When your kids say 'There's nothing to eat' what does that mean in your house?

[fairfarmhand]

Here, it means no cereal and/or milk.

 

No junk food lunches.  No sweet snacks like cookies.

 

There can be plentiful sandwich stuff, a fridge packed with leftovers, homemade muffins for breakfast, but if those two things aren't around, there's nothinig to eat.

[Rebel Yell]

There's nothing to eat means we have a fridge and pantry overflowinfg with ingredients.

 

Somehow, ingredients are not food. :glare:

[Mandylubug]

same here. It can also mean " I want the gluten free alternative to what everyone else is having. I don't care that it isn't in the pantry!" even when there are acceptible alternatives in fridge or pantry, just not THAT alternative.

[Sandragood1]

What Rebel Yell said!

 

Plenty of ingredients but kids too lazy to make something.

 

I intend to work on this over the summer with meal rotations added to chore lists.

I do get that when cooking something is new it takes lots of mental energy so I want them to put together a basic repertoire that they *know* so well they can make it in their sleep.

[Okra]

Here it means that there is nothing crunchy to eat....

[fairfarmhand]

Here it means that there is nothing crunchy to eat....

 

Do broccoli and carrots count? :)

 

[Tanaqui]

It means they want an advance on their allowance (that they blew on Sims or Minecraft) so they can go to the store now and buy chips and ice cream even though dinner is in, like, half an hour and we have a house overflowing with carrots, apples, oranges, carrots, eggs, and carrots.

 

I answer all such requests the same way: Either suck it up, or eat your sister.

[SKL]

Here it means "I am too special to eat any of this ordinary food today."  :/

[Rachel]

My kids don't say that but when my husband says that it means there isn't any snack food. I find it funny that he still says that when I've never kept snack food in our house in 15 years unless it was for a specific reason.

[emzhengjiu]

Here it means there's nothing quick and easy to eat.  Everything needs substantial preparation and cooking.  

[Word Nerd]

Here it means: "There is nothing here that I feel like eating...though even if I could magically produce whatever I wanted to eat with the help of a chef genie with the snap of my fingers, I'm still not sure what I would want." 

[MEmama]

Is it safe for me to admit I've never heard it? DS will eat anything and he's not a snacker.

 

I, on the other hand, say it frequently when we don't have kettle corn in the house. :)

[HeWillSoar]

It means, to my teenagers, that there is no prepared packaged foods, and they are too lazy to actually make something or that there is nothing that they really want, even if there is food.  Now my 11 year old has no problem making a sandwich but the teenagers can't seem to do that. 

[kewb]

Here it means they were unable to open the pantry or fridge and find an already prepared meal/snack/junk food.

The fact that there are fruits and veggies and the ingredients to make whatever they want does not count as something to eat.

[Truscifi]

Here it means: "There is nothing here that I feel like eating...though even if I could magically produce whatever I wanted to eat with the help of a chef genie with the snap of my fingers, I'm still not sure what I would want." 

 

This is what it means here too. Grr.

[TammyinTN]

Here it means...Mom hasn't restocked all the junk food or pre-made stuff.   I have a pantry/freezer full ingredients to basically cook for a month so no one would ever go hungry here. 

[Carrie12345]

My kids don't say that.

 

When dh says it, it means there's no yogurt, easy-to-heat leftovers, or Oreos.

When I say it, it means there's no cheese and crackers or chocolate.

[Seasider]

It means that when they open the fridge, a Chipotle-bag-holding hand doesn't extend an offering right out.

 

Or when they open the pantry, they don't find the shelves stocked and arranged neatly like down at the Circle-K.

 

But they mostly have cars and part time jobs and some disposable income, so I just keep filling the kitchen spaces with chicken, vegetables, peanut butter and pita chips.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Here, it means no cereal and/or milk.

 

No junk food lunches.  No sweet snacks like cookies.

 

There can be plentiful sandwich stuff, a fridge packed with leftovers, homemade muffins for breakfast, but if those two things aren't around, there's nothinig to eat.

