Do people really not know what to eat?

Both my kids are in scouting and have learnt cooking skills there and they’ve regularly been set badge work around cooking or had bake offs. School is one place but there is other community opportunities for learning skills.

@TheGrinchWasHere please report back 🤣

Bring back Home Economics. We should all be taught basic cooking and household skills at school. I remember when we were taught to sew and some of the boys scoffed and my HE teacher said to them I don't know what woman you think will want you if you don't have basic life skills 😂

I think this is pretty balanced and normal.

I do fear that there are more ‘outliers’ than you think.

Im actually about to do a grocery shop in person. I’m going to have a sneak at what is in other peoples trolleys.

Not unreasonable but yes, as you admit, very judgemental and, dare I say it, (?, yes, I do), sanctimonious.
Sadly as a society we've become used to being told what to eat. Low socioeconomic status, shift patterns ,lack of education etc all contribute to poor diet. UPF foods contribute to many poor health outcomes, including low self esteem and depression and yes, sadly, many families would benefit from being educated about what to eat.
I've developed the same, fascistic attitudes to food that I was brought up with, organic, made from scratch including bread, minimal processed foods etc etc but unfortunately, just as I did as a teen, my kids don't appreciate this. In fact not long ago my teenage DD had a meltdown, asking why I didn't just let her eat "normal food" like her friends. I said she'd tank me one day!!
But that's how much we've been blindsided about what's healthy and what isn't. So I don't think judging and shaming is particularly helpful.
I write this a single parent with no support network, working 50+ hour weeks on the nhs and still struggling financially, so like you, I know it's still doable to find the time to cook but as with everything it isn't that simple.

My kids eat a mix of upf, pf and non processed foods. I think we are quite average.

Today - breakfast rice crispies with milk and a piece of fruit. (This will move back to weetabix or porridge as we eat up the Christmas cereals)
snack - neither want to take snack
lunch- M&S less ingredients rolls with salad and cold meat and cheese, grapes, cucumber, cheese string, smoothie
dinner - pasta with a home made sauce served with garlic bread.

That’s a very standard day, I could swap out the yoghurt / smoothie / cheese string and sometimes they have a block of cheese or something.

They have crisps (one standard multi pack bag) once a week. I sometimes buy chocolate biscuit bars, they might have knelt those after school or a pack of proper pop corn.

At weekends they are allowed a couple of fizzy drinks. During the week it’s mainly water, milk or hot chocolate.

Once or twice a week we will have a upf dinner, tomnorow its going to be Birds Eye chicken, potato waffles, frozen peas and baked beans.

I cook a roast on a Sunday, upf stuffing and gravy sometimes. Monday is leftover roast kn some way (gammon, egg, home made chips and baked beans this week), Tuesday I made a curry and it had M&S bhaji with jt (assume upf), yesterday we had jacket potatoes with upf baked beans or upf tuna and mayo and salad. I don’t offer dessert, there is a fruit bowl.

I think I’m a very average family, we could cut down but we are all healthy weights, I’ve been on mj for 18 months, my family are all active people and I’m chronically ill and physically buggered.

we eat McDonald’s, once a month maybe, this week we had smash burgers and fries and chicken tenders from a local non-chain takeaway. It was delicious. I like kebabs.

We talk with our kids (10 and 12) about exercise, nutrition and balance. My 12 year old got a fabulous ramen graphic novel for Christmas and has been learning to make soft boiled eggs and noodle dishes. My 10 year old loves to bake and we do that when I’m able to.

A level of upf is normal and manageable. I think those eating 75%+ of upf is an outlier and being used to froth people up.

In defence of schools...

Whatever the school, the issue is getting the children to eat. Being hungry affects learning and behaviour outcomes much more than UPFs and in some areas, the only place the children have access to food is at school. It's why so many breakfast clubs have sugary cereals on the menu even though we know better.

I know the poverty thing is less relevant to private and boarding schools but if you have 15-20 kids in a class who refuse to eat lunch then you have a pretty rough afternoon ahead of you. I was never overly impressed with my daughter's (private) school lunches, but one of my friends worked in the reception class and is super healthy. She said it was a trade off in ensuring that the children would eat and the healthier stuff is refused, one child refused healthier lunches because she knew mum would bring her extra chocolate bars on those days. They had to have a word with mum (who did not change her behaviour).

