Do people really not know what to eat?

I think there has been a swing in the prices for convenience food being cheaper than home cooking.

There are now huge numbers available and a packet of chicken nuggets is vastly cheaper than chicken nuggets.

in the 80s and 90s and into the 2000s convenience food was seen as and often eas the more expended option.

They were also relatively new and people were still often eating now their parents ate.

There are lots of reasons. Maybe they don't have a car so have to walk half an hour to get their dc from school. Maybe 1 of their dc has football practice after school so it's 5pm when they get home and bedtime is at 7. Maybe there isn't an asda close by so they do all their shopping at the corner shop, which doesn't sell fruit and vegetables.

Maybe they are a single parent and the dc fight all the time so they can't cook anything that will burn or stick to the pan if you leave it for a few minutes. Maybe they are just knackered. Maybe they had to take one of the dc to the dr or dentist at 5pm.

These are just off the top of my head. Today we had sausages in bread rolls for tea, which isn't great but it was all I had time for in between taking the dc to their various activities. Tomorrow we will have cottage pie with lots of veg because I'll have time to do it.

And your point is?

…”no kids yet”

I know a woman with an obese toddler who is constantly eating family size bags of chocolates. Whenever this gets discussed online people wheel out the excuses “they just don’t know that chocolate is fattening” I mean ffs come on I became a mum at 16 and my kids always ate healthy even when I lived with other people and had to share the kitchen with someone with personality disorders who used to smash up all my plates after an argument and threaten to put me through the wall, I was still in there cooking my meals, a more pathetic being would have retreated to their room with pot noodles and a family size dairy milk.

How can someone claim they don’t know why their toddler is obese when he’s eating a family size bags of maltesers? I’m convinced some people do it on purpose

DH’s family have absolutely no idea about nutrition. They see our diet as weird. They just don’t get it.

Just watching this programme now. I find these shows so patronising. Not cos I think I’m some sort of diet expert. But he keeps banging on about how hard UPFs are to spot like the ingredients are some sort of well-kept secret..not right there on the back of the packet!! Surely if you want to know if a bag of rice is processed you just look at the back and if it lists other ingredients other than rice & water it’s processed. The more ingredients something lists the more processed it is. I came to this conclusion by common sense alone and I’m of very average intelligence 🙄

. We camp and DH & I still feed the kids good meals with some veg and fruit. We make burgers from mince, salt and pepper, not UPF ONES. We make pizzas from scratch, the dough is yeast, flour and water.

I would absolutely not be bothering with making my own burger patties or pizza dough when camping! That’s pretty unusual

I agree with this.

I grew up very poor, but we all had 3 home cooked meals a day. Not a UPF in sight, no snacks. On occasion we'd get fish and chips from the chippy, or some penny sweets. Dessert would be homemade cake. Single dad, widowed. I'm in my late 30s so this wasn't that long ago.

There was only one obese child in my school. All of my friends ate like we ate, it was the norm.

These days kids are grazing all day long on snacks, and there's no need for it. In my DC's school alone, I know at least six obese children and we live in a "naice" area. One friend came to our house for dinner and had a tantrum because he didn't want homemade cottage pie, he wanted chips or to go to McDonald's! His mum just laughed. Next time he came, she sent him with crisps.

I know one woman who feeds her family exclusively off UPFs. Her family is obese, her child looks incredibly unhealthy and cannot run without wheezing. She works part time and simply cannot be bothered to cook - she jokes about it. It's pure laziness.

Something is going wrong somewhere. You mentioned cutlery; the amount of children at DCs school who can't correctly use a knife and fork astounds me. They use a fork and gnaw off it rather than cutting their food. If we'd done that when I was young, we'd have been sent away from the table until we could eat like we had manners!

I make that exact meal a lot! Down to the same method for the jacket potato. Though I usually add frozen sweetcorn or peppers to the chilli.

I make extra chilli so I can take it to work for lunch the next day.

I think eating healthy is quite expensive, we get through a ton of fruit on a weekly basis. I try & make me own snacks as we snack to much but again it’s probably cheaper to buy biscuits as opposed to me baking them.

Would be nice if you acknowledged that for some of us it’s not that simple.

Now I will admit I have a lot of time compared to others as I’m currently back at university so I usually start cooking at 5 and serve around 6/6.15.

Microwave the potato for 5 mins then put in the air fryer (cover in oil first) for 20. Perfect crusty spud. For chilli throw a chopped onion and courgette in a pan, add a tin of mixed beans, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, chopped tomatoes and cook down for 20 mins. Add coriander. Serve. Easy.

These all sound delicious!! Can I ask when you usually cook dinner, and do you have kids? I get home at 6, dinner at 6:30 and feel like a jacket potato and chilli would take me 2 hours 😭

I actually think beans on toast is a great dish. The lysine in the beans completes the protein in the bread which I think is cool.

