A mother has revealed she spends more than £1,800 a year on cheese to feed her four-year-old son’s ‘addiction’.
Dawn Baker, 43, from Forest Hill, South East London, said she had cravings for cheese while pregnant with son Alfie Baker-Knox and he has been ‘hooked’ since first trying it at three months old.
The mother-of-four, who dubs her son ‘cheese boy’, shared a viral video of Alfie grating giant block of cheddar directly into his mouth that went viral on TikTok.
She now spends around £35 per week on cheese, including packed lunches for Alfie filled with Dailylea dunkers, a cheese string, cheese sandwiches and cheese chunks.
Dawn Baker, 43, pictured, said she had cravings for cheese while pregnant with son Alfie Baker-Knox, pictured, and he has been ‘hooked’ since first trying it at three months old
The mother-of-four, who dubs her son ‘cheese boy’, shared a viral video of Alfie grating giant block of cheddar directly into his mouth that went viral on TikTok
She now spends around £35 per week on cheese, including packed lunches for Alfie filled with Dailylea dunkers, a cheese string, cheese sandwiches and cheese chunks
Dawn, a community carer, said: ‘He’s literally addicted to cheese. Apart from breakfast he has it with every meal. He won’t eat school dinners because they can’t incorporate cheese like we can.’
‘Everything in his packed lunch has to have cheese in it, from cheese strings to cheese dips. Then even when I make dinner I’ve got to grate cheese on it no matter what it is.
‘I have to make sure my fridge never runs out of cheese and it never will.’
Dawn has revealed that once Alfie started walking she would find bite marks in the cheese in the fridge and half-eaten chunks tucked away under the sofa.
Despite facing criticism from other mothers, Dawn has hailed his addiction as a ‘godsend’ as she believes it’s responsible for his ‘amazingly strong teeth’ and even for correcting the flat feet he had as a toddler.
The mother credits cheese with introducing Alfie to healthy foods he wouldn’t usually like because she mixes cheese with vegetables and even blending it into fruit smoothies.
She continued: ‘It’s a way of getting him to eat food he doesn’t want. We’ll put cheese on top of the veg and mash it up, and with his fruit I can get it in smoothies. It’s been a godsend.
The mother credits cheese with introducing Alfie to healthy foods he wouldn’t usually like because she mixes cheese with vegetables and even blending it into fruit smoothies
Alfie eating a Babybell wheel in his pram as a toddler. Despite facing criticism from other mothers, Dawn has hailed his addiction as a ‘godsend’ as she believes it’s responsible for his ‘amazingly strong teeth’ and even for correcting the flat feet he had as a toddler
‘When I was pregnant, all I ever wanted to eat was cheese. I’d sit there with chunks of cheese. Any type of cheese as long as it wasn’t stinky.
‘I wasn’t having lots of it before I was pregnant. I was having the odd couple of slices of cheese on toast now and then, but that was it really. It must have been Alfie demanding it from the womb.
‘When he’s at the childminders they’ll give him cereal for breakfast, but I know he loves cheese and I can’t say no. So when he’s with me on the weekends we’ll have omelettes.
‘People have been saying I’m a bad mum, letting him eat that much cheese, but I did check with the doctors and he’s got the most amazingly strong teeth.’
A video of Dawn discovering Alfie ‘cutting out the middleman’ to grate cheese into his mouth last month has been viewed more than 700,000 times and other cheese fans have labelled him their ‘spirit animal’.
Dawn says luckily everyone in her household in Dover, Kent, which includes husband Lee Knox, 36, and two of her other children Billy Payne, 19, and Isabelle Baker-Knox, 10, all like cheese.
Tiktok commenters reacted to Alfie Baker-Knox, four, grating cheese directly into his own mouth in a clip viewed more than 700,000 times
She explains ‘cheese connoisseur’ Aflie’s favourite meals are cheese-topped shepherd’s pies and cheesy pastas, describing him as ‘an Italian boy at heart’, while he also loves baby bells, cheese rolls and mini cheddars.
Red Leicester and mild cheddar are his preferred cheeses, and it was the former which Dawn caught him eating directly from the cheese grater last month while they were making his Saturday morning cheese-only omelettes.
Dawn said: ‘We were making omelettes and I went to the front door to let the kitten in, I went back and he’s there with his grater, just grating it in his mouth. Luckily it’s a safety grater.
‘He took the lid off because the bowl was full, so instead of eating what’s in the bowl he grated what’s left into his mouth. It’s a great shortcut. He loves cheese so much he had to cut out the middle man.
‘He said he was bored and that he’s tried cheese every other way so he wanted it this way. I just thought it was hilarious. I told him he shouldn’t be doing it but he reassured me the angle he had it at so he wouldn’t get hurt.
‘It was weird to see it go so viral, but perhaps it’s because so many people like cheese too.’
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk