What is really stopping us from eating healthy?

[LilMissRe]

Hi mums
I’m trying to balance full time mummy-hood and completing my degree and after what felt like an eternity, I am edging towards the finish line. The only thing left is to finish my research project. I say “only” but this has been a huge struggle and I am asking for help. My project is about promoting healthy eating in cities. I’m comparing what the government thinks needs to be done, to what families, and those particularly struggling to access healthy food, think is hindering their access to healthy food. So I am writing here, in the hope that you could share with me your opinions.

Most “experts” say that healthy food access is difficult because of price, location or income. (I’d add time too- but think there is more to it than that). We all relate to and value food differently so I am keen to find out how you think healthy food access is an issue.

My parents grew up very very poor in the Mediterranean; but they both insist that their diets were much healthier then than they are now and have always been surprised as to how diets have worsened, and obesity risen despite there being relatively more availability of food. My parents are from a different time however, and so I am asking you for your opinion on why you think diets are getting worse.

Expressedways why is homemade food not tasty though. I certainly find it tastier than most /all ready meals.

I'm so surprised at the amount of people that consider cheap ready meals a good option to fuel your body.

there's lots of reasons, as pp have mentioned.

i try to eat healthily- the things that get in the way are
a) availability of junk food. I stopped at a garage and needed to pick up lunch, and had a choice of cheese/ mayo loaded sandwiches, crisps, chocolate etc. no fruit or salad options in sight.
b) time - stopping off at a garage for lunch as eating on the move- not enough time in work for a proper lunch
c) addiction to sugar. so much stuff has added sugar and salt in it's very hard not succumbing to a cravin

But on your point about cooking in schools; do you not think the internet, and tv cooking shows would somewhat compensate?

Most cookery programmes don't feature ordinary, every day meals though, even if they claim they do.

I'm so surprised at the amount of people that consider cheap ready meals a good option to fuel your body.

If that's all you've ever eaten how do you know differently?

I was lucky my mum always did homemade cakes and biscuits - my MIL never cooked at all so my DP grew up with shop bought cheap cake and he likes it even though I think it's rank compared to homemade.

Also there is such a preconceived idea of what constitutes a meal.

Tonight ds is having fish fingers, granary bread & butter, frozen peas and ketchup, standard 10 minute kiddie meal.

But I’m not particularly hungry so I’m having a trout fillet that I took out of the freezer before I went to work, folded in a granary bun with watercress, mayonnaise & lemon juice. It’s balanced, tastes fab and is enough but if I tried to give that to anyone else, they’d look at me like I was mad.

I agree with the fact that children are no longer taught to cook so basic skills are being lost. I did GCSE food tech (in the 90s) which was a complete waste of time. No cookery skills taught at all. Luckily my parents are both excellent in the kitchen and taught me to cook. At uni (in early 2000s) I would spend between £10-15 on a weekly supermarket shop for myself and ate really well. It’s not expensive if you know what to buy and how to use it.

Also I would say that lots of people have no idea what is in food products. Many things that are marketed as healthy actually have high sugar levels, eg, lots of people think ‘organic’ = ‘healthy’ even though you can buy organic ice cream, chocolate, sugar etc... Lots of people do not know the difference between butter and margerine/spread, and actually think ‘full fat’ cola has fat in it! As for vegan and gluten free products that people choose as a healthier option, they are usually worse as they have to have artificial thickeners/stabilisers etc in them.

So I would say lack of education (what to buy, what it’s made of, how to prep and cook it quickly and easily) is the biggest factor in not eating healthily.

So from what I can gather is that most of us are hooked on sugar laced foods, and too tired to do much about it? ;)

I'm an LP.

The monotony of being the one who cooks every single day starts to grind. By the time I've finished cooking whatever it is (usually healthy, made from scratch) I don't actually want it anymore.
I then feed DD, think 'I'll have mine later' - later comes and I reach for crisps, mini cheeses and chocolate.