 

That's exactly what they mean when they say it.  :glare:

[Cinder]

There's nothing here I feel like eating. There is no leftover pizza, no chips, no crackers. :glare:

[Lisbeth]

That their ARFID is manifesting, there is a very well-stocked house, and that I am being tortured again.  :glare:  We seriously have a VERY well stocked house.  I'm a Mormon.  We are the food storage people.  I stock good stuff, too, it's not just dried beans and wheat berries.  ;)

[swellmomma]

Here it means the house if full of ingredients, but not prepared foods.  Or that we are out of cereal/milk/bread.  They will phone me at work to tell me they never ate because there is nothing to eat even though I know for a fact the pantry, fridge and freezer are full but they would have to actively cook something beyond frozen pizza.  Which they know how to do, they just don/'t wanna

 

[Wildiris]

When your kids/DH say 'There's nothing to eat' what does that mean in your house?

The repeated refrain at my house: 'There's nothing to eat'

What this means is there is nothing that anyone either cares to eat or make for themselves. We don't have ready made food at our house unless I make it. Cookies don't count since DD makes those weekly. Of course there is food in the refrigerator, but these foods are just the ingredients to a meal. It fries me when I come home from town late and everyone is look at me with wilting eyes wanting to know what dinner is and when its going to be ready. I guess I didn't train them to be self-sufficient yet. 

[foxbridgeacademy]

It means that there are no snacky quick foods but tons of healthy stuff and they want me to cook it for them.

[Dmmetler]

Usually it means "Daddy ate all of whatever I want to eat last night". DH is trying to diet, and apparently the hours between midnight ad 4:00 AM don't count or something....

 

 

[mathmarm]

When I was growing up, late elementary/middle school stage mom taught us to stop complaining by reacting to the "There is nothing to eat" by not-feeding us. She'd send us to bed with out dinner. A couple of days later she'd be sure and make us help in the kitchen over the next several days so that when we saw ingredients we could easily identify a meal.

 

It was very effective in teaching us not to whine/complain about food options.

[TechWife]

nm, user error! 

[BarbecueMom]

For DS6, it means he wants to cook something gourmet and elaborate but doesn't want to clean it up.

 

For DS5 it means we have all of his favorite foods but he wants to argue anyway.

 

For DH it means he's trying to not snack mindlessly, and he is convincing himself we don't have anything to munch on.

 

For me it means I need to eat but haven't had an appetite but a handful of times in two years.

[staceyobu]

There are no Cheetos or Nutella.

[luuknam]

My kids don't seem to ever use that phrase. They just whine "I want something to eat" combined with "I don't want that". Which is somewhat surprising, since my wife says there's nothing to eat way too frequently (no, she doesn't want cereal, oatmeal, bread with jam/nutella/peanutbutter, or another 5+ options). She's super picky at times, usually when she's already too hungry. I've learned to just ignore it - it's not my problem, even if she wants to make it my problem. That said, it annoys me, because it's tough to raise the kids to be good eaters when half their rolemodels are bad. But hey, there are kids with worse rolemodels. She's NOT shooting up heroin in the living room (or anywhere else) or w/e.

 

Usually my kids get 1-2 choices and if they like neither that's their problem.

[Mimm]

It means no cereal, no pasta, no bread or sandwich stuff, no snack foods, no fruit, and no easy frozen stuff to eat. It means there is technically food in the house that we would eat if we were broke and starving, but there's nothing easy to prepare. Sometimes our cupboards get rather bare simply because no one gets around to going shopping because no one likes doing it. Less so since the baby was born because we have to keep her in formula/milk.

[Pippen]

Oldest it means there is no main entree coming out of the oven when he comes wandering through the kitchen, or no desirable leftover in the fridge.

 

For middle it means no cereal, pizza, or homemade mac and cheese.

 

For youngest it varies--sometimes it means no fresh fruit cut up and ready to go, other times it means what's on the menu or in the fridge isn't appealing to her at the moment.

[Zydruna]

Recently it has come to mean that we are out of Sweetos.  If you haven't seen them yet they are Cheetos but puffy and cinnamon/sugar flavored instead of cheesy.   I don't know who came up with the idea of those, but I am so glad that they will supposedly only be available for a limited time!

[Btervet]

I don't know what I want to eat, decisions are hard, so there is nothing to eat.

 

I'm not hungry, but I'm hungry, but I'm not hungry, but I'm hungry.