It's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Step one is ensuring that everyone eats enough to survive the day. Step two is improving the diet.

I'm of an opinion that even though lots of people kind of know what they are eating that there is just so much misinformation out there that leads to poor choices.
An exboyfriend of mine needs to lose some weight so starts eating big bags of nuts as he believes they are full of protein and nutrients which they are but also full of calories in that quantity. Also KFC and Five Guys meals, yes they have protein in them but also a ton of saturated fat. Having salad or soup can be healthy but it can also not be healthy, and no drinking latte all morning is not fasting. He's not stupid, he has a really great job but catching on to words like protein, fasting, general misinformation about food and his diet is pretty awful with very little exercise. He's not going to lose weight at this rate, most probably get bigger..

Obviously it is. I’m not stupid.

@Needlenardlenoo yes there is a cultural difference.

Some of the food on offer here is shit. I like McDonalds/BK so am not fussy or scared of calories but somewhere like Legoland sells horrible food. I always bring packed lunch for trips to theme parks etc

You’re absolutely right of course.

These days there’s so much tempting junk available.

You missed the bit where the son was copying the dad eating the pot noodles and the kids were eating chocolate etc - they switched to fruit snacks at the end.

@soupyspoon what does that have to do with my post?

I was on holiday in Tenerife over Xmas and spent a day in a water park. It was mostly fast food type options, and as I'm gluten intolerant I did wish I'd brought something with me other than Trek bars, but on the menu even of the kiosk type offerings were a salad and a fruit salad. When I bought the salad it was clearly freshly made on the premises and it was tasty and inexpensive. They were well stocked with pots of fruit salad too. I don't generally go to theme parks in the UK but I don't think many do that. The airport was the same.

It does show the culture difference I think.

I often wonder this, I mean who the hell is agreeing to go on tv and get flamed and humiliated I remember this tv show big families on benefits or something I wonder if the people on it were just told it was about big families but not benefits. I remember the voice over flaming them “she lives in her benefits house in her benefits town with her benefits dogs and benefits kids” 🤣

Overeating for kids is rife though, a different eating disorder.

A healthy balance between the occasional snack/UPF and mostly non UPF is ideal imo I wouldn't want to live a life where I never had any tasty UPF snacks (my mother does and my god is it boring!) I am a very good cook (it is my only skill I'm quite awful at everything else 😂😂) so I don't feel bad about the occasional UPF snack or takeaway when the majority of our meals are home cooked and great

I do think that in 2025, for an adult not to be able to cook (excluding disabilities and such etc) its quite embarrassing. There is such a wealth of knowledge out there, its not hard to learn. I learnt most of my cooking tips from tiktok, there's some really good creators on there who teach you in ways that are easy to learn. I found the best way to learn how to cook (for me) was to understand WHY we did XYZ thing rather than just remembering certain cooking steps. I read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat which was extremely useful. Im a much better cook because I now understand the processes behind what I'm doing so I can amend things using intuition and not religiously follow recipes - I roasted a duck the other day for the first time and loosely followed a recipe but tbh mostly did it myself purely from what I have learnt on how to break down proteins with bicarb soda, remove moisture and create crispy skin when I do chicken/pork belly etc.

I am also not afraid to use salt or MSG or fats and have probably 10 different kinds of cooking fats in the house depending on ehat I'm cooking 😂

I feel uncomfortable watching that kind of show, because there is so much more to it than people being too lazy/uneducated etc to cook/clean or whatever the issue is.

Judgement sells though, a lot of people watch these programmes and then they can congratulate themselves & feel better about themselves.

You’d be surprised what goes on in private boarding schools these days. They have suffered financially. Friend works in one and the canteen food is carefully rationed. Staff are told off for eating in the canteen at dinner time. Friend does it to save money and has been repeatedly told off. Technically it’s allowable if you are still working - so friend stays behind marking/planning until food time. Food is healthy on paper so that box is ticked, but in reality, meal times are short, food runs out, portion size suffers, children are hungry which they sometimes then address with cereal / white bread and jam in the boarding house. Or sweets bought. They do a lot of exercise and those teens are generally exceptionally lean.