I just don't enjoy food anymore. By the time I've done everything I need to do in the house I'm exhausted and need a quick pick up (usually sugar) so that I can keep going until bedtime.
Sitting down and eating is also a time I start thinking 'oh I could be doing the washing/hoovering/making beds/mopping/insert whatever chore' and I almost start to feel guilty.

A ready meal bunged in the microwave plus the time eating it is much less than all of the above. It's such a disjointed way of thinking but to me now (personally, not for DD) eating dinner=wasted time.

I think the biggest thing these days is portion sizes! As a society we have totally lost track of how much we should be eating - spoiler alert! It's much less than we think. The very fact there is an abundance of food available means we are eating more than ever. Even if we were to eat only freshly prepared, healthy, food we'd still have an obesity problem.
Plus the convenience foods that a lot of people eat due to lack of time and/or knowledge to cook healthy meals.
Activity levels are also much lower which contributes.

@MilkLady02 I remember the cooking lessons I had in year 9 and 10 - bread based snack, apple crumble and a sausage roll- that's we all we learned how to make, and they're still teaching kids today these very same dishes.

My thoughts have been written further up.

We are now at the second generation of children who have not been taught at school how to cook. The 90s were the beginning of this when home economics was replaced with design and technology. Instead of learning basic cookery skills like chopping and frying I was required to plan a menu for a children's party but not actually make anything! Plenty of lessons about nutrition but not enough practical experience of how to prepare and cook a meal. TV shows won't fill the void. (For example I am a fan of the new planets program and can now name some of Jupiter's moons and talk about their properties, I would not have the first idea if to find it in the night sky with or without a telescope!) 10 year old children can identify the past perfect tense but they can't make a sandwich! Which skill is going to be of most use in their adult life?

Convenience food is well convenient! It is just human nature to take the easy option, especially after a long day at work when everyone is a bit tired and grumpy. Stick the ready meal in the oven and sit down with a cuppa or chop and fry and stir?! The amount of time is the same but the effort isn't.

Meal planning takes planning time and it is easy to just not bother. There are many many demands on our time.

The problem with having much smaller portions is that you feel hungry all the time.

I think people have always been fat and greedy. There were a brief few decades when everyone curbed their appetites with cigarettes, but now nobody smokes and we're all back to being fat and greedy again.

Kipperthefrog to me a lot of the portion sizes comes down to people having lost the ability to listen to their body. I eat small amounts because I stopped dieting years ago and learnt to eat when really hungry and stop when satisfied.

Your parents grew up at a time when processed foods were not easily available, cheap and heavily advertised. Most people go for the easy option. Easier when busy to pick up a cheap ready made meal than cook from scratch. Easier to take the kids to McDonalds when on a day out than prepare a healthy picnic.

Add to that that processed food is designed to be very tasty. And that people are encouraged to eat it as a treat. So when people feel stressed or unhappy they are encouraged to treat themselves.

If the Government was serious about healthy eating it would ban processed food for sale, except in a few outlets that people had to travel a way to. They would ban advertising of processed food, and have food outlets selling healthy tasty food.

Instead basic things like the traffic light system in processed foods is still voluntary for food manufacturers rather than compulsory. And people are blamed for eating unhealthily.

@PoppadomPeach- I totally understand. I used to be a secondary school teacher and our lunches were in theory 30 mins long. When you factor the telling off the kids after class, the prepping for the next class, and the general behaviour management outside the classroom, I was only left with 15 minutes- A meal wasn't really an option- so I'd have a cup of tea or maybe a bar of chocolate.

I'd make sure my son had a 'proper' dinner at home and by the time I did everything else at home that needed doing- I'd go to bed completely forgetting to eat something.

Other days, I'd have a cube of cheese or a spoonful of Nutella- awful really, but when you're absolutely exhausted, you're exhausted.

Time is a a huge issue no doubt. I think so many of us are time poor.

