What is really stopping us from feeding our children healthy food?

[LilMissRe]

I saw an article today about obesity levels in little children and how it is increasing to dangerous levels. I'm intrigued as this is for a project I'm doing to graduate from university- hopefully this year!

The concern here is that, well, little ones (0-5 yrs) have the least say in what they can eat and drink, and as many don't start school officially till 4-5- schools can't really intervene and so a lot of experts place the blame entirely on us parents- especially mothers.

In my opinion I think time and marketing of unhealthy food is a big player here and is to blame, but I can't just use my opinion and would be very grateful for your opinions and experiences on this.

What is really stopping us from feeding our children healthy food?

Thank you!

OP's claim that marketing was to blame annoys the Fig out of me. I have agency. I made my own choices, thanks.

We all live in our food environment.

May I recommend a couple of books by Bee Wilson? First Bite and The way we eat now.

Lots of good points. In my case, I can cook and my husband and I eat a pretty healthy diet full of veg and fruit but since my son turned 1 (he's now 2), he's just not that interested in the healthy stuff! I try to feed him what we eat but we don't always eat together and he'll often just have plain pasta, beans or fish fingers. I know he'll eat them and I don't have time to keep trying stuff... I feel bad if I make him something and he won't eat it

Cost- we spend £30pwk on fruit and veg, we could do that if we were living in poverty

Convenience- small local shops sell crisps and sweets but not fruit/ healthy snacks

Menus- kids menus suck!

Marketing- unhealthy food has lots of advertising and bright colours/ characters to attract kids

Easy- Drive thrus only sell unhealthy food

Resources- it takes a decent kitchen and a couple of hundreds of pounds of equipment to make a good meal from scratch.

Knowledge cooking skills aren’t innate, they need to be taught and learned

Misinformation in the press about what is healthy

Societal culture that kids eat different food from parents

Long working hours

Small houses that don’t have space for a dining table

School dinners

I think that part of the reason restaurants don't do half sized child portions is that alot of the food is prepackaged and heated up in the microwave.

I think snacking is a lot to blame, I still have friends who continually feed their children. I have no issues with puddings but when you add puddings to snacks it all becomes too much. I've got friends who are overweight and desperately trying to lose it who continually turn up at the school gate with biscuits for their children. Mine haven't snacked in years and can manage a few hours without crap being fed to them.

We also need to teach children to know when they feel full. Mine stop eating when they've had enough.

The other thing is crappy drinks. Thankfully mine (and me and dh) drink water, even low calorie drinks trick the body into thinking it's had sugar.

poster SudowoodoVoodoo mentioned desert bars. In our town and othe towns nearby desert bars have really taken off in popularity. The amount of incredibly cream, biscuits, cream, syrup, chocolate and waffles on in these deserts is jaw dropping. Theplaces in my town are always packed. Same with the milk bars that sell the freak shakes. I swear there must be two days worth of adult calories in those things!

The young people are drawn to these places!

quite frankly, H, who is constantly grazing on rubbish and feels the need to offer son junk at every opportunity.

@Graphista

I said 'processed' carbs or are you claiming they are good for you?

Actually while there are essential proteins and fats there are NO essential carbohydrate nutrients (name one). Some cultures survived completely without them before the westernised diet came to be.

I'm not saying that there aren't other factors that have an effect but this is a biggie and my main point is we are currently in a massive experiment by removing fat from our diet and it has potentially really fucked us up. This is something that governments are slowly now realising and the language is slowly changing to reduce sugar. Low carb is used to treat and prevent T2 diabetes (a condition created by bad diet in most cases)

Prior to the 70s low carb had been an accepted healthy way to live/lose weight for centuries. People call low carb a fad, I'm afraid low fat has been around for a far shorter time. The 'everything in moderation approach' is fine when the eating of junk wasn't normalised to the extent that it is.

Forgive me but anything that gives me withdrawal symptoms when i give it up is not good for me. 'keto flu' is sugar withdrawal.

