To be shocked at the level of obesity of British children?

I said above that it is different now. What my grandchildren do now is better than my daughter did in the 90s.

I think one of the easiest things the UK (or any country dealing with this issue) could do to begin tackling this issue would be to begin introducing regulation around UPFs and requiring clear and obvious labeling of UP foods. My 8 year old had a nutrition unit in science class where they taught the kids about the food supply chain and how to look for healthy and ethically produced food (as well as what to avoid), and it was really effective! Now whenever I do the shopping, she always checks the eggs for the number stamp, she checks things like the bananas and the coffee for fairtrade labels, and she notices if the stoplight system on food packaging has a label that isn’t green. I actually had no idea that eggs were stamped with a number (0-4) according to their production conditions until she told me, and we’ve changed our purchasing habits accordingly. I bet there are parents out there who would quit picking up quite so many UPF foods if they were clearly labeled and education around UPFs was included in units like this.

Well I guess if you ate enough of them, it's possible. But the vast majority of people simply wouldn't have had that to spare. By necessity they would be much tighter on budgeting and portioning.

If you think about it, it was prob quite hard to be obese in the 1920s. My grandmother told me about one girl who they all passed their lunchtime leftovers too who was ‘fat’. I imagine not obese. Is anyone becoming obese on too much home cooked ‘meat & two veg’ second helpings?

It’s all free as they’re school sports teams and to be honest, plenty of their parents are overweight.

So generally speaking, I’d say the only difference is the kids are very active.

Yeah absolutely

it's interesting, I remember checking (for some reason) and two regular sausages are only something like 250 cals. Not at all bad compared to many, many things that would be considered much 'healthier'

Of course that's about portion size too. We would never get more than two sausages as kids - which probably seems quite meagre now.

@TheKeatingFive I wonder if we could bring that back? 70s cooking likely ‘better’ too. Rosemary Conley, Hip & Thigh, demonised fat. Savoury suet puddings not necessarily ‘bad’ & use up veg making it more palatable if a bit elderly/watery.

Another thing about classically British food is that it fell foul of a lot of health trends from the 60s/70s onwards.

Firstly the idea of the Mediterranean diet, then the long term assault against fat - which has been totally reconsidered.

Things like liver and onions, suet puddings, sausages/mash/gravy, bubble and squeak - all positioned as terribly bad for you. But probably far better than a lot of what we eat today.

Very interesting on rationing & food ‘history’. Many women were in domestic service pre war & it was possible to learn to cook really well. After leaving service many were ‘good plain cooks’ & many women could rustle up the delicious from meagre ingredients & speedily. Interestingly, in the memoirs I have read many ex cooks attributed their long healthy lives to the high quality food they ate whilst in service & habits formed.

Cars, screens, UPF

Idk if I agree with the rationing point tbh.
I remember reading a book about Ukraine in the 1930s someone telling their grandmas story how they were starving and had to eat leather and grass and stuff. So they had worse than our rationing but you rarely saw a big Ukrainian in the 2010s (before Russia invaded as the example because obviously there isn't enough food there now).

What I think really does it for the UK and the us is the obsession with chocolate and sweets I was born in 01 so I'm not ancient but my parents were strict and a treat was a treat like at Christmas or Easter with the eggs. I pretty much only had sweets at birthday parties. Now looking at other parents of primary age kids I'm seeing people who constantly give their kids bags of sweets and chocolate bars like multiple times a day. These people aren't poor and unable to buy anything else btw(as people on these threads often claim) hell I grew up actually poor and that's another reason my parents never wasted money on chocolate and cake.
I also agree with the point someone made on this thread about Disney dad's/mums and grandparents undermining the parent who tries to feed their kids healthy with a million "treats"

That's very interesting, thanks.

What on earth are you banging on about? Two sound bites and a free mind reading session. What am I supposed to take from that?

twistyizzy, it helps though! Less in and more out, no excuses!!!

I read a theory that the UK took so quickly to eating processed sugar because the climate doesn't have lots of sweet foods, unlike Mediterranean countries with figs and dates and so on. The US followed suit because of English people settling there. Who knows if it's true but it's interesting. Both countries were definitely heavily involved in the slave/sugar trade but so was France.

In the US now, it's pretty easy to explain- unchecked capitalism and very little regulation. Corporations are seen as more important than people. Advertising has worked on people and they now think UPFs are the default food. Plus there's the whole don't tread on me/no nanny state attitude.

Farming subsidies is another huge one. Basically there was a surplus of corn because industrial farming techniques gave a higher yield and they had to sell it somehow, hence high fructose corn syrup. Now the farming lobby is too powerful to change this.

Wall -E coming true.

I think its peer based, we have 5 daughters differing ages up to 12 and in 3 schools. There are zero overweight children, all are sporty and fed healthy food. The reason in our case is it would be frowned on and the schools are competitive... no one would want to be the large child or large parent.

In the UK obesity bas er normalised to such a large degree. Shops like m and s who previously carried very few clothes beyond size 16 now have all ranges in all sizes. If you like say Reiss clothes then you have to stay slimmer for example.
If larger clothes were hard to come by um sure there would be less large people. Same for kids.

That's interesting @TheKeatingFive. On the MN S. Asian forum, parents are feeding their 7 -month -olds chicken curry, daal, and mooli (radish) parathas.

Itsprobablynotcominhome · 23/06/2024 12:45
Why do you care? Look after your own kid, stop judging everyone else's

Everyone should care. There are hundreds of thousands of people being treated for completely preventable diseases.

That aside, living as an obese child is a pretty miserable existence.

This is very interesting and I'm sure there's a lot of truth to it. I wonder what the explanation is for USA though. They're history is obviously very different to ours. They're a mix of many different cultures (some of whom have the most wonderful, healthy foods) yet they embrace junk food, fast food and UPFs even more than us! When I see what some of my US friends eat, there's very little that I'd describe as real food.
Junk food and UPFs exist everywhere but some countries seem to have taken to them more than others.

It is a large factor in maintaining a healthy weight, and in overall health as a person gets older, and in longevity.

It is often said, if exercise was a pill it would be the number one best-selling drug in the world.

On a separate point, there's the weird Victorian obsession with feeding small children very bland, milky food - driving a sense that children in the UK eat different things to adults.

The AA Gill food culture point - if anyone's still interested.

In countries like France / Italy - food culture was established by coming 'up' from the peasantry and 'down' from the court.

In the UK it didn't work like that though. It was more driven by the (upper) middle - what he calls the squire-ocracy. So think of country houses, food like roasts, pies, salads, puddings, cakes, preserves. The kind of food you'd read about in Edwardian novels, then later Enid Blyton.

Rationing was implemented a lot longer in the UK than other countries and ran a coach and horses through this kind of eating. It was also harder to bring back after the war as it was more expensive (not so many cheap peasant dishes to fall back on). Also this type of food relies on big kitchens and usually domestic help - all on the wain).

So after that, we floundered. He also talks about the influence of Elizabeth David introducing Mediterranean food ideas in the 60s, and people with a bit more money embracing this kind of eating, even though we don't have the produce or culture behind that. He goes a bit off piste there I think.

Then we were all sitting ducks for the convenience food of the 70s and 80s.

So, the main points as I remember them

Skinny fat is a thing. And also, health is more than weight.

i think you know this but are in denial