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

I genuinely had no idea people felt this strongly about generic cereals. If you prefer porridge or toast, you could’ve ordered that from the hospital menu.

Also children go on and off things. We’ve had the porridge phase, weetabix phase, cheerio phase, now we’re onto rice crispies over here.

Agree, if you make the instant kind and make it with milk, but some upthread are talking about how cheap a bag of oats is. Which was what I was thinking of.

Yeah, British stubbornness is both admirable and frustrating. Meanwhile here when last year (or maybe the year before) the recommendation came that people should significantly reduce consumption of things like ham and sausages, they did.

There's always people whose tastes change (for instance my DD, who eats hardly anything these days but pretty sure there's some ND there) but they are more likely to continue eating a food if they start eating it in early childhood, that's why food tastes are cultural.

How so, obtuse? You said one of your DC was veggie and one was allergic to fish. So how are either of them eating salmon? (unless the veggie one is also the one allergic to fish, but you did not make this clear).
I am being relentlessly logical.

Porridge only takes three minutes in the microwave if you can afford to buy instant oats. The cheapo bag of porridge oats have to be cooked on the hob and takes ages..If you were actually poor, you'd know that.

Yes this happened to me when I was in hospital after giving birth - absolutely shocking and completely unacceptable really, the bar should be higher. As well as midwife advice for me to eat processed cereals when I had low iron levels post birth... Ignorance permeates throughout the system... Doesn't make it right.

Completely agree - ignorance is truly alive on this thread. The cereal companies have done a brilliant marketing job and people really just want to bury their heads in the sand... It's easy, it's cheap so it must be ok... And don't tell me otherwise, 'cause I'm not listening!

Well every time my DD has been hospitalised she’s been offered Rice Krispies for breakfast on the ward. Maybe someone should tell the hospital it’s not healthy.

Yep. It’s designed to look like pretty familiar menu to my generation of parents and is nutritionally well balanced. One bowl of rice crispies is a ridiculous thing to worry about. No foods are totally devoid of nutrition. That’s a nonsense idea. People just get confused because of course it’s important to limit foods that are high in calories and low in micronutrients. But people also need calories, and rice crispies actually contain quite a lot of useful micronutrients because they are fortified! Yes they are very processed but you have to look at the whole week’s food and not just freak out about this one thing and the fact they’ve included a small amount of juice as one of people’s five a day.
It’s not really useful to think of individual foods as being either good or bad. You need to look at someone’s whole diet.

It’s not just as easy as educating. Never before have we had the level of information available literally at our fingertips. Those of us working with struggling families know the issues are many and complex - simply telling someone to feed their kids porridge doesn’t address any of those complexities.

They're not low sugar please educate yourself: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-40301978.amp

Cereals shouldn't be promoted by any healthcare body, they're convenient - but healthy, they are not.

Everything we're discussing here is 100% cultural.

I've lived in the UK for thirty years and if there's one thing that defines this place it's people's stubborn resistance to progress and improvement of any kind! 😄

We’ve always eaten porridge for breakfast, my DS absolutely loves it, my DD won’t touch it now despite being fed it all through primary school. How odd that different people will have different preferences for taste and texture.

Better guidance is achievable, through education - not through the level of ignorance shown on this thread though, it appears to be a lost cause as people simply 'don't want to know' - ignorance is bliss.

Well, obviously cereal is only part of the story. Also, there are cereals and cereals. There's a difference between branflakes and Frosties or even Rice Crispies. I think that OP isn't being UR. I think that most UK people's diet is far too reliant on simple carbs.

Rice Krispies aren't nutritionally bankrupt or whatever bollocks is being pedalled. They are low sugar and, like most cereals in the UK, are fortified with vitamins and iron, so actually have considerable nutritional value to developing children.

Hah! Yeah lots of porridge eating here, funnily enough when people eat it from early childhood they don't usually find it disgusting.

https://www.uhsussex.nhs.uk/resources/food-fact-the-glycaemic-index/

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/ask-the-doctors-what-is-the-glycemic-index-and-why-does-it-matter

High glycaemic index = high blood sugar levels = higher risk of a wide range of health problems, including the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, nerve damage, cataracts and kidney disease. That's why the NHS shouldn't be promoting these 'foods'.

Also I used to live with a woman who fed her one year old nothing but biscuits for breakfast, mumsnet would have a meltdown if it knew the rest of her diet.

Rice crispies aren’t the reason anyone is obese

I meant I lacked the equipment and resources to cook, to store food, to buy in bulk. To be fair, I had time (hence living on what was under-25 rate JSA) but the stuff I ate was quick to prepare.

I also lacked the knowledge of how to cook proper meals from scratch. So I ate simple (and quite bland) things. That's what I meant in reference to the PP mentioning lacking knowledge.

I think the lack of education is more basic than proper cooking - as you say it's more about really basic nutritional understanding. With internet access (which I didn't have) you can now easily look up how to make an omelette, for example, but you need to know that's the best thing to do. How do we teach it though? I know I covered healthy eating in school in the 90s. But if it was on the curriculum, a lot clearly didn't listen! Also food packaging now mentiond 5 a day, and has given calorie guidelines for over 20 years+. But people ignore it.

It's one of those areas where there is a genuine lack of resources for many but also an almost wilful ignorance from some. So telling people without means to cook to prepare elaborate meals is patronising and infuriating. But plenty of people who are not in such desperate situations still eat crap!

I've been half wondering whether we might be from the same non-UK country, but now your username plus comment about toothbrushing before breakfast have pretty much convinced me!

Plus all the porridge eating and the disdain for sugary drinks for kids. 😄

I think, OP, you need to strongly consider where the government's baseline is for children's nutrition across the UK and in differing economic groups. Guidance needs to be achievable.

Yep.

I completely ignore those type of leaflets because they simply can't apply to my child with a limited diet.