Smug Parents Of Good Eaters, Please STFU

After several years of parenting, several thousand parenting articles written, and several million parenting articles read — I’ve learned one thing about being a parent: you should only speak for yourself. Assuming all parents should be able to duplicate your parenting “successes” is just dumb.

Celebrity chef Curtis Stone thinks it’s super easy to get children to eat well, because he happens to have two good eaters of his own. He and his actress wife have a garden where they grow fresh veggies – and Stone uses those freshly grown, beautiful celebrity veggies to make his son a green juice every morning. His son loves freshly squeezed green juice. And yours would too if you would just start parenting.

“Your kid is going to embrace whatever you expose them to, right, that’s just a fact of life,” Stone recently said while promoting his cookbook Good Food, Good Life. “People tell you, ‘no, no my kid likes this or my kid likes that’. My opinion is, that’s just not accurate.”

No! Your kids don’t have tastes of their own. They will literally eat whatever you put in front of them. You’re just not trying hard enough. (Please read the sarcasm here.)

Curtis may have lucked-up with some children who eat everything he feeds them, but just because he’s not currently experiencing the struggle, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Picky eaters come from all different types of households. If you don’t happen to have one you should thank your lucky stars, not assume parents who do aren’t trying. I’ll also mention here that his kids are three and one — so he should seriously consider shutting up before his smug-parenting karma comes back to bite him in the ass.

When my first child started eating, he shoved anything I put in front of him into his mouth. I still remember his first bite – smooth, pureed avocado. I was totally delighted when as a toddler he started popping capers, olives, and feta cheese into his mouth gleefully. Then he turned three and decided spaghetti and PB&J were the staples he’d like to have in his diet, thankyouverymuch. My two-year-old still loves everything I put in front of her, but I’m sure that will be changing soon. Another thing I’ve learned about parenting — never speak too soon.

Don’t expect Stone to offer his kid a hot dog either, because those are fucking poison: “Someone said to me on a TV show in America ‘But how do you stop your kid from eating hotdogs?’ I’m like that’s pretty easy, my kid has never eaten a hotdog because it’s full of shit. I don’t want him to have all the nitrates and crap that’s in a hotdog. Of course one day he will be invited to a party at a fast food restaurant and I’m not going to say no, you can live a life of course, but you are in charge of his day to day.”

He has admitted in the past that his kids love foie gras and Vegemite. Foie gras is made by force-feeding male ducks so they become so obese they can’t move, their livers basically turn into pure fat, and rich people around the world rejoice and gobble them up. Vegemite is full of preservatives, but who cares? Doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is, STFU, Curtis. Nobody’s perfect.

Apparently no one has told Stone the cardinal rule of parenting: anything you act smug and superior about will come back to haunt you. Just wait.

Related post: 25 Reasons My Kid Won’t Eat That