To be shocked by this government dietary advice for babies and children?

If your giving juice just make sure you don't brush teeth straight after - my dentist told me that the acid in juice (and wine... not for the kids but maybe me...) dissolves the enamel on teeth so swishing with water is better than brushing straight away as brushing acid into teeth removes even more enamel. If that makes sense!

I don’t beleive this is about cost rather than education. You can buy wholesome real food cheaply. As an example, a bag of porridge oats from Tesco is cheaper than a box of rice crispies and is packed full of goodness and sustained energy for babies and toddlers. A bag of satsumas is cheaper than a bottle of juice and has fibre and less sugar.

It's all part of a well balanced diet!
A bit of variety.
Look at the whole day or the whole week, rather than just focussing on one element of one meal.
Breakfast cereals (not the sugar coated ones) are not that bad, given all the extra vitamins minerals, when combined with milk and fruit.
Kids need different foods to adults in order to develop and grow.

I wouldn't feed my kids fruit juice or cereal on a regular basis. Maybe cereal on a camping trip...

Juice is just refined sugar with all the fibre removed. Better off having a glass of water and a satsuma.

Cereal is UPF refined carbs and sugar... total junk.

DD has a carton of apple juice with her breakfast every morning, teeth fine because y'know we brush them. And she drinks water or milk at all other times, with the occasional request for a glass of squash.

It’s not the NHS in NI. It’s the HSC. It is clear that the OP and many others here know absolutely nothing about NI or they would understand that the culture is different and therefore so is the advice. — From someone who actually raised a baby recently in NI.

What’s wrong also with babies usual milk mixed with baby rice as a first meal before moving on to fruits and veg etc ? They are not saying mixing it for bottle use.

Agree with others juices with a meal rather than throughout the day for teeth.

I'm honestly baffled about why water and milk as the main drink for kids, with juice as an occasional treat, is worthy of such scorn?

Hell of a lot easier to introduce kids to water and milk and maintain that than to start them off on sweetened drinks as standard and then try to course correct later when people start bleating about how their little darling is dying of dehydration at school because "they just don't like the taste of water and refuse to drink it."

From a health authority "give kids juice every morning" is indeed pretty crap advice.

Rice crispies, whist they do have sugar, are also fortified with vitamins and minerals. So that's not correct.

I couldn’t agree more OP, I think nutrition in babies and under 5’s is a huge issue in this country and needs more focus. This is part of the problem.

Because not everything in life has to be perfectly balanced, nutritious and healthy, and there’s nothing actually wrong with some diluted apple juice and rice crispies.

Government guidance has to account for the majority. Can the majority afford it, understand it and access the information. I wouldn’t choose to feed my children this way, but I can see it’s a good balance of food groups and it’s accessible to the majority in terms of cost. I think this actually reads pretty sensibly & if someone was struggling, this would be useful guidance

Possibly I’m old now, but when I was weaning my kids the advice was to explore flavours with them and get them to try a lot of different foods and drinks.

I presume the theory was it would expand the tastes they were used to,

obviously this doesn’t apply to things that are straight up bad for them - giving a weaning baby or child gin is probably not a good idea - but I got mine to try quite a few different drinks including lots of different fruit juices and smoothies and yoghurt style drinks etc.

What is wrong with rice crispies and cornflakes. Jesus

They’re a low fat, filling breakfast and with milk have sources of calcium, iron etc so they’re not the perfect breakfast of balance but it’s not bad advice to suggest your child might occasionally have them for breakfast!

It looks fine to me.

Does everything you eat have perfect nutritional value?

This is MN where everyone drinks tap water and milk by the gallon - nobody would ever give their kid apple juice or worse, Ribena 😂

They say the juice should be “well diluted”. I agree that water would be preferable but I think to call that advice “crap” is quite a stretch.

I think the point is, the NHS shouldn't be recommending that young children drink juice at all. It's really bad for their teeth and predisposes them towards preferring sweet drinks. There's no need for young children to ever be drinking fruit juice, it should be water or milk only.

OP YANBU, I find the NHS generally dreadful for dietary advice. I had dietician appointments when I was pregnant due to gestational diabetes and the advice was woefully inaccurate. For one thing it was the same advice given to people with T2 diabetes, despite the fact that you have much less freedom with GD. For another, it made all sorts of mad recommendations like having 150mls of orange juice with breakfast, or using reduced sugar jam (the correct advice for GD would be to have no fruit juice or jam at all).

18 seed bread 😂

Why can’t toddlers have cereal for breakfast? It’s saying if it has to be juice, with a meal is best because it doesn’t damage the teeth as much and I think it’s just suggesting that if you make up baby rice, you use the baby’s notmal milk as the liquid component so for a 6 month old formula fed baby use formula not cows milk or use breast milk if breastfed etc

Sure it is the goverments fault !

How dare they give advice based on quick meals that are reasonably cheap, easy to source from the supermarket or local shop, easy to make but still provide nutrition for children to grow.

Obviously my kids have handmade cereal, homemade 18 seed bread and kombucha before school.