will grow out of it! Amy H.