My stepdaughter refuses to eat anything I cook, so I started doing something sneaky

“She started raging saying that I was treating her differently from the rest of the family and I am the evil stepmother.”

The last thing Jenna* wants to do after a long day working is cooking a meal for the family. 

Actually, scratch that; she’s fine with cooking a meal for the kids, but after working as a nurse all day, she doesn’t want to make more than one dish for dinner. 

But every time Jenna’s stepdaughter, Kaya*, comes to stay, it seems like she’s undergoing a new diet plan. 

The 15-year-old has stayed with the family every week for years, but in the last 12 months, her eating expectations have become unbearable. 

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Jenna is fed up with her stepdaughter's everchanging diet. Picture: iStock

“I have to make her food in almost a separate kitchen”

“First she became vegan, which I have no problems with,” Jenna shared on Reddit. “I just make her food sans animal products, but that didn’t stick, and that’s normal too.”

In the weeks that have passed, Kaya has switched her diet once again. This time, the 15yo is eating “holistically and claims to have developed “allergies from everything.” 

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“Salted Nuts, lactose, processed foods, gluten, red meat, mustard, mushrooms and anything a loser Instagram influencer is making money telling people is dangerous,” her stepmum said. 

While Jenna doesn’t have a problem with her stepdaughter’s ever-changing diet, the rules that come along with it can be exhausting, to say the least. 

“She started demanding that I separate her cookware even in the dishwasher,” Jenna wrote. “Separate her food in the fridge and freezer. Take out all my salted nuts and sugars etc and throwing them in the trash because she complained about stomach pain that she attributed to contamination from the pantry.”

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Fed up with the constant complaints from Kaya, the 35yo woman told her stepdaughter “that she should either eat outside or do her own cooking and cleaning from now on.” And, ooh boy, Kaya did not like that at all. 

“She started raging saying that I was treating her differently from the rest of the family and I am the evil stepmother,” Jenna recalled, adding her husband, Paul*, began “yelling” at his wife over the quarrel.

Instead of sticking to the 15yo’s demands, Jenna requested her husband take the teen to get an allergy screening and chat with a mental health professional about the teen’s potentially disordered eating. 

“Surprise, surprise, she had no allergies,” Jenna said. “But her answer was that this doesn’t matter, what matters is what she believed.”

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It’s been months since the teen began making the outlandish demands, and, much to her chagrin, Jenna has had to follow every single one of them. 

“I can’t have anything in my house now, and I have to make her food in almost a separate kitchen,” she said, frustrated. 

So, she came up with a (slightly evil) plan: “I started putting gluten and lactose in almost everything she ate, especially the chicken soup that she loves so much.” 

It’s been six months since Jenna started secretly slipping the forbidden ingredients into her stepdaughter’s food, and so far, she’s had no objections from anyone. That was until Kaya’s biological mum dropped her off and stopped by for coffee. 

Kaya’s mum began commending Jenna for helping her teen with her stomach issues, gloating that the girl’s issues had started to dissipate. “[Kaya] yelled at me, ‘Yes I don’t have stomach issues anymore,’” Jenna said with a smile. 

“I just calmly said, ‘Great, I wonder what changed because you have been eating the same food as the rest of us over the past months, especially the chicken soup you love so much.’”

Raging, Kaya began “yelling and throwing things” around the house, threatening to never stay there again. This prompted the teen’s biological mum and dad to accuse Jenna of being “reckless” to their daughter’s health. 

“Now [Kaya] demands that I apologise and divide the kitchen into two areas if she ‘ever’ to live with us again,” she said. “Because she has been having stomach problems since I started feeding her normal food.”

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“This family sounds insufferable”

The Reddit community immediately took Jenna’s side in the argument, telling the woman to “throw the whole family in the trash.” 

“If your husband wants to back up his daughter so much he’ll get off his lazy ass and learn how to support her dietary needs,” a comment read. 

“Your husband started yelling at you about it? Congratulations Husband, you are now your daughter’s chief chef and bottle washer,” said another. 

“Daughter can want anything she desires - but why do you have to provide it?” someone asked. “She's 15, she's old enough to buy, cook, etc for herself. And if Dad disagrees, then he can buy, cook, etc for her.”

“This family sounds insufferable,” another added. “First, she's your husband's daughter, not yours. If her diet is so complicated, then he should be responsible for feeding her.” 

To this, Jenna explained her husband “can’t cook”, so it’s unlikely he will ever step foot in the kitchen to help out. 

Others saw issues with the teen making up an allergy when it can genuinely affect someone’s livelihood. 

“As someone who is actually lactose intolerant and does have allergies to certain foods, I HATE when people pretend they have allergies and they don't because they're on some new fad,” a person wrote. 

*Names have been changed

Originally published as My stepdaughter refuses to eat anything I cook, so I started doing something sneaky