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

Well, you're talking to an audience that thinks McDonalds (fries and nuggets with juice) is an appropriate meal for a 10 months old (a thread from a few weeks ago)....
So in comparison those recommendations aren't that bad! 😂

I just don't believe that anyone is genuinely confused by any of this. Its totally wilful.

Interesting how you think I'm the ignorant one @vanillalattes ... Read your post back and have some self awareness. So your suggestion is NHS dietary advice should be poor and that it is acceptable to provide poor advice because people are poor - let their children suffer the consequences hey?Now that truly is an ignorant argument, very little Britain.

I gave vegetables as an example, but there are obviously plenty of very cheap sources of carbs that can be included in a healthy diet for children (bread, potatoes, pasta, rice) at an appropriate portion size.

Where I live, eggs, chicken, pork, and various kinds of fish and cheese are all very affordable sources of protein if eaten in nutritionally sensible amounts.

Porridge in the morning takes 5 mins and doesn't need milk, can be cooked in water and eaten with splash of milk.

Sure, but who wants to basically eat gruel every morning? And how is watery porridge even remotely tasty or filling for a young child?

Raisins are not good for you, btw - full of sugar. Porridge from scratch? Do you go out to paid work?
Just a query. If one is allergic to fish and the other is veggie how does the salmon fit in?

The main issue is education and culture not cost - poor people in poorer countries than the UK don't eat the same level of heavily processed food lacking in nutrition, it's just not the cultural norm. Unfortunately in the UK it is the cultural norm and there lies the issue. Which is where education comes in and exactly why the NHS should not be promoting these things. If it's about cost then tap water is cheaper than fruit juice, oats with milk are cheaper than baby rice, breast milk is free etc., etc. the cost argument just doesn't make sense and the NHS should be promoting healthy food choices. I agree OP it's an appalling recommendation and no amount of sugar coating and attempting to link the advice to cost pressures makes any sense.

How is it classist when you've just said yourself that the single mum with the handful of GCSEs and minimum wage job can't handle something more complicated.

And why doesn't she have time to cook from scratch in the evening? What is she doing with her time?

Lentils, just to point out, don't need soaking and cook in under 30 mins.

Porridge in the morning takes 5 mins and doesn't need milk, can be cooked in water and eaten with splash of milk.

And I don't see how you can point your finger at the food industry but not see how the NHS is doing their work for them with this guidance?

Again, you’re showing your ignorance - because the best dietary advice is simply unobtainable for many families, whereas pouring a box of cereal into a bowl and adding milk is not - it’s quick, it’s easy, it doesn’t involve loads of equipment or knowledge. It can be done in 30 seconds, it doesn’t require lots and pans, or a microwave, or a cupboard full of additional ingredients to make it taste nice.

But you can't actually feed a young child entirely or mainly vegetables. It would be its own kind of unhealthy, plus they'd be hungry. Vegetables are often great on 'vitamins per penny' but would come out terribly on 'calories per penny'. This is fine if you're an adult trying to lose weight and so eat the maximum volume of food for the minimal calories. Babies and toddlers have tiny little stomachs and are growing enormously quickly so that is not what they need, at all.

Often I think they're comparing convenience foods with the latest expensive middle-class "health food", rather than with things like ordinary fresh vegetables, which far from being expensive, are usually the cheapest food in the shop when measured by nutritional value for money.

I sometimes work out what I'd be spending on food if I stuck to a simple and entirely healthy diet, and it would be a tiny amount compared with my more indulgent normal spend.

I do live in a comfortable bubble!

And I also do get the point about indirect costs associated with food.

But I still don't get what the "cheaper and more convenient" alternatives are to the kind of things I listed, and would be very keen to understand what actual items people feed themselves with instead?

And if volume is the issue driving obesity etc. (as per a pp) then surely the cheaper items will become more expensive over time as you need to buy more just to fill your belly after an hour of eating total crap?

And of course kids won't eat a carrot if they know that a tantrum will hand them a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar! But are we meant to pander to this and spend billions on obesity-driven medicine and dental care because no one can be expected to actually parent because they're so poor and put upon that they need to be absolved of all responsibility?

This kind of utter crisis/societal breakdown is very expensive, and I just don't think being endlessly accepting of low standards in terms of diets and lifestyles is doing anyone any favours.

Yes it is possible not to be able to cook lentils. That requires soaking beforehand and long cooking unless you have a pressure cooker (remember those?). Tinned equivalents are as nutritional but you need to know what to do with them! That means you have to be able to negotiate a cookery book.
Carrots and other vegetables will rot if not used quickly and lose their nutritional value after a few days. The tinned or frozen equivalents are as good.
You need skill and time to cook cheap cuts of meat since they require slow cooking.
Everything you have written suggests you have no idea of the lack of culinary skill among the general population and that lack is intentional from the 80s to boost the fast and pre-prepared food industries, both for profit and to widen the number of employed people (thus lowering wages).
Dietary advice for DC has to match what the parents know and understand. It's pointless to tell a young mother who left school with some GCSEs and has a full-time job as a check-out assistant to feed her children home-made porridge in the morning (no time!), to cook from scratch every night using fresh ingredients. But she can feed her DC a cereal like rice crispies with milk (cereal is fortified with vitamins etc and the milk contains calcium and Vit D - as long as not skimmed), to give them diluted fruit juice, and fruit (read the whole menu) and cook simple evening meals which require little cooking expertise and which she already knows about e.g. cottage pie, lasagne etc and knows how to do and what to buy.
The suggestion that 'special' advice be given to the working poor is classist, btw.