Poor isn’t an excuse for making your kid fat I became a mum at 16 lived in a homeless shelter and had to share the kitchen with a crazy bitch. Still fed my kid well

Not true.

You can buy unrefined sugar, well that's what it is called but it is actually minimally refined so it still has molasses in it.

Putting the molasses back in to the white sugar gives it a different taste hence it being used in coffee not tea (well in the 70s it was) and changes the taste of baking.

I think crisps are an interesting thing. In the 1970s it was a once a week treat while watching Star Trek.

Now they are a daily part of a lot of peoples' daily diet.

Someone up thread mentioned 'meal deals', these are not healthy but they look like they should be, and it plays into our subconscious that it is a daily diet.

Just having a look on Tesco's website, trying to find healthier choices

Pollen & Grace Mezze Houmous + Rainbow Veg Grain Bowl 275g looks health and is packed with veg, it is 414 calories
Pure orange juice (330) ml is another 150 calories
Tesco Carrot & Houmous 100g is 117 calories

Total 681 calories

A Tesco roast dinner is about 400 calories. I'm not saying ready meal is better than the meal deal but just on calories it is. I know the Mezze have a lot of veg in them so are probably better for you. And there are vitamins in the OJ, along with about a desert spoon of sugar.

Super invested now. Had to go and look up sugar beet… learn something new everyday!

I assumed all sugar was made from sugar cane and I was clearly wrong. I live in a sugar cane region and within a short distance of a sugar mill and it didn’t even cross my mind that sugar was made from an alternative. It’s been a learning day for me.

I find it hard. I have two fussy teens and I genuinely often feel I don’t know what to cook. We eat a lot of pasta, I don’t even like pasta but there’s few meals they’ll both eat. My son would rather not eat at all, he’s very limited in his food intake. Weirdly he does like to cook though so I’m hoping to build on this.

I find it depressing cooking and it being rejected. I’ve done a cooking course to help find some inspiration but I often end up shoving a pizza in the oven or fish fingers for the ease and the peace. When I’m down I eat rubbish. I’m 2 stone overweight, my DC are healthy weights and so far have good teeth despite the sugar they inhale.

Ignoring the issue of food (which i know is the point of the thread) programmes are edited a certain way to get maximum engagement/interest/reaction from viewers and i think most of time (particularly on certain channels) that is at the expense of the people appearing.
Ive often read or heard from people who've spoken to the press or been on tv and said it was twisted to suit the narrative and came across completely different to how they were led to believe. It wouldn't surprise me if the families in this show (I confess I havent seen it) did cook some meals themselves but it suited the premise of the show to portray that they lived entirely off upfs.

Look at "how clean is your house" in the early 2000s, I imagine a lot, if not all of the people living in that level of clutter/dirt etc, had some kind of MH issues....even now I think similarly about sort your life out. I would think therapy would be a more helpful option than everyone seeing all your stuff laid out in a warehouse.
I feel uncomfortable watching that kind of show, because there is so much more to it than people being too lazy/uneducated etc to cook/clean or whatever the issue is.

The couple in the programme did a better job than the producers of pointing out it did involve a lot more washing up but didn’t cost more (if you don’t factor in time). They weren’t stupid so it might have been helpful to probe more into the ‘why?’.

my very well educated boss, who can cook, still has energy drinks by the fridge full and large white baguette sandwiches even though he’s got diabetes, couple of staff at work who complain about not losing weight while eating mayonnaise stuffed sandwiches and salads and raiding the biscuit tin. It’s addictive, and millions of pounds has gone into making it all addictive. My DHs ex hardly touches a vegetable …. I bloody love crisps and have had to go cold turkey and I’m a stone and a half overweight.

both been ill so had M&S fishcakes last night, few oven chips and a pile of green veg. I had home made BLT with avocado and sourdough bread for lunch.

it’s a balance isn’t it? Got a frozen home made beef stew in the freezer for tea tonight.