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

When there was an outcry about the cost of Lurpack I was astonished at how many people will only buy that. I always buy own brand butter as surely it’s all the same? Switching to the supermarket brand didn’t seem to be much of a step down. But I do think a lot of people equate buying brand names with success. And they’re often not the best in terms of UPF. For example, Philadelphia is UPF while many own-brand soft cheeses aren’t.

When you review the foods available over the last 50 years you see UPF foods

• grow more and more prevalent
• their cost get (proportionally) lower and lower
• the psychological/physiological understanding of manufacturers increase on how to make them so that the taste triggers receptors in your brain that demand more and makes you feel 'happy' when they are consumed...
• ...and package them in ways that are eye catching and attractive.

Our biology basically working against our health here.

We are all being asked to fight a war we are in no way individually prepared for, at a time when collective mental health appears to be at all all time low; when physical effort in minimised (and the time to do it consumed with working to pay a mortgage etc); and when physical leisure is curbed by greater land restrictions and the same demands on time. And then we are being blamed for losing.

I don't think people are that different now to 200 years ago. I think if you plucked a Georgian worker from their time and plonked them now, they would grow fatter. I think if you took someone now and plonked them in the reign of George iv (for eg) they would grow thinner. People haven't change; the world has changed and we have not evolved quick enough to combat it - in food and many other ways (see things like workplace stress).

It's actually an incredibly fucked up situation and the longer people try to simplify it to just one or two tweaks that need to change (like parents just not feeding their kids in for 5 years), the worse it is going to get because it is all so much bigger and interconnected than that.

I am from an immigrant background and I can tell you first generation immigrants are poorer than anyone else, and yet eat better than most well off British people.

That’s interesting about the brand names.

Children are so influenced by what they see around them. My DD has only drank water from being a baby. Obviously I like this but it’s never been forced on her - I don’t tend to have much in the way of soft drinks at home but I would buy the odd juice, squash if anyone wanted it. But she never liked anything and even at parties would just choose water. As she’s got older (she’s 10 now) she’d start to ask for soft drinks when we were eating out, but would always take one mouthful and leave the rest. I unpicked that she likes to have them, because that’s the norm and she likes the feeling of sitting with the glass or bottle in front of her, but she doesn’t actually like to drink them. Basically I do think a lot of kids use drinks and food as a kind of status symbol. I think it was Andy Warhol who commented that Coke is a leveller - the president can’t buy a better Coca-Cola than the man in the street, so the brand names are a way of buying a bit of status for yourself.

Yes but school dinners at secondary school are terrible. Lots of ‘soggy carbs’ is how my DD describes them, not homemade so maybe that is why? For example, she tells me he pizza is Chicago Town ones cut up (???), there used to be a roast but as there is a local of table space you used to have to eat it in polystyrene container, sitting on the floor outside in the winter! The roast has actually gone for good now as probably too expensive but also why can’t school children past year 7 not sit at a table. I went to a London comprehensive that was like Grange Hill in its general level of behaviour but even we had somewhere to sit.

Maybe a slow cooker then? They're cheaper than air fryers (lots of used ones around) and can be used to make really cheap nutritious meals.
I realise there is poverty and it makes things really hard but if people knew how and wanted to, they can make nutritious meals easily. Even a bag of pasta with a tin of tomatoes, some herbs and anything else is better than frozen chips and nuggets.
We have to prioritise health. There should be no question around that anymore. We know what shit food and sedentary lifestyles are doing to us and our children.
We all deserve better.

Back in the 60s and 70s just about everyone has school dinners

They were meat and two veg (and liver, as mentioned in an earlier post, appeared sometimes with onion gravy) with the only exceptions bring squeaky cheese pie (with mash and tinned tomatoes) and the much reviled TVP curry. Then pudding - often stodgy with custard

You were expected to clear your plate

And we were a much more normal weight as a population then

(edited - SPAG)

Yes, I agree and I think are pretty healthy. I would say that I cook more British food than most people I know but that is because that’s what I grew up on so I am familiar with it - loads of casseroles for example. However, my DC don’t like some of them so they can’t stand Chicken, cream and pear one that I had regularly as a child. In fact maybe they are thin because they push my offerings around the plate and don’t eat much of it😂 The main thing I replicate from my childhood is quite a bit of veg. I do have Scandinavian heritage that is quite far back but I think seeped into my Mum’s cooking so unsure if that is healthier, more fish I think that the average British diet. My DH is a really good cook and enjoys and is good at making an array of different styles of food but I notice he doesn’t provide as much veg as me, hardly ever offers cooked vegetables.

