To wonder what is dangerous about my child’s lunch

I think this healthy eating lunchbox bollocks is hilarious and stupid.

I had loads of pepperami and babybell in my (spice girls) lunchbox. Also lots of dairylea lunchables and Sunny D. Yum!

I can assure everyone that in comparison to my own school packed lunches, by far the biggest detriment to my health has been having children.

Schools need to lighten up.

What about big standard UK cheese?

You uncouth oik, you

A trickle would be OK but definitely not a blob or a dribble.

Is the drizzle important, would other methods of adding the honey be acceptable?

What about big standard UK cheese?

What an unnecessary preachy post

From my understanding:

”Natural flavouring” on an ingredient list usually refers to a lab-created ingredient. They call it “natural flavouring” to make you think oh, it’s probably just grape juice or honey. But the “natural flavouring” wording is dishonest. After all, if it was just honey or fruit juice, it would state that instead. “Natural flavouring” is covering up the fact they are industrially-produced extracts and concentrates.

Seed oils on an ingredients list (such as “rapeseed oil” listed for frozen fish fingers) are highly unlikely to be in an “unmodified state”, and that’s rather the point. It’s overly processed seed oil, used to cheaply bulk or add flavour on an industrial scale.

Things are phrased on ingredient lists in an obfuscating way, to make it sound healthy or innocuous. Like malted barley extract, makes you think barley = good. It’s just an “extract” after all. But the food industry uses innocuous sounding words to hide things they know the public won’t like. “Malted” = ultra processing to make it sweeter and more palatable.

The point is, any of these things are fairly harmless on their own, or if you just drizzled a bit of oil into your homemade bread or whatever. That’s no issue. But if you’re eating a high-volume of foods with these ultra-palatable and processed additives hiding in them every day, that is what is causing health problems.

And no I don’t mean sneering at nuggets and chips or McDonalds. For myself, it means eating a Pret avocado and egg sandwich, or a granola yoghurt, or pesto pasta, or a vegan burger, or Sainsburys finest haddock fishcakes, and thinking they’re reasonably healthy options, but everything I’ve eaten is chocked full of ultra-processed additives to make them hyper-palatable and make me crave more of it, but the nutritional content isn’t actually that good.

And the imprecision of the UPF argument frustrates the bejesus out of me.

Obviously we should all (and I'll put my own lardy arse at the top of the list) be eating healthier food, and eating less processed food is a good rule of thumb.

But I've never seen an actual definition of UPF, or WHY any particular foods are harmful and evidence of that harm. As far as I can figure out, huge numbers of ingredients fall under the (vague) UPF umbrella but they can't all act in the same way.

how can that be? BBC This morning with Dr Xan van Tulliken reccomends them so they MUST be ok

Sadly there's also an epidemic of financial instability, meaning something that costs £1 a meal per person can be a lot more attractive to someone strapped for cash than a lovely fresh healthy equivalent that costs £10 per person.

Apparently canned vegetables are considered a UPF by some bodies, but they can cost an awful lot less than fresh

If the allergy is serious, why has it not been clearly communicated to all parents? How many innocent Frubes must be sacrificed before they are added to the banned list?

And why does this school communicate in such vague terms? Do they think they're a social media platform?

"You've violated one of our Very Important Rules. We won't tell you which one, but don't do it again."

Seeded bread? We have someone at school with a sesame allergy so not allowed seeded bread/hummus!

My DC are mid 20s now so at primary school in the 00s. There were no rules but I did send an apple back and forth every day for my own conscience. DS1 survived on white bread and jam sandwiches and a frube.

Presumably a plain packaged (e.g. own brand ultra cheapo) ready meal is therefore safer than an "artisan" one home made in the farm shop with all fresh ingredients from the farm, if the farm shop one has bright shiny packaging. Both would have more than 5 ingredients...

There is an obesity epidemic in the west, any measures to encourage healthy eating are a good thing i'da thought

Yes and if the packaging is brightly coloured with a cartoon character, I believe it actually lowers life expectancy. <nods sagely>

Especially if the packaging is attractive!! PLAIN PACKAGING FOR UPF! 🪧🤨👎

@godmum56 yes I think cold pressed rapeseed is fine too from a upf perspective

well but cold pressed ultra virgin rapeseed oil is available.....

I find the "no culinary use thing" a bit crazy....you can thicken with flour or cornflour, fruit juice concentrate can be home made and a healthy flavouring, herbs and spices are flavours, food can be coloured with beetroot, blueberries, cherry juice and so on. lactose is in breastmilk as well as all mammalian milks.....not that I amn suggesting that we all start cooking with breast milk.

I think because olive oil just needs pressing but other vegetable oil is often treated with solvents in order to extract the oil.

. I have been known to make bread with some vegetable oil in place of some butter, does that mean my home made bread is UPF?

The vegetable oil itself is upf so yes technically it would be better to use olive oil, if you care enough!

I think the ingredients only count if you wrap it in plastic and print them on it. Otherwise it's, obviously, very naice and healthy.

Oh I've just seen all the comments about the "more than 5 ingredients". Well that's my home made bread out of the window, with or without vegetable oil! Flour, milk, yeast, butter, sugar, salt - and that's before I add anything like seeds or fruit to it! Then there's things like meat rubs, I use at least 5 spices or herbs in most of those.

I wonder if the "more than 5 ingredients" thing works for combination foods, like chocolate swiss roll (flour, baking powder, eggs, gran sugar, cocoa, butter, icing sugar). But Eton mess is absolutely fine to eat all day long as it only has 4 ingredients - eggs, sugar, fruit, cream 😂

It can be easy to tell whether something classed as "processed" or "UPF" if it's at the far end of the scale, but where do people draw the line?

I can't see why a "natural" flavoring (as an example from above) in food means it's UPF, it could be as simple as a bit of fruit juice as a flavour enhancer or honey/sugar as a sweetener - you probably aren't talking about MSG in many cases.

Equally just because there are additional naturally occurring additives in a food doesn't always make it UPF. Addition of a vegetable oil could be there to change the texture slightly, plus what's the issue with having vegetable oil rather than butter in some foods e.g. I have been known to make bread with some vegetable oil in place of some butter, does that mean my home made bread is UPF?

The definition of UPFs keeps changing over time, and there's plenty of dispute about the various different definitions out there. The entire NOVA definition (that seems to be the accepted one) is too long to quote here & I think people can find it themselves using Google with little effort, but the extract I think is most relevant is below

"Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients.[23]"

Interestingly, many of the "shock, horror" items referred to by pp such as sugars and vegetable oils in an unmodified state, don't seem to come under that definition.

It was not.

Ah as long as your child is happy and ok... stuff all the others eh