UPF, poverty, obesity.... children’s healthy eating - an impossible challenge?

Sometimes you do need to ban things. If your only options are 5-6 really unhealthy things (because that is all that is stocked in the shop as they have a long shelf life), then it won't change as there is in incentive to do so. Sometimes people claim that there isn't a market for something healthy, but that is usually because they haven't been allowed to buy it (not stocked) or it's at 10 times the cost of the unhealthy version as often places seem to put premiums on healthy options.

God yeah, it drives me mad. "Houmous is it? Ratatouille? Your kids are eating home made focaccia with olives?" The implication being that you're ridiculously precious and middle class to be eating delicious stuff made from scratch, or that it's expensive. Listen, I'm a single mum on benefits and all this stuff can be made for pence. It's all what poor people from the Southern Mediterranean eat- my only privilege is that I happen to have the cultural capital to know about it.

To appear all salt of the earth and not pretentious, it appears I have to be eating stuff like cheap processed ham, chicken nuggets and frozen pizza. Well I'm sorry, but despite what people say this all looks pretty expensive to me when I go shopping.

I don’t really agree. Basics like pasta and a sauce aren’t hard to whip up quickly and it’s very easy to make and freeze sauces, soups etc. I can make a quick risotto too, or we have stir fry (super quick). You can make up lasagnes, curries etc. and freeze them too. My laziest dinners are usually mash and veg or super lazy jacket potato, baked beans and cheese (with some UPF in the beans I admit, but you could make your own or a chill con carne and freeze that). I mean sure, if you want complex meals every night it takes time but there are lots of quick options. I recall Jamie Oliver making a 15 minute meals book and other chefs have made ones on quick cooking and using microwaves etc.

if you’re reliant on a food bank I don’t blame you for anything you cook as you clearly just cook what you are lucky enough to have. If you put chips and pizza in the oven every night because you can’t be bothered to spend 15-30 minutes cooking for your kids each night, or an hour batch cooking on the weekend, then you are choosing for your children’s health to suffer.

There is some reverse snobbery around food in the UK, I'm not sure why though.

he main argument for pouches was their convenience and the lack of time for making fresh meals. If there are so many mums who are unwilling to even contemplate making a baby puree from scratch, how would you expect these women to feed their entire family fresh, home-cooked food for the decades to come??? It's essentially a mindset.

On MN there's also sometimes even a negative view towards making your own purées. There will be some "let me guess, PFB?" type comments to anyone who wants to avoid pouches, along with "why bother, they'll be eating McDonald's soon enough anyway".

This is a fair list but you don’t need to ban anything, just tax the hell out of upf and subsidise fruit, veg, milk, eggs etc so healthy food becomes the cheapest option consistently.

I agree with other pps on here that although some of it is driven by poverty and lack of education regarding food, the majority of it is down to parents who are not in poverty.

You see it on here all the time regarding snacks for children, they never seem to stop eating, an attitude that the children are going to die of starvation if they are not constantly eating. It also seems to be the case with adults on here anything to do with weight loss talks about snacks, people do not need snacks, they do not need to eat every hour on the hour. There seems to be a totally fucked up relationship with food.

I lived in a country in southern Europe, a place that was popular with both British people living and working there and British tourists. You could always tell which children were the children of the British tourists and not children of locals or British who lived there permanently - the children of tourists were overweight, always eating crisps, sweets, ice cream, drinking fizzy drinks, would have huge portion sizes of meals, and never a vegetable or piece of fruit would pass their lips, whereas the children of those who lived there were a perfectly normal healthy weight, did not eat constantly, had much smaller portion sizes at meals, ate fruit and vegetables and would drink water.

You are what you eat and if you eat a crap diet and feed your children one you shouldn't be surprised at the outcome.

I can't see anything changing until:

• healthy school meals are universal
• cooking is properly taught in schools (so that children can make basic healthy food on a regular basis. Not once per term if you are lucky and you are only making sausage rolls type job)
• exercise is done daily on schools (something like Zumba in the mornings, rather than games where you spend 80% of them doing nothing)
• sweeteners are banned
• the are can/bottled drinks options that aren't just alcohol/fizzy/highly sugared or just plain water
• very unhealthy foods are just banned (such as fruit loop breakfast cereals)
• food is made less sweet
• public transport/cycling/walking is the default way of getting around
• healthy premade food is actually made affordable. Most people aren't going to spend £8 on a non filling salad when you could buy a burger for £2.

Actually, although as a family we didn’t have takeaways very much, I do remember my Dad sneaking a Indian curry in occasionally on a Friday if he’s worked late as he commuted to central London and walked past a South Indian restaurant at night on the way home. I say sneaked as my Mum had of course made him something and he probably didn’t want to share with us as we became teenagers!

No, I agree with you, when I was child we had a takeaway maybe once a year! We would eat in restaurants on holiday but it just wasn’t a thing. As a teenager I’d have the occasional burger from Burger King with my friend but that was the cheapest, smallest one and I was 14 so not tiny.

I would say though my DH is a good example of where it can go wrong, he loves cooking and tends to only want the best. It is annoying as I get it, his food is tasty but sometimes it is better that we just have some hot veg and a piece of fish and perhaps not fret about it being restaurant standard every night. Many British people in the past cooked dishes that are probably not that interesting but at least it was from scratch. My Mum was like this and my Mum and Dad had other interests like poetry and composing music, politics. When they were first married my Mum was never around as always out in the evening and as it was pretty sexist then so late 60s, she was expected to provide dinner, she would leave him one of those air dried curry’s to make on the hob with boiling water! She said it was fashionable at the time due to space missions etc.

