Do people really not know what to eat?

They don’t - 6 bags of crisps are about a quid - 6 apples are £2+.

I haven’t read the whole thread but if the parents are obese then chances are they make poor decisions around food themselves and are unlikely to cook their kids a bean stew for dinner if they are not cooking one for themselves.

a lot of families use food to ‘treat’ or to bribe - because it’s cheap (in comparison to a trip to the cinema) and

They should be:

In the UK, basic cooking and food technology (often called Cooking and Nutrition) is mandatory for all students up to age 14 (Key Stage 3) as part of the Design and Technology curriculum, covering skills like nutrition, hygiene, and practical cooking, with GCSEs becoming optional later.

Beautiful reply and echoed exactly what I was going to say, but you got there first, and wrote it better than I would have.

Which to be fair he explained that it's not OUR fault that we eat a whole packet of biscuits in one go. Manufacturers have spent billions on making sure we like biscuits and will keep eating them even when we're full.

Salt, fat and sugar. An unbeatable winning combination.

I mean this is what we tell 5 year olds at school so they don't feel bad about the crap they often eat at home. We call them 'treat foods' instead.

As adults i think we can cope with the truth. A deep friend doughnut with jam in the middle and coated in flour is absolutely 'bad food'. There are plenty of others!

For a PP it's also not 'good' to have a balance of good food and crap junk food - It's better than eating crap everyday but it's not nearly as good as eating healthily every day. The stuff people delude themselves with!

Junk Food Kids - great documentary

Exactly this

No they don’t. The vast majority of schools don’t even have cooking/food tech classrooms.

It seems a deficiency of crisps in the diet can lead to a loss of sense of humour?

Presumably people don’t, though, or there’s some reason that’s stopping them.

Getting exasperated at people instead of understanding the hurdles isn’t going to help. People will just be put off.

Theres no comparison to the casserole recipe that the poster set out, to spaghetti hoops and chicken nuggets, dont be disengenuous

Rightly or wrongly, I never assume that tins of veg are full of sugar and salt because I personally, if buying tinned stuff, dont buy it with sugar and salt

Tomatoes for example dont have sugar and salt added to them but many a thread on here lumps them in as UPFs sometimes.

If there is salt in a tin of sweetcorn for example, it would simply be in the place of salt I would use in a recipe in any case.

I think a lot of it is due to lack of education.

I’m vegan and eat incredibly clean. No UPF’s, everything homemade, track every macro etc.

However I acknowledge not everyone can eat like me for numerous reasons.

Mainly lack of education . Either from schools or they grew up (usually in poverty) where cheap UPF freezer foods where the go to. Lots of time poor people have never been taught how to cook. My food bill is actually very cheap, however if I didn’t know how to cook then I imagine it would be very high.

There are lots of people who resort to cheap UPF foods who are poorer and think that this is all they can eat as they haven’t been taught how to eat anything else within their budget. People also aren’t educated on what a normal portion size is. If you’ve grown up with generational obesity you don’t realise how little food we actually need to survive. My Mum is obese and her portion sizes are insane. I am a normal weight and eat normal sized meals and she thinks I eat like a mouse.

Some people also need convenience foods for a multitude of reasons and unfortunately not many of them available are healthy.

People also have no idea of healthy vs unhealthy. My Grandma is overweight and constantly wants to lose weight but when I suggest foods to her won’t eat them. She refuses to eat fruit as “it’s full of sugar”, yet will happily eat 4 slices of Warburtons with lurpack for breakfast.

They really aren't. Crisps are full of fat and salt, all taste purely of that, and don't fill you up at all, or provide any nutrients whatsoever. If you really do think they're great, you probably grew up in one of those houses where people couldn't be bothered to cook and believe that shit 'food' is fun. And that's a shame for you.
I do eat crips sometimes, but it's not food. It's more like wine!

Banana's and apples, on the other hand are great, as they are cheap, filling, portable, and contain nutrients your body needs.

