Need your opinions about Change4Life ads aimed at parents

It made sense to me FAQ!

But I am someone who buys in bulk when she can and loves the size of the freezer in this flat!! I mean, £6 of chicken breasts is dinner for DH and I for about 3 - 4 nights (depending on what I am making, obviously) so its about £2 per meal! Not that much more than the £1.50 for the nuggets chips and beans.

haha - ok fair enough we're singing from the same hymn sheet then

I agree with you education (can't bear to say it 3 times over ) is the way to go. Not "you should be cooking from scratch" type things. but actually teaching them (in practical classes) of how to make healthy food on a a budget.

Ok they may still be buying green and white, red, white and blue, or yellow and white stuff - but hopefully the healthy stuff (pasta, tinned tomatoes, onions,).

They need to be shown that yes the ingredients for that meal may look like they're costing you £4 (or whatever), but you're not going to use them all in one go so will have stuff left over to make more meals so it works out cheaper.

I think too many see the example that you gave (nuggets, chips, beans £1.50 - cheap but all gone in one meal) but don't see the whole bigger picture of buying food

I don't deny that you can FAQ, i do it every day [smug]

but it is by far the easiest option. and when you have 16 year old parents who have never cooked so much as cornflakes what is the more likely evening meal? fish fingers and chips or a spag bol?

education education education

and at my appalling typing in my last post

I think cookery classes and free sports/dance lessons are the way forward.

Mamazon - I beg to differ it is possible to cook healthy food on a single parent benefit income.

I think the problem lie in education - not in the "education" of this ad - which is telling people what they already know. But actually showing people how to cook healthy meals on a very tight budget.

oh and if you can make 1 tin of beans go between 3/4 children I well impressed

I hate the thing. It is scaremongering IMO. We did recently reveived the "How are the kids "questionnaire through the post, and I decided to fill it. It only takes into consideration the day you feel it in, not usual average diet your children atre having. The day I filled mine was on my birthday so we all had some cake and wnt out for a curry. I think it must make me something on the line of "irresponsable child murder attempting" parent. I decided to not post the thing back to actually know because a day is really not very often an accurate picture of what really is happening is it?

I am getting very ennoyed at all the "you are ruining your childs life" remarques you get if you so much as dare giving your DCs a biscuit.

I have got a couple of friends I only see on special occasions ( religious festivals birthaday...) and they EVERY time tell me I should not give cakes to the DCs blah blah blah and I can see them cringe at the sight of them actually enjoying the slice of cake.

Now I am all for healthy diet, I give Dcs a packed lunch that contains everything they need according to the "food pyramid" thing, they eat more than 5 fruit/veg a day, they walk top school every day and do practice sports outside school + they rides bikes arround the house whenever they get a chance, all meals eaten at home are home made from scratch. I am very tired of having to justifie myself to people when I decide every now and then to give them something a bit less healthy maybe but that will NOT kill them!

Sorry, hijack over!

Awful scaremongering, it absolutely infuriates me. Why can't the money for these ads get spent on laying on fun sporty/dance/outdoor pursuits-type stuff for families at weekends to encourage us to get active? Or free cookery classes where kids can join in and find out about fresh ingredients? Or mobile fruit and veg vans with a subsidy going round housing estates? I could literally think of two dozen other initiatives that would actually come at this whole issue from a far more positive point of view instead of this wicked finger-wagging.

I think just 'telling' people with these sort of ads is ineffective and a waste of money.
We should plough the money into early stages:

• educating children and parents about healthy living & eating and about balanced diets, home cooking etc.
• helping young children develop self-respect for their bodies and health, so that they aspire to be healthy later in life

Let's face it - neither of the two kids portrayed in these ads is particularly unhealthy-looking?

I think they're too simplistic - and the people they're targeted at are too ignorant/ will not be reached via the media channels being used...

Oh, and the other issue which needs to be addressed is the 'don't care - whose business is it anyway what I eat/ size 16 isn't fat/ I'll feed my kids chips if I want to - it's not doing them any harm, yada yada yada.....'
(And I'm sure we'll now hear lots of this on this thread in response )

Terrible! The Change4Life ads are rubbish, a total waste of taxpayers money! The ads need to promote healthy eating - treats are still OK in moderation. On the flip side, young girls have enough problems with eating disorders so this is a v bad example.

A normal weight kid eating something sweet - bit of a rubbish ad imo.

Coming at it from the perspective of someone who's had problems with food over the years, I don't think it's very clever.

a) on the scale of it (vs a mars bar, chips, crisps etc) a cupcake is not that bad, is it.

b) secondly - and more importantly - I think it creates a very unhealthy attitude to food. Isn't there research which shows that when foods are 'banned' in childhood, people tend to binge on them in later life, whereas where people are taught to eat them in moderation, they continue to eat reasonably as adults. It's taken me years of my life to learn that, and I'm still not there yet.

c) It all depends on the cupcake. If it's home-made, I'd rather my dd ate that than any of the additive-ridden rubbish that the supermarket sells. There seems to be an increasing opinion that it is some of the additives and ingredients - palm oil etc - that are key in obesity. You only need to look at the recent changes in opinion on butter (now better than margarine) and eggs to see that we don't yet have all the answers on nutrition.

So yes, I think it's daft. And I think - given the earlier onset of worried about bodyimage etc in girls - that it's particularly daft given that it's a girl. Why not a boy?

its totally ineffective IMHO.

people know the risks involved with over eating and obesity but in the real world it makes little difference to the buyng habbits of someone who can only afford shite.

i can go to Asda and buy a bag of nuggets for 50p and bag of chips for 50p and a tin of beans for 20p. so for less than £1.50 i can feed 3/4 kids.

If your a single mum on benefits you get what you can afford and make the most of it.

they need to spend less on colourfull posters and more on subsidising healthy food or forced increases to the price of junk.

make junk the more expensive "treat" option rather than the cheaper daily alternative.

I think it is totally ineffective, in the same way pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packs is ineffective.

People know these things are bad for them. But there is also such a thing as quality of life. Granted, smoking, to me, has nothing to do with quality of life. But to a smoker? It sure does. When I was a smoker? It sure did.

As for eating sweets? Definitely all about quality of life.

The government needs to stop trying to change human nature. And survival of the fittest.