To those who say that some posters are in a bubble - they may be with regards affluence and education. I agree I'm extremely fortunate and privileged to be able to prepare nutritious food and have an educational basis to make healthy choices. That doesn't mean the NHS should promote unhealthy dietary advice for babies and children though. And yes baby rice, rice crispies etc. are unhealthy food choices - that's not to say people don't eat them, can't chose to eat them, don't have the monetary means not to. The NHS shouldn't however promote them if the aim is to support people in making the best dietary choices they can for their babies.

Yep, that is the reality for many people. If you don’t understand that (and that those people are who this advice is aimed at) then yes, you’re very, very privileged.

I was a child in the 1960's (born 1957). We always had breakfast, which was either porridge or a boiled egg with toast. Sometimes bacon and eggs or kippers on a weekend. Lunch was either school dinners or packed lunch. School dinners would be meat and 2 veg and a packed lunch would be ham, cheese, meat paste or egg sandwiches with a piece of fruit. Mid morning we had a tuck shop at school where we could buy crisps or a biscuit if you wanted to and were we given a half pint bottle of milk. Evening meals were always eaten by the whole family together around the kitchen table and were homemade, such as stew, cottage pie or belly of pork (we were poor so mum made the most of cheaper cuts). Other than the aforementioned tuck shop, there was absolutely no snacking between meals. The concept didn't exist and children didn't want or expect it. It seems that children live on chicken nuggets these days and can't wait for their evening meal without being fed snacks, even in the car on the way home from school. However, I don't see the problem with children having breakfast cereal occasionally or a glass of orange juice or baby rice. Children need to explore different flavours from an early age and the human body is incredibly resilient.

I was given loads of this welfare orange juice. I’m now 72 and still have 30 teeth - it didn’t appear to have done me any harm.

Could you just cite your source for 'High sugar, fast absorption spiking blood sugar, zero nutrition and zero fibre'? It's just that it's weird that, if it's scientifically proven fact, three out of the four claims you make are contradicted by the nutrition information that comes with the food itself. They aren't high sugar, don't have zero nutrition and don't have zero fibre.

To cook all those things you need time, knowledge and money, which is something millions of families simply don’t have. There are families in this country who don’t have ovens - their only means of cooking are boiled water in a kettle and a microwave, or maybe an air fryer.

There are parents who struggle to read, whose only internet access is via the mobile data on their phones and who don’t have access to basics like spices, herbs and oils.

A box of (supermarket brand) rice crispies can be stored in a cupboard. It won’t go off. It won’t go mouldy. You can’t make it wrong so you don’t need to worry about your kids not liking it (or refusing to eat it because it tastes funny).

It is true - you might chose not to believe it and that's your choice, but it's scientifically accurate.

I could afford lentils but I can't afford food waste and I wouldn't know where to start with cooking them or even if I would like them because I've never had them before.

Sometimes it isn't necessarily the lentils or whatever that's the issue, it's the fact that trying new things, experimental cooking with more risk of food wastage etc is something I simply can't afford.

So I stick to what I know and what my child will eat.

But the "reality" seems to be that this country is full of barely literate, utterly uneducated people living passive, sedentery, unhealthy lives, who cannot be expected to walk beyond the corner shop or think beyond instant gratification when it comes to eating, or even to think or exert themselves in any way.

And if that is not the reality then what is?

You obviously live in a comfortable bubble. Its not just the ingredient costs. Its the fuel costs, kitchen equipment costs, time costs and not having the skills to cook these things well. Its the risk that the children won't eat the food but your shopping budget has gone.

Is your actual question 'are there really people in existence who don't have either the knowledge, time, equipment or resources to cook meals from scratch, to store the ingredients in between and to be able to buy ingredients in bulk so that they have a lower cost overall, but a bigger upfront cost?'. You don't already know the answer to that? If you really don't then: no, not everyone has those things. But I would really recommend that you read the news sometimes - you are clear you have resources, so I don't know why you're so ignorant.

Exactly. The village I’m in at the moment only has one shop - a Londis which is much pricier than a regular supermarket (the closest of which is a 5 mile round trip, or £10 in a taxi there and back, and even then it’s just a standard Tesco. The nearest Aldi is a 30 minute drive or 90 minutes by train as there’s no direct route. The nearest Lidl is about a 75 minute drive.

Some posters on here are just oblivious to what life is like for many people. It’s not as easy as popping to the shop.