Both my parents worked full time in the 80s, as did I and apart from the odd occasion, never did I not have time to feed them a decent meal. Don’t get me wrong, Friday night was usually pizza out of the freezer but throughout the week there was always spag bog, meat 2 veg, jacket potatoes served.

I agree with PP’s, I think a whole generation have been brought up on upf with parents not knowing how to cook from scratch.

“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.”

Bullshit.

Casseroles are fab but if you've only got 50p left on the gas, you've worked a 12 hour a shift as a care worker and you don't get paid until next week, you're going to chuck a frozen pizza in the airfryer instead.

There's more to food poverty than not being able to afford stewing steak and a few carrots. Time, fuel and cooking utensils also have to be accounted for.

U just have to walk into a supermarket to see that healthy food is a lot more expensive if you are feeding a family. It's awful. And local shops/ convenience stores are really hard to shop healthily in even if you wanted to. Surely this is part of the problem (yes I know if you are deliverooing a Chinese then this is a different problem)

It's sad yes but it's a choice.

So what do you propose we do about the ones that do?

"I would agree with this but the 2hrs for your typical British casserole is a pain when DC are young as mine were impatient but now I have teenagers we often eat about 7 or 8 so if I’ve WFH it is something we have quite a bit."

Casseroles are fab. Use whatever meat or veg, herbs and spices, add potatoes or dumplings if you like. Very easy, tasty, nutritious and only one pot to wash.

It's up to parents not to feed their kids crap.

I should add though I don’t always succeed and my eldest I know will occasionally get KFC or Chinese curry and rice at lunchtime but he is in 6th form college and hasn’t is always active and thin. My youngest DD has educated me on stuff but at the same time it can be a worry with her as I feel she is too thin. When I lack energy though the easy oven baked pizzas or even a Charlie Bingham style meal are on occasion part of the overall diet. I would say though that other than DS portions are pretty small so we wouldn’t buy loads of pizzas etc.

I was really shocked by the food when I had dd in hospital. They gave me a leaflet about how important a high fibre diet is post childbirth to encourage that first poo but the only food provided was a cheese sandwich on white bread without so much as a lettuce leaf. I wasn’t expecting NHS food to be nice but I assumed it would be appropriate.

Well I don’t know anybody that gives their children separate meals, friends, parents of DC’s friends my family with children, I live in one of the healthiest cities in the country and in my locality, in my children’s schools it is rare to see overweight DC. I would therefore not say I am the exception. I am on one WhatsApp group where a Mum sells homemade Organic Kimchi and Sauerkraut that is designed to appeal to children!

Where I can I try to buy organic seasonal fruit and veg and organic meat, fish as I want to limit the pesticides ingested and chemically pumped meat is not good for your gut Flora which is linked to many health problems.

Have only read the first 3 pages. Don’t know what the answer is.

Part of the difference nowadays….
when my mum and dad were little, they might go to the park or play out for a couple of hours after school, they’d arrive home for dinner - home cooked from fresh of course…. But cooked while they were out running around.

I do take my kids to the park after school, but I…. Go with them of course! So we get home, they’re starving and have to wait while I cook. Eldest has got better at waiting out that hungry bit, I do chuck the younger one a snack to keep him going, otherwise I would never get the cooking done (safely). Luckily this is a kid that loves fruit and veg so his snack is usually a carrot 😂 . But I do think that’s a difference.

Not saying their diets are perfect. I have recently given up refined sugar myself and am now on a mission to rid all the families diets of UPFs. It’s ridiculously hard though.

also yes they go to parties, they get given sweets when it’s someone’s birthday at school… I don’t want to “ban” all those things and make them more desirable!

Thank you @Mulhollandmagoo. I’m so aware of the fact that my own relationship with food is absolutely fucked and I really don’t want that to happen to my daughter so I have spent a lot of time and headspace trying to figure out the best approach. I really appreciate you saying that.

I wonder if part of the reason children are shorter, is due to steroid inhalers? Both my children are on them for asthma. They really do struggle to breathe without the brown one, as soon as they get any respiratory virus. Last winter, one was hospitalised as couldn't breathe - the children's ward was absolutely packed, as many children was the same. NHS staff were speculating at the time, the the reason it had been so much worse, was people not putting the heating on. Presumably also things like not being able to make repairs to houses, to reduce mould etc.

School lunches are terrible. Burgers, pizza, fish fingers and chips. We could learn a lot from Japanese schools where food is properly healthy and it's drummed into the children how important that is.