@jennymanara Absolutely. I think the sad reality is that for some governments, and I include ours, lobbying of big businesses and the money they make for the government outweighs the benefits of eating healthy. It took them so long to take on soda manufacturers and even then their initiatives are ineffective.

Hi OP,

I have only read some of this thread... due to luck of time!
I agree with most posters about time and skill shortage. I also think that many people don't know how to resolve the subject of skill shortage and where to look for "cheap & healthy" foods.
An other big influence must be advertising. A lot of food advertising is based on quick tasty family meals. It's easy to fall into the trap.

For me personally (FT worker), I do cook most of my meals from scratch. I have a 20-30 min prep time rule AND I pre cook in the evening (after dinner, homework,...) for the next day. So my meals are basic, not always healthy but very tasty! I cook a lot of vegetarian food as frozen vegetables rule my kitchen (= cheap& easy for pasta, potatoes rice or pulses!)
Strangely enough, I did discover this type of food & cooking when I had very little money and a family to feed .... I also discovered the health benefits and can't imagine going back to processed convenience food.

I live alone and most days cannot be bothered to cook.

In terms of solutions to the time issue I have found batch cooking hugely time saving. Save extra portions of just about every meal I cook. Usually get another family main meal from it plus extra single lunch portions. Which saves money as well as time. Also it means no overeating. It actively encourages us to be careful with portion sizes because not overdoing the portions mean less work. Win, win😁. We end up with a stock of homemade ready meals, potato wedges, vegetable sides and soups.

@tinylittlebird Is this something your family did growing up and have passed on to you?

Is it also that the effects of eating less well are not seen straight away? The biscuit and crisps taste good now! The long term effects of eating too much sugar and salt are not evident until much later. Equally it takes a while for the effort of healthier eating to pay dividends and the lure of the quick sugar fix is very hard to resist!

Ive not read the whole thread but in addition to lack of time and the temptations of junk food, I’d add that because we’re all so busy and generally out of the house and on the go, our food choices are limited to rubbish unless we choose to carry healthy food with us. Just try getting a healthy salad or ‘paleo’ meal or snack when you’re in Wolverhampton or Middlesborough. Petrol stations are the obvious choice for food when travelling but all they offer is rubbish.

Usually, if Im not carrying a protein shake with me, my choices are limited to something covered in mayonaise, a chocolate bar or a sad, warm boiled egg.

Sandwich vans that serve business parks are the same - junk food only.

On a separate note, i think the quality of food generally has gone down in the race to ship exotic food stuffs half way across the world, i often end up with fruit and vegetables which go off the next day, unless Im willing to shop at Waitrose.

Im sure there’s a lot more choice in London and the south east but elsewhere it’s dire.

For me, it's because I can store non-perishable food for longer. If I buy fresh stuff, it's got to be eaten within a few days or it goes off and is wasted. It's more flexible to have frozen food, tinned food, dried foods.

Also there is generally much more prep with fresh foods than with long life things which are usually ready prepared. So if I am feeling tired or like I just need to get something immediate (or something I can chuck in the oven and leave) it seems like a smarter/easier choice.

It's also to do with options, isn't it? I'm sure if I lived in the Mediterranian in the 70s I'd eat healthily because I probably wouldn't have a Lidl or a Tescos, I probably wouldn't have a car, might not have had a freezer, I definitely wouldn't have online shopping and my only real option for getting food would be to walk to a market, or a shop, where I'd buy a small amount of fresh food so that I could carry it back home and it wouldn't go off and then I'd eat it over the next few days, or a decent amount of dried rice or whatever that would keep for a long time. Diet is simple because of limited availability and options.

I could do that now - but I don't have to and perhaps that is half the problem? I can just go into Lidl and buy a three pack of frozen pizzas.

We were just talking about when we were little and used to go to my grandmas for tea. We hardly ate 'healthily', we would have meat and potato pie, chocolate cake and then the sweetie box would come out!

Same at home we would have loads of chips etc. It was all home made though.

I just think it all comes down to lifestyle rather than diet. People are just less active and must just eat too much?