Apologies everyone, i am fully aware that i sound like a conspiracy nut case when i go into these rants but i have been looking into this, reading studies extensively and personally low carbing on and off for many years.

It was a huge revelation when the diet worked and so i dug and dug to find out why.

I haven't read the whole thread but I would say it a mixture of things.

I think a lot has to do with education, people just don't know what rubbish is in the foods aimed at their babies, "if it's in the baby isle it's good for them" type attitude and can't believe how wrong they are.

A lot of People are to busy to cook from scratch, so go for processed foods.

I don't really know why everyone s talking about kids menus, do people eat out that regularly? I'll be honest it's all been covered above, when my kids were babies they ate every vegetable under the sun, but now we have different battles with all of them over different battles, one hates breakfast, another fruit, another is picky over dinner. It's so easy for people to say every child should do x or y but when you've a kid roaring crying that they won't eat as they sit under the table or who just says 'no, you can't make me' it's really really hard and I understand people not having the time or patience because they're wrecked and stressed and have somewhere to be. Also I think some people need to be told just because it says it's healthy does not mean it is. It's not common sense for everyone. A regular meet up/follow up after people have kids can help people. Oh and to the 'it's easy to cook nowadays' people, my God I dread dinner times. It does not come naturally to all of us!!!! And yes, Id agree with people who say tv and boredom and weather are huge factors

Interestingly there is consensus that we are eating fewer calories as a fat nation now then we were as a slim nation....

Low carb diets can fuck right off tbh

Eat less move more, yes it really is that simple.

I can’t cook at all but still manage to rustle up something like pasta with a veg sauce or beans on toast which is relatively healthy.

The problem is outside the house

nursery - a desert with every lunch. Often cake or ice cream. Birthdays = bringing home more cake.

And yes @stayathomer we eat out a lot. Usually a couple of times a week. And kids menus are shit and always have chips and always have ice cream as a desert.

Other parents - constantly giving snacks to my child. My daughter is not over weight at all but I do worry as she’s a ‘good eater’ so doesn’t need snacks every ten minutes.....

Interestingly there is consensus that we are eating fewer calories as a fat nation now then we were as a slim nation

I find that hard to believe due to the increase in snacking, bigger portion sizes, more 'drink' calories.

Even going back to my childhood in the 1970/1980s portion sizes were smaller, eating out was a rare treat, the likes of Costa etc didn't exist. People weren't drinking energy drinks and fizzy pop as a matter of routine. We only had it at Christmas and on holiday.

But we did move a lot more then.

There are soooo many more places to get food now compared to when I was a child. So many "affordable" restaurants, chains, sandwich shops, takeaways, delis... food is everywhere and that food is rarely healthy. So adults eat it, think it's nice and pass that to kids.

Plus, 4 mars bars are often offer more cheaply than 4 apples.

Snacking is definitely not new though. We always had supper before bed.

I guess time poor as well as finances don't help. I don't think anyone wants to damage their children.

I'm not really sure. I think we also are more keen on happy then healthy? And don't like saying no.

I’m surprised how few people have mentioned the vast amount of sugar many kids are eating habitually. The thing that always strikes me the most among my kids’ school friends is both the frequency and amount of sugar they are given and/or allowed access to. At the school gate, snacks are usually an open packet of biscuits, a big muffin, a full-sized pain au chocolate, etc.

After one activity most kids are allowed to buy a large pack of Haribo at the tuck shop and eat it there, before tea. After the park on school days there’s always ice lollies and slushees. Free access to the biscuit tin at home after school. Add all that to the jelly and cake bar in the lunch box, nutella for breakfast, pudding after dinner, which is part of their daily diet anyway and that adds up to a HUGE amount of sugar each week. Huge.

And that’s excluding weekend visits to McDonalds, massive ‘treat’ desserts at Creams st the shopping centre, the tonne of sweet stuff dished out at every party.

It seems to be normalised. My kids are outliers as they aren’t allowed a lot of this stuff (we do allow moderate treats, but promote healthy eating). Ideas about healthy diets for kids have become completely distorted.