Apples and bananas go out of date. Crisps last ages. Apples and bananas can have grotty stuff going on inside that makes kids reject them. Crisps are gloriously consistent. I can see why families on a budget would rather buy stuff that will absolutely be guaranteed to be eaten.

And I think everyone knows what good food looks like, and what is good for them. We are all taught that at school.

Most adults weren't taught just how bad UPF is though, or how much of what we eat is in fact overly processed. A jar of Dolmio pasta sauce might not be anywhere near as good for you as a bolognese made from scratch, but I genuinely don't believe many parents would consider that they're feeding their kids' ultra-processed food if they served up a spag bol with sauce from a jar.

So I vote YABU, and I wouldn't judge people for not knowing just how bad the food they are feeding themselves or their kids.

I judge the food industry and its lack of regulation until recently for landing us here.

I get it too and appreciate what you’re saying. I was just giving an example of an ‘easy’ meal (as opposed to a ‘good’ meal) as I think that the challenge in many people’s lives is time and money. I think a lot is to do with my perception of what makes a meal healthy and perhaps I hadn’t factored in the salt content in this case, or the amount of processed food. But I would hope it’s a better alternative to some other foods (such as takeaways). Maybe it’s not and that’s the issue

@CremeEggsForBreakfastyoure confusing processed food (food that’s changed and processed in any way including home cooking) and ULTRA processed food (food that’s altered through processes and ingredients that are not possible/available in a domestic kitchen)

I would love it if my child ate the same meals as myself, but unfortunately it isn't that easy. I am a decent cook so it isn't bad cooking, he refuses a lot of meals purely on the smell which he is very sensitive too.

He has got better overtime and will now eat some home cooked meals, but not everything. I resort to something in the freezer like fish fingers at times. He is a very healthy, happy child so I have no concerns. People on here can judge all they like.

I had friends growing up who ate freezer food and beans or peas every night for tea. When they went to uni, they knew how to cook, if cooking involved putting something on an oven tray or putting something in the microwave. We didn't learn in school about the food groups or the importance of a balanced diet. Many of those people now have kids - I imagine there will be many of them who are simply eating (and therefore feeding their children) the same way they ate and were fed. It's easy to act shocked about it when you've been brought up with not only an understanding of why it's important, but also an awareness of how to do those things - if you only know how to microwave stuff, even chopping some veg can seem faffy or something that people like you don't do or even daunting.

Tell me you don’t know the definition of UPF without telling me. Everything in your second paragraph is incorrect.

Or just make it with milk… kids need the calcium and choline in milk. They don’t need to be on a diet.

My DS is borderline overweight according to NHS guidelines. You can see his ribs. I never thought I'd be that mum but I really do doubt the obesity figures now. No wonder we can't see the overweight toddlers if they look like mine!

This. Refined sugar or unrefined sugar… it’s glucose,fructose or sucrose. And it all acts the same in the body. It’s sugar.

I’m not getting at you, we’re all doing the best we can. I pointed it out because your post said there’s no excuse, everyone should be making an effort…and it’s just not that simple. You’re making a home-cooked meal with some processed ingredients…some people would consider that no better than chicken nuggets and spaghetti hoops. Some parents feel they’ve done well if they manage a bit of tinned sweetcorn instead of the spaghetti hoops, but there’s always someone ready to say it doesn’t count as veg because it comes in a tin and has additives. “Making an effort” means different things to different people, and it’s complicated.

It depends on the brown sugar: Muscovado is unrefined and still has the molasses in. 'Dark brown sugar' has had it taken out and put back in. Better flavour for baking (IMO) but still sugar, not a health product. Demerara sugar still has some natural molasses in it.

On many a thread on here people are simply using UPF to describe any and all types of food. People havent a got a clue

And thats another, thing, you have people going on about chucking out their oxo cubes and tomato ketchup etc, to extremes in my view and then somneone who is trying to learn how to improve their kids diets are going to be completely bamboozled by this rubbish.

Atlhough why people think they need stock cubes or sachets of spice mixes is another whole thread.