Do people really not know what to eat?

And yet on the Yuka app the majority of fish fingers are rated excellent although I don’t think too many fish fingrs leads to obesity.

I work in the timber industry and was horrified to find out that the end use of our product is something called cellulose which is a common food additive and filler. It never crossed my mind that the trees we were harvesting would end up in anything other than paper or wood products. Yet here we are...

But aren’t fish fingers just white fish in breadcrumbs? Not all UPF is bad, YOLO after all.
I thought that fish fingers would have been ok. However this is what I found out:

Fish fingers are classified as ultra-processed foods (UPF) because they undergo extensive industrial manufacturing and contain ingredients typically not used in home kitchens.
According to the widely used NOVA classification system, a food is "ultra-processed" (Group 4) if it is a formulation of industrial ingredients rather than just a modified version of a whole food.
Key Reasons Fish Fingers are UPF

• Industrial Ingredients & Additives: Many brands use substances like diphosphates (binders), modified starches, and raising agents to improve texture and shelf life.
• Highly Processed "Mince": While some use whole fillets, others use "minced fish"—leftover bits processed with binders and emulsifiers to mimic the texture of a whole fillet.
• Manufacturing Methods: The production process involves multiple steps that cannot be replicated at home, such as industrial pre-frying (often in inflammatory vegetable oils) and extrusion.
• High "Non-Food" Components: Many supermarket fish fingers contain less than 60% actual fish, with the remainder being a mixture of breadcrumbs, seed oils, and various starches.

You invested me in brown sugar now...

I would guess that not all brown sugar is the same given the quick google search.

People assume they are eating healthily as UPF foods are often advertised as healthy- eg high protein (but full of sugar and preservatives) fortified with vitamins (cereal) tasty and delicious (McD, KFC, pizza,) good for you (eg energy drinks) or a fun lifestyle choice (RedBull, Coke,)
And also food served for school dinners is not healthy, same in hospitals.
Unless people are interested in food/cooking or nutrition it is easy to believe the marketing and that the products they choose are healthy.

Agree: some of the competitive undereating on here is terrifying. I think many of these threads should be taken down by the mods: they are triggering to people with disordered eating and full of unscientific nonsense.

It literally says unrefined on the packet, but I suppose you’re right in that it’s not a bag of sugar beet 😂

But aren’t fish fingers just white fish in breadcrumbs? Not all UPF is bad, YOLO after all.

@Thepeopleversuswork there are mixed messages & as @CodifyThis a lot of disordered eating often displayed on MNs.

I actually think a huge factor in the nations health is how time poor & stressed people are.

Like pp have said the programme makers will have chosen an extreme example.
I actually now feel more annoyed that editors make programmes designed to make people feel judgy or superior to the people in the programme. And it makes me wonder how they advertise for people to go on them....do you want to come on tv and have lots of people feel judgemental about you....?
I watched a programme last year called the gluten goddess, each person on the show had a health issue they had been struggling with, she put them on her special diet - the health issue subsides....but of 4 people, all of them were portrayed as mainly eating upfs/"junk" food with barely a fruit,vegetable or meal made from scratch , in sight. (Who knows if this was their actual diet or the way they edited it) But i wanted to know if tweaks to a more varied diet would have the same impact....but that wouldn't have made such good tv

Id imagine a private boarding school would offer healthy balanced meals as part of what you are paying for. This would be in contrast to what would be available in the fridge of a poorer child when they get home from school.

This is true and I think sometimes the anti obesity messaging is quite unhelpful because it emphasises reducing calories and reducing carbs as the priority. So people feel that low carb, low calorie foods are the gold standard because they support weight loss but they often are worse for cardiovascular and metabolic health overall.

Faddy eating has been with us for years but I think it’s done profound damage to attitudes to food. And while weight loss in general is a good thing it shouldn’t come at the expense or a balanced diet.

Where are you getting earlier and more frequent/poor quality diagnoses from? As far as I can tell, it is still largely misunderstood and underdiagnosed.

Anorexia is big in boarding schools

@StroppyLabWontMove much more pressure to be skinny. At my school eating disorders were rife.

I often notice richer families have really thin children like BMI 16 I'd guess or a size 2uk for teen daughters. The mum usually up to a 12uk. There must be a genetic element as well as diet.

how do you think my child was going to grow out of autism?

We were under dieticians at the hospital from 6 weeks. FYI.

they’re still allergic or intolerant to almost all the foods they were back in the day - long and patient work by us and them has meant that they have now a wider range of foods than I ever thought possible.

I've got 3. I get up at 5:30 so there is time for exercise, making decent lunches and throwing stuff in for slow cooking all day.

There is not really a proper food culture in the UK, same as US (and some other countries like Holland, Norway)

cooking healthy tasty nutritious food requires effort and time

in most families here both parents work, so buying fresh food and cooking it feels like a slog when you get home from work at 5 or 6!

I was one of those healthy cook from scratch mums but only in the years I did not work FT 😁 It is a lot of effort IMO and now that my kids have left home I happily eat scrambled eggs on toast with a tomato instead (lazy) after I get home at 6

I think programmes like What Not to Eat are created for the middle classes to feel smug about how fatter poorer people live 🤔

This reminds me of one of my children’s class mates. He was severely overweight and his mum kept talking about how healthy he is. One day she listed everything he eats in a day and we were all like, what?! A small child ate more than our husbands and most of it was processed junk food! Honestly did not know how she afforded to feed him so much as processed food is more expensive! If my kids are hungry they get yogurt, fruit, rice pudding, toast.

Ironic isn't it.

I see obese children all the time, not 50% no that sounds a little exaggerated but I still see a lot.
And funnily enough since ozempic I see a lot less obese adults? So these people I know don’t want to be obese themselves but subject their children to it. I’m convinced in some cases it’s a case of munchausen by proxy

Poor nutrition and unhealthy eating habits will show up in children in different ways eg poor school performance, poor concentration, behavioral issues etc

Its less likely to be physically visible as it is in adults. At least this is my view.

No - but earlier and more frequent poor quality diagnoses of ARFID absolutely limit the ability of a child to grow out of it.

And you only have to look at the amount of effort and energy people are prepared to put into new food crazes such as air fryers. They’re more than happy to spend large amounts of time and money on new ways to heat up crap, but don’t direct that energy into better quality food.

The problem with children is probably more malnutrition or at least poor nutrition and this manifests itself in adulthood as obesity as we mature

Good point