My DH and SDs diet pretty much consists of chips with either sausage, chicken nuggets, a pork pie or fish fingers (or something equally beige). Some times they go all out and add either peas, beans or spaghetti hoops. He considers this a perfectly adequate and balanced diet. His mother brought him and his siblings up on a pretty similar diet. As neither him nor his siblings have come to any harm he sees no need to change so I think some of it could be due to a similar attitude of it never did me any harm.

I also believe lazy parenting is a big factor. Generally beige, bland stodge is pretty inoffensive as far as taste in concerned so most kids will like it immediately and prefer it over something like spinach. I notice with my DD who we are weaning, new textures or tastes can take her by surprise a little but after 5 or 6 mouthfuls she's ok with it. DH sees her pull a face after the first mouthful and declares she doesn't like it and can't be bothered to put the effort in to enticing her to try it again. I think this is likely the case with older kids, it's just easier to give them some thing you know they will like.

It's convenient. I don't think we can deny tipping a packet of oven chips and a few turkey dinosaurs on to a tray and sticking them in the oven for 20 minutes is far easier than preparing a chicken casserole from scratch.

I also think if you are perhaps a single parent or even an adult living alone it's often quite hard to cook in very small portions. You can't make a homemade spagbol for one for example. When I lived alone I didn't have a freezer because I couldn't afford one so there was no point making some stuff because so much would go to waste because I couldn't freeze it and that also made it a very expensive way of cooking.

I find it very sad when I see kids and adults alike refusing to try new food. I love food and trying or making new things, being able to visit a foreign country and try their cuisine and not be stuck looking for an English bar selling burger and chips.

@Graphista yes, I largely cook from scratch at school - although, admittedly, the Chicken Korma is made with a paste. Otherwise, it's all fresh ingredients - fruit, veg and meat all locally (ish) sourced.
I have no issue at all with the nutritional value of the main courses - just the huge reluctance on the part of parents to shed the daily sugar-fest puddings. Like I said, I don't understand it at all.

*At the school gate, snacks are usually an open packet of biscuits, a big muffin, a full-sized pain au chocolate, etc.After one activity most kids are allowed to buy a large pack of Haribo at the tuck shop and eat it there, before tea. After the park on school days there’s always ice lollies and slushees. Free access to the biscuit tin at home after school. Add all that to the jelly and cake bar in the lunch box, nutella for breakfast, pudding after dinner, which is part of their daily diet anyway and that adds up to a HUGE amount of sugar each week. Huge.

And that’s excluding weekend visits to McDonalds, massive ‘treat’ desserts at Creams st the shopping centre, the tonne of sweet stuff dished out at every party.*
Are you seeing this every day with every single child? Because I regularly joke about always meeting people in Tesco when there's rubbish in my trolley, that they must think its all we eat, could it not be the same here? I can't believe any child would be allowed a bag of Haribo after school and chocolate spread for breakfast and a pain o chocolate etc daily

Snacking and cheap convenience foods def don't help!

I've been brought up that you have dinner and the occasional pudding and that's it until the morning but I don't think that's the case for a lot of families.

I also think people believe they and their kids need a lot more food than they actually do!

We're not perfect, we enjoy treats, love a macdonalds occasionally and definitely don't eat enough fruit and veg but we're (teenage dd and me) both a healthy weight. I think that's because overall we don't eat masses of food everyday.

People have a warped sense of "good eater" my eldest is a rake. Not overly picky but stops eating when full. But Granny classes him as picky.
His cousin is a "good eater" doesnt know when to stop is actually over weigh.

Oh and for what it's worth the good eater cousin has the skinny parents !

Yes we are eating less calories than people did in the past, but we are doing a lot less exercise. So we are eating on average more than we need.

I honestly think it’s a lack of cooking and budgeting skills. I work with families who would mostly be classed as living in poverty and most have not been taught these skills and due to many complex reasons are unable to learn them.
Finding Free healthy eating and cooking classes would help.

I'm not a snacker and never think to pack snacks for DC. But when you meet up with other mum's and they pull out loads of snacks and I've forgot again .