‘Puffed pork rind and gherkin ketchup’: Kids’ food is growing up

It looked like a publicity stunt and it trended like a publicity stunt. But however you feel about Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge’s decision to launch the free “tiny tasting menu” for children last month, there’s no denying the dismal statistics which prompted the move.  

According to Censuswide, who conducted a poll of 1,000 families across Britain, 84 per cent of parents struggle to get their children to try dishes with new ingredients. Only 24 per cent of parents of children aged 6-14 would describe their children as adventurous eaters, and a sorry 20 per cent of parents said their children preferred pre-packaged food over freshly made. Professing himself “surprised to see how few children are adventurous when it comes to trying new foods” Kerridge created a five-course menu “that will hopefully help parents to introduce new flavours”.

Quite how it went down, of course, we will never really know. For my own part, it reads like a hit list of foods my younger self was most averse to. Puffed pork rind and gherkin ketchup, Berkswell blue and truffle “cheese toastie”, cured salmon, Avruga caviar and spinach tart and BBQ beef brisket with smoked mashed potato, salted anchovies and caper butter – all sound delectable now, but they are hardly what I would call children’s foods.

And that is where I and the overwhelming majority of food retailers, producers and parents have been going wrong, apparently; because there is no such thing as children’s food. Time and again studies show that children who eat the same food, at the same time as their parents, are healthier and happier than those that don’t. This is true regardless of family backgrounds. In fact, says Bee Wilson – chair of Taste Education and author of the fascinating First Bite: How We Learned to Eat – “you will often find children from Asian and Middle Eastern families stretching their budget to make amazing home-cooked meals every night, rich in onions, tomatoes and pulses, whilst there will also be children in both working- and middle-class families whose parents don’t have time to cook and sit down with their children in the same way.”  

The result has been an extraordinary surge in foods produced, packaged and promoted for children and busy parents: foods like Dairylea Dunkers, Smiley Faces, Cheese Strings and Alphabites. They’ve filled hole in the bellies of children –  but they’ve opened up a bigger hole in parent’s knowledge of what children can and should be eating. “Even in Spain, where they take a lunch hour and are so proud of their food culture, you’ll find the same french fries and breadcrumb-based children’s menus,” says Wilson. “It just shows how powerful this idea of kids food has become.”  

Mercifully – from a nutritional standpoint at least – food marketed for children has been improving. Where possible, many manufacturers have limited the amount of added sugar, whilst artificial preservatives, colours and flavours have been largely stripped out. The range of foods available is improving too – if an expansion in the children’s food market can be regarded as an “improvement” when so many problems stem from food bring labelled as such in the first place. 

Based on extraordinary sales of baby food pouches containing vegetables, seeds and pulses, Whole Foods recently predicted in their 2021 trends report that kids’ food will get an increasingly “adult makeover” –  at least in terms of ingredients, with their own range expanding to include portable pouches of sweet potatoes & olive oil with rosemary; purple carrots, cauliflower and avocado oil with oregano, and pumpkin tree organic mango puree with oat fibre and seeds. Better known over here perhaps is Ella’s Kitchen, whose mixed herb munchy fingers are as standard an accessory amongst middle-class parents as Breton tops and Bugaboo buggies. Yet adding more expensive, less accessible snacks and meal pouches to the equation does nothing to dismantle the division between children’s food and adult food. If anything it only serves to compound it.  

“I have negative views on these pouches. That is not how a child learns to eat,” says Wilson. “[Parents] know their child is getting fruit and vegtables. But it is sad, because there is a whole world of flavour and texture to explore – and one of the joys of being the child is in exploring.” So dismayed is Wilson at the trend for these pricey pouches, she’s coined a term for them: “berrywashing.”

Seen in this light, Kerridge’s tiny tasting menu seems eminently sensible. Children desperately need to be exposed to a variety of flavours. News that a Michelin-starred chef is giving away free food might not have reached every family, but it will have made a difference to at least one. The same goes for Gordon Ramsey, on the CBBC show he does with his daughter, Matilda and the Ramsey Bunch; and, in Germany, for another Michelin-starred chef Alexander Herrmann, who last year collaborated with the airline Lufthansa to design its children’s menu to “provide fun and variety on the journey with their colourful and lovingly designed children's meals.”  

Before taking to the skies, the menu was tested by a jury of international children aged between four and nine. Dishes they favoured include dragon’s feet – poultry sausages served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes – and rice pudding with raspberries, labelled as rice pudding mouse. 

Wilson – and fellow advocates for a more grown up approach to children’s diets – welcome the involvement of professional chefs, particularly in the form of the Chefs in Schools project, a team of chefs and teachers who work directly with schools and provide materials and resources to improve the food and food education offered. “It’s amazing – and it really helps change the narrative around children’s food when they post tweets and Instagram posts saying this is what school food looks like, and it’s not what you expect ‘kids’ food’ to be.”, she says  Meals like pumpkin, chickpea and cauliflower curry – served in a nursery they support –  “challenges assumptions,” she continues. “And being open-minded about what a child might like changes everything.” 

Pass the salted anchovies and caper butter – my goddaughter’s coming for tea.