 

I'm bored. I'd have to open a bag to eat that and that's too much work.

 

There is no sliced chicken. Yes, I see those slices of chicken over there, but that's not how I like it sliced. 

[KrissiK]

"I'm bored, I'm not really hungry, at least not hungry enough to eat the zwiebach or yogurt, or fruit, or cheese-stick that you have offered me and really want sweet cereal or some other form of junk food!"

[FarmingMomma]

Thankfully, I rarely hear that refrain around here :)  The kids and hubby will occasionally mutter about being out of cereal, yogurt, granola bars, popcorn, or crackers, but there's always plenty to eat.  We have milk cows and chickens and ducks, so there is ALWAYS milk and eggs in the fridge, and both kids know how to fry or scramble eggs.  I make my own bread in big batches, so there's usually back up loaves in the freezer.  There are about a billion jars of homemade jam in the basement, and big jars of peanut butter.  There are pickles, usually hard-boiled or pickled eggs, and tons of other easy to make options.  I only listen to their whining if I am behind on baking and don't have any bread, in which case baking bread moves to the top of the to-do list.  

[Seasider]

Recently it has come to mean that we are out of Sweetos. If you haven't seen them yet they are Cheetos but puffy and cinnamon/sugar flavored instead of cheesy. I don't know who came up with the idea of those, but I am so glad that they will supposedly only be available for a limited time!

I did NOT need to learn about those!

[umsami]

My kids don't say that.

 

My husband says that when it's food he doesn't like....like pasta or pizza.  

 

My kids haven't said that....yet..... With an 11-1/2 year old, I figure it's coming....soon.

[Murphy101]

It means they aren't really all that hungry. *shrug*

 

Now when it comes to making a full family meal, it means we have gaps impeding menu planning. Like lunch meat and no bread. Cereal and no milk. Tomato or Alfredo sauce fixins and no spaghetti. That kind of thing. Usually THAT means it's 1-3 days until payday and I tell them to quit being so picky. Spaghetti with butter and garlic is good enough. Dry cereal is right up there with popcorn. Lunch meat with tomato and cucumber is just a deconstructed salad, people pay large amounts of money for "deconstructed" meals at restaurants.... ;)

[amo_mea_filiis.]

It could mean anything. We could be standing in the middle of any grocery store and there's still nothing to eat if he's in that mood.

[Χά�ων]

It means the kitchen staff and the serving maid have left for the night and there is no one to provide entertainment and snacks. 

[Cottonwood]

Here it means their eye balls shut off after they grazed through what is there and they didn't see their favorites.  I used to say "guess you're not hungry enough because there's plenty of food in there'.  After 1002 times, and now they are plenty old enough to figure it out, I just shrug and they know what it means.  i have sort of trained it out of them and more often I find them rummaging and coming up with something, even if it's not as easy or a fav.

 

I keep organic popcorn kernels around as a 'last resort' and when I hear them popping, I KNOW we are low on food.  If DH says there's no food, it usually means we are nearly out of food! lol

[Arcadia]

Nothing that they (the kids) want to eat. They said that this morning and I told them to make themselves yogurt smoothies. They did make strawberry yogurt smoothies and then commented that they should have added carrots and mangoes as well :)

[Rosie_0801]

Dd doesn't say it.

 

When I say it, it means I forgot to put beans on to soak, I hate everything and everybody so don't want to walk two blocks to the fish'n'chip shop. Mostly the solution is to stomp off to the chip shop, knowing that food will raise morale and I will no longer hate everybody and everything because I didn't put beans on to soak. Ideally, I'll remember to do that when I get back home so as not to repeat the process tomorrow.

[Guest tainzhiuma]

There's nothing to eat means we have a fridge and pantry overflowinfg with ingredients.

[LisaKinVA]

It usually means, there is no food in easy reach that I wish to consume.

 

Sometimes it means, there is no food that is easy to consume, and I can't figure out what to make from these basic ingredients, because mom and dad haven't gone to the store in a week (IOW, we may have a box of mac & cheese in the cabinet, but no butter and no milk...or, we have canned beans, but no tortillas, onions, or other things to go with the beans). 

[Lizzie in Ma]

This, they mean this.

[ikslo]

It means my husband needs to go food shopping.  :)