Do people really not know what to eat?

I agree about porridge. A big bag of unbranded is very cheap. You can microwave it with water and top up with a bit of milk. Half a sliced banana and a bit of chopped apple and that’s a great breakfast for kids. My adult son still has this for breakfast. Very cheap.

@PattiPatty my sister is the same age and was taught how to cook and nutrition in food tech. She learnt knife skills, pasta cooking, fruit salad, how to cook chicken, made custard from scratch.

i was in secondary school in the 90s and learnt quite similar.

I know the cooking syllabus in secondaries has been very similar for the last ten years.

My son is in secondary now, he did make wraps in y7 but these had to involve protein and vegetables and the nutrition was discussed and explained.

It’s a shame your child wasn’t taught properly, I wonder if that can be extrapolated to other schools or my examples can?

2015 a framework was released that outlines in detail what should be covered in food classes.

But I honestly don’t understand why people don’t try.

Because trying takes time. It costs money. It often requires new equipment and knowledge. And then you have to be sure your children are going to actually eat what you've spent time making.

you need to make a bingo card for threads like these about

food, dieting, sugar

Exactly!

You're right. I'm not saying a good diet isn't preferable but it can be very easy to sit in smug middle class judgement when you haven't lived on the breadline and edges of society. In those places there is no good food/bad food, just hungry or not. A pack of 35p noodles from Aldi takes minimum budget, requires next to no facilities or gadgets, is low cost to prepare and is better than nothing if you are desperate.

Oooh food "but olympics"! Has anyone said yet that pulses are a no go because they don't have time to soak them?

You’re probably right, normally I would use fresh veg and but literally no time this morning. But then I would argue it’s better than some alternatives. Any veg is better than none, whether it’s straight from the garden, fresh from the supermarket, frozen, or from a tin.

I empathise with the poster who said about the judgement on here. I think there’s extremes of attitudes to food, when most people are muddling in the middle.

It’s not even as clear cut as that. I probably have McDonalds once a week, sometimes twice a week. I’m a perfectly healthy size 8 with a BMI closer to underweight than overweight.

I’m aware of the UPF I eat though, and I’m aware of a normal weight and fitness level for me and will adapt what I eat if they start to change - but I don’t need to only have a grilled chicken wrap once every 8-12 weeks in order to be healthy.

Considering you can get 120 frozen chicken nuggets for the price of 4 chicken fillets and the chicken nuggets would last around a month where as the fillets would be about 1 week
When money is tight would you rather feed your kids for a month or a week?

Does anyone remember kids sitting in pushchairs with a bottle of tea back in the day

This is not true.
At school in the 1970s we were taught cooking and nutrition but my DC who are 27 and 29 were not taught any basic cooking at school. They were taught "food tech" which was very, very limited. How to make a sandwich was one lesson.
I had to teach them everything from baking to veg prep and nutrition myself.

My DC are the same age as many young parents now, who's own parents didn't teach them and may have been raised on convenience food .

For someone who is being a bit snobby about what other people eat, you don't appear to understand what a UPF is?

Fish fingers are generally not UPFs - if you look on the Yuka app, the vast majority of fish fingers are rated as excellent or good. For example Aldi's frozen fish fingers are organic, have no additives, high protein and low salt, sugar and saturates.

Lots of parents are not 'off their face' when using drugs. Plenty of parents are habitual substance users and parent and bring up their children

But we know thats not ok, thats just about holding on. The children will be affected by that, the role modelling, the health of their parents. Even if the children themselves dont get their hands on the drugs (the example given up thread is that this family on the telly the other night dont feed their kids the same food they have, bt thats not the point)

Children of substance users are not always removed from the family home, they function, the parents function

So again, no judgement?

I watched this episode and made the pasta sauce with soaked cashew nuts and roasted tomatoes I added spinach and roasted red onion and it was absolutely delicious when blended!
The parents chocolate habit was absolutely bonkers though!
Mum had hot chocolate for breakfast, a huge chocolate brownie for lunch and 2 bars of Chocolate in the evening!
It must have cost a fortune too as Chocolate prices have really increased with the poor cocoa harvest issue.
My Adult DS's normally get chocolate in their stockings but I greatly cut back this year due to the expense of it.
Hopefully with the money they save they can do a kitchen extension as cooking for 6 people in that galley space would drive me absolutely bananas!
The kids did seem loved but the parents did need nutritional guidance as poor eating and the resulting health issues will be passed on.

Good question. A lot of crap in my 20s, then slowly learned to cook as I got older. I worked a lot longer hours then and had less time, but it was also not planning or knowing what to do to be honest. I think people need to find motivation to cook. Now my motivation is my son and my own health. But it’s hard. My mum fed me a lot of crap as a kid and then left when I was 11, and then my dad was more hopeless (but really tried). I think that’s why I want to make a difference to my son now and to give him the skill of cooking.

Most supermarket sugar that's simply labelled "Brown" is refined with molasses added. Muscovado and some other types of brown sugar are unrefined.

Something tasting the same every time, being reliable, can also be a big attraction.

Some people's monkey brains are telling them it's safe not some poisonous new thing, cos they recognise the taste. And the modern brains of people on a tight budget are telling them they know they like it so there's no risk of wasting your money and still being hungry.

I do think for some families being busy and when you have a few kids it’s hard to get them to all eat the same thing. Happily I have only 1 but it’s a struggle, she just polished off a bowl of extremely simplified red thai curry and rice (minus any veg), she’s 6 and this is the first time she’s actually finished off a home cooked meal. It takes a lot of effort with some kids. I think starting them off right is helpful, mine is happy with fruit and nuts as a snack (getting there with veg) but it’s always been what we offered.

PP point about what counts as a meal is correct I think as well, Dh will make omelettes for dinner and thats fine. Tbh as well I think people need to let go of the upf sauce thing, jar of dolmio, chopped chicken, pasta, hide some veg and you have a perfectly decent meal. I tend to do my pasta sauces from scratch because I have time for it but if you are rushing in from a shift and dinner needs to be on the table quickly then you do whats reasonable. I wonder if we’ve over complicated what cooking is and some people give up before they start.

No they wouldn't - not if you were also feeding them veg and protein, which you would be.

I’m not sure your casserole - made with processed meat, tinned salty vegetables and UPF baked beans - is any healthier than the average ready meal.

School food has high nutrition standards and they are held to them. My kids won’t eat some of them because it’s chips once a week with no salt and tiny portions. Puddings are low in sugar and minute.

They’d much rather make a chicken and salad sandwich, grapes, cucumber and a cheese string. My 10 year old can prep his lunch in about 4 minutes.

No, that's just 'processed', even 'minimally processed'.

I know what it's referring too except most definitions of "ultra processed food" would include jacket potatoes and porridge because they've been washed/peeled/milled/etc and then cooked on top of that.

No they wouldn't.

Well good for you OP.

The family in question did work hard and turned their lives and diets around really quickly.

People slide into habits without realising. It's surprising how many people actually don't know the difference between various foods, especially if they are too busy to watch TV about it or didn't grow up with healthy eating, a family that taught them to cook etc.

They were brave to put themselves out there on TV for people like you to have a pop at. I thought they were a lovely family - loving and supportive of each other.