Also just because you eat pasta, doesn't make you fat. It's what goes on it that matters. Also the volume. Portions are enormous, people have lost sight if what constitutes a normal sized meal. Plates are 1/3 bigger than they used to be. As pps, snacks are seen as normal. The constant grazing on nibbles and sucking on juice is pretty revolting tbh.

Back in the day, I am old, we had breakfast, lunch, dinner. Sat at the table. Drinks with all three. No supplemental snacks or drinks during the day. We were out and about most of the day, so no access to food or drink, we had no pocket money to buy them. It was the 70's so no lack of processed crap available, Angel Delight etc, but I suppose we just didn't eat much of it.

Also the brand name oat milks count as UPFs, but Lidl's own brand doesn't (no gums or emulsifiers).

I use my slow cooker, quite a lot to cook stews. It cannot be any easier than throwing in some meat, veg, and stock, and leaving it for a few hours. I even put in potatoes, if I do not have the energy to make separate mashed potatoes. I recall countless times, posters here decrying the slow cooker, saying that everything they cook in it tastes the same, and it is not worth it, as the food is unappetising. I do not know what they mean, as there are countless ways to make each dish taste different , with spices etc.

A lot of wealthy people also eat high UPF but are largely unaware due to high prices and fancy packaging of their posh junk.

'in the real world people don't choose to feed their kids crap because they can't be arsed to cook. They do it because it's cheaper and it's all they can afford.'

I know several families where the kids eat crap because the parents can't be arsed. And they do regular takeaways and spend £££ on fizzy drinks, sweets etc so it's not an affordability thing. The thought of a vegetable or piece of fruit fills them with horror. They're modelling seriously bad habits to their children.

If course there's room for government involvement, of course there are families struggling, where just getting food on the table is an achievement, but there are very many families who need to take a bit of responsibility.

I was going to say that they eat tastier too, but thought it would be rude!

Ok, maybe more accurate to say immigrants eat better than wealthier people because they usually have food knowledge. I take it back.

I just don't buy that cooking tasty and nutritious food is only for the rich. Because we weren't and neither was anyone around us.

For many young parents today the dice is loaded against them .They have been used to growing up with parents who work often FT, and lots of Single Mums who struggle economically through no fault of their own.Good food is expensive, and cooking stews and meals from scratch quite labour intensive as well.When school dinners were around, a large part of childrens diets were catered for .Maybe Labour could bring back some funding if they are elected?

You think wealthy people have diets of UPFs? I think that will vary depending on where you live and culture of the place. I actually thought you were going to say in the sense of having tastier food which I think is more likely😂

Proper butter is way nicer than anaemic Lurpack. Decent bread is almost a meal in itself - made without preservatives.

Cheap bread can have HUMAN HAIR protein in it - revoltingly Pig bristles and feathers can also be used to create an amino acid that makes it last longer.

THAT is obviously why ''halal'' labels are on some brands of bread!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/01/does_your_daily_bread_contain_human_hair.html#:~:text=That%20is%20a%20little%20odd,does%20not%20include%20human%20hair.

There was a thread a few months ago on the use of baby pouches with an astounding lack of knowledge about basic nutrition. A few posters were prepared to defend Ella's Kitchen to the death claiming that it's just as healthy as fresh veg because the ingredients say "100% peas". They refused to accept that the fact the vegetables had been heat-treated, mashed up and diluted with water might mean they are less healthy than just pureeing your own peas. Someone posted a study proving that baby pouches lose nutrition due to the maceration (mashing) process. And one poster tried to defend it by saying food gets mashed up when chewing so they lose just as much nutrition as the pouches.

The main argument for pouches was their convenience and the lack of time for making fresh meals. If there are so many mums who are unwilling to even contemplate making a baby puree from scratch, how would you expect these women to feed their entire family fresh, home-cooked food for the decades to come??? It's essentially a mindset. Even if you take the cost and time required to create fresh meals, there must still be the willingness and determination to take on the challenge. UPFs are marketed to women at the earliest possible stage and the idea that anything that comes in a brightly coloured box is quicker, easier and tastier than the natural version. Formula milk is technically an UPF but that would be opening an entire can of worms which is not worth the argument now.

In the sense that they eat non UPF because it is not a part of their diets usually. And more veggies and greens.

Exactly - if you look at McDonalds marketing for the past few years it has been almost entirely focused on the experience rather than the food. McDonalds as a facilitator for family relationships and friendships, a port in the storm, a place where anyone is welcome without judgment…you barely see any of the food!

In what sense? I just don’t think that is true , it is totally contextual, where you live and availability of outdoor space, the minder of the wealthy people. My Mum lives in the midlands and wealthy people on her street are not the healthiest looking but the car is over relied upon. Our extended families on mine and DH’s side all live in different, expensive parts of the south east, they definitely eat really well and they are all hyper fit and thin! One has regular private medicals to understand how they can improve their health constantly. I really don’t think it is the case that many wealthy people are unhealthy as health is expensive!

I must be a similar era to you- Snacks were for parties and Christmas- walking to school and back was the norm, plus playing out.

There was only one overweight girl in the year, and she wasn't allowed to play out which was really sad. Her mum just didn't allow it.

The rest of us were stick thin, skipping, bicycles, horse riding- and I remember the deep feeling of hunger as a child- being so hungry I wished I could eat grass. {if you didn't like what was on offer at mealtimes, there was no alternative.

It's shocking to hear that children's heights are actually decreasing- one would expect that they would be getting taller, not shorter.

the brand names are a way of buying a bit of status for yourself.

They are also emotive. There is a big reason the likes of MacDonalds and Coke sponsor sports events or Coke runs that Santa advert every year. It's because they want you to grow up to link their brand to memorable moments of joy, such as your team winning or to the excitement of family Christmas as a child. They want the joy and their name so strongly linked in your head that you don't even think about the link. You just somehow feel a bit happier around their brand as a result.

Like I say - fucked up.