I’ll bite - recent meals I’ve made:

Carrot and lentil soup

Chicken and leek pie (I make my own shortcrust) with cabbage and carrots

Tuna and minced vegetable salad with couscous

Turkey breast steaks with butter bean and tomato stew

Herb crusted cod with cheese and parsley sauce and rice cooked with carrots and cabbage

Roast chicken with polenta and roasted veg

Jacket potato with bean chilli

Potato cakes and poached eggs with salad

I think so long as it’s made from whole foods with no added nonsense and is relatively balanced then it’s good food. Whole foods can include tinned / jarred or frozen but not with added preservatives and flavour enhancers etc

Beans on toast is a healthy nutritious meal in my view. You'll hear that shouted down with complaints about the bread, about the sugar in the beans etc.

Its cheap, filling, tasty, warming, good nutrition, low in fat, high in fibre and add cheese if you want more fat and protein. Plus butter, always butter. I also dont think the sugar it it is excessive.

There are lots of different factors but a few points based on comments I've read.

Obesity isn't necessarily related to money or IQ but lack of money or knowledge about food prep don't help. Plenty of middle class obese people about though and genetics will play a part.

Mental health and neurodiverity are issues for a lot of people, even more so as they hit their teens and in to adulthood and they impact how you feed yourself and how you feed your family. These things are not inherently conned to wealth/class.

Working full time, multiple kids activities, commute times - where are you finding the time to cook from scratch every day and do your kids not reject your healthy meals?

PE in state schools is still abysmal and puts a lot of people who are not naturally sporty off exercise, whilst the thread is about food, it's a factor in obesity and healthy habits

Stats for childhood obesity likely come from the weight measurements they do in reception and Y6. If it indicates a child is overweight a school nurse will call and offer help if you want it. A lot of the advice given will be undoubtedly towards low fat UPFs.

Food tech is still a thing and seems quite unchanged in the last 30 years, I suspect most kids give it up when it gets interesting at GCSE because remembering and lugging the ingredients in on the bus is such a pain.

School dinners in the 80s were virtually inedible, they moved to being over processed and now they seem vaguely better. Still a lot of all day breakfasts and fish fingers going on. My DC went to an event at a private school (one of those where they invite the poorer kids in) and he said the school dinners were amazing.

I'd note that I became overweight aged 16 mostly down to my 6th forms cheap sausage barms and probably over consumption of vodka red bull and beer 🙈 These things were cheap (maybe not the beer) and I was mostly in control of my own finances. Show me a teen that doesn't sometimes make dreadful food choices.

I recall most m/c kids in my primary eating a ham sandwich, club biscuits and ribena in the 80s/90s. I also recall having small chocolate bars and multi packs of crisps at home to have on moderation around home cooked meals as did most of my friends Maybe it was simpler less judgemental times 😂 Lot of judginess these days.

We can and do cook meals from scratch at least 5 days per week, free access to fruit, but I also buy hula hoops and biscuits. I think most people do a mix and generally the majority are doing their best with the time, capacity and resources they have, which may not be consistent day to day. It's not as simple as to say you must prioritise your kids health.

@FurForksSake I know what you mean; things like baked beans or a higher-fibre cereal have some dietary merit. Although many people don't feed their children the higher fibre cereal, I used to be cross as my children's breakfast club for feeding them white sugary carbs first thing, although I suppose the milk was better than nothing. It's not a 'good start to the day' though.

I think there is such a thing as 'bad food'! Most UPF's are bad food. I don't think you should be stoned for eating it, indeed, I occasionally have it myself, but it is objectively 'bad' as in unless or actively detrimental calories.

I think people have often lost the ability to give a shit about the latest food fads.

It has to be really clear the risks of eating certain foods and probably fairly imminent consequences for people to understand.

As was discussed up thread, lack of fibre is a massive cause of bowel cancer. Wholemeal bread, whole grain cereals and baked beans are really good sources of fibre but are also upf. They are cheap, fairly easily accepted by kids and readily available.

The whole upf thing is a new category of shit and it’s confusing and frustrating to navigate.

m&s are cashing in by selling lots of products with limited ingredients, replacing the shelf space all the vegan stuff of the last fad took up probably.

UPF is a bit of a red herring in a way, it should be about encouraging more whole foods, fibre and lean protein. There is much to be said by encouraging positive changes over telling people everything they eat is shit and going to kill them.

Lots of family centres used to run family cooking classes, but they’ve closed. This thread is telling me some schools have abandoned teaching basic nutrition and food skills.

Perhaps supermarkets could use their massive amounts of profit, end of product life items and real estate to engage communities in cooking and food education?

Alongside food banks can they run sessions on eating seasonally and fresh food?

Could schools and communities start community allotments / market gardens where they make seasonal dishes together and learn to grow and produce their own foods?

They knew they weren’t doing enough to feed their family well, that’s why they went on to the programme and have made steps to change it.

Pink Lady apples are not the cheapest though, there are cheaper varieties, and will always be a better choice, for myself, anyway.

It was the two family sized bars of chocolate per person per evening that got me! How they were simply unaware what healthy eating and portion control looked like. Baffling!