Honestly, how much processed food does your young child eat?

[FoodShame]

Yes, I watched the BBC documentary about ultra processed foods. I've felt guilty about my 3 year old's diet for some time, but it was the wake-up call I needed. I actually feel quite anxious about the amount of processed food she's eaten over the last couple of years. We started off so well, and she had a great diet until she was about 18 months old. Then as fussiness increased and our lives got busier, I seem to have got worse at feeding her a healthy diet. These days she lives off peperamis, cheese strings, frubes and cereal. I do cook at least one decent meal each day with plenty of veg, but she usually leaves it and just asks for toast instead (the only alternative she's offered). She won't eat any fresh fruit anymore, which she used to love.

I'm not really asking for advice, more reassurance I suppose? I plan to make some positive changes but feel so bad about what's already been done.

like many others we've recently watched / listened to various things on UPF and have made some changes as a result.

Breakfast is usually Flahavans ready oats with cocoa and oat and/or cow milk.

Lunch is usually salad based. e.g. falafel (Ramona's brand seems ok ingredients wise), typical salad veg plus seeds, nuts, pears, pomegranate, avocado, cheese, hummus. Or will do bread based, eg cheese on toast. Bread I make myself now following the recipe on the back of the Doves organic wholewheat flour bag. I use wholewheat, white and spelt flour plus some ground flaxseed.

Tea is usually stir fry (no shop sauce), curry, home made bean burgers, roast veggies (we are vegetarian), homemade veggie meatballs.

Things we rely on are:

• Home made bread rolls, sliced in half then frozen. Make 1 batch of 10 per week.
• Home made bean burgers - loveandlemon recipe using black beans. These freeze really well, then air fried to cook. Same for veggie meatballs, easy to freeze and airfry.
• Home made tomato sauce frozen in ice cube portions. Use these for pasta or pizza topping.
• Curry batch cooked and frozen in individual portions in ikea glass food dishes so they can be microwaved with no plastic leaching.
• our air fryer and instant pot pressure cooker - these both make life so much easier. We cook beans from scratch and the pressure cooker is fab for this.

The things I don't know what to swap out for are the Ella's kitchen melty puff things. I know they are nutritionally void but they are so handy!

Snacks are typically fruit - raspberries, satsumas, blueberries, grapes, strawberries, pear, banana, melon. Or dates, sugar free trail mix (from buy whole foods online), lidls raw fruit and nut bars, aforementioned melty puffs, peanut butter sandwich.

for those wondering on non dairy milk, we have until recently brought up our eldest as generally non dairy, but have introduced more to move away from UPF dairy free substitutions as he is not intolerant or allergic as far as we know. The advice is always to avoid the organic non dairy milks as they are not fortified. Oatly blue / full fat, or Oatly barista tend to be the recommended ones. Oatly also don't use glyphosate on their oats as far as I can find out anyway. so for me that was the best compromise, their ingredients list seemed better than most others.

Not that much I don't think.

Generally porridge (just plain oats and milk) or weetabix (is that ultra processed?) for breakfast.

Bread for lunch which is ultra processed.

Dinner is cooked from scratch pretty much every day. It does sometimes include ultra processed foods but actually not that often. DH and I both have different allergies so automatically a lot of processed foods are ruled out so we have no choice but to make our own. But we will sometimes have things like sausages, or baked beans which are processed. The last few nights of meals has been fish pie, lasagne, curry, and a creamy chicken mushroom pasta thing. None of these had ultra processed foods in them.

Plain natural yghurt or fruit for dessert. Or something home baked.