Children of UPF parents

[Horriblebirth]

Just wondering if anyone else grew up being fed absolute shit by their parents and what their relationship with food or their diet is like now?

Growing up I was given ready meals, frozen meals, sugary snacks, probably over 90% of my diet was UPF. Pasta using a jar of sauce was considered a cooked meal.

I used to get embarrassed when I'd go to a friend's house and their parents cooked a lovely meal and I didn't like any of it. I wasn't being rude, I was just so used to beige crap.

It's been so hard to try and get myself to eat real food as an adult. I'm still terrified of trying new things and have a really limited diet. I'm trying my best to ensure my kids never turn out like me because it's depressing and embarrassing.

I worked at Kwik Save briefly, we had to remember all the prices off by heart, so I doubt anyone was ever charged right. It was filthy too and the manager forever had his hand down his pants. I lasted about a month.

When criticising parents for not knowing/doing better, don’t forget that Jamie Oliver’s Feed Me Better campaign (against Turkey twizzlers and the like in school dinners) was in 2005

To be fair McDonald's isn't actually that bad and probably better than your average takeaway. The UK ingredients are vastly different to the US ones.
Not that I'm defending McDs or anything, but this always bugs me.

This is what a lot of people don’t seem to realise. Our parents didn’t know that UPFs were unhealthy. I remember the days when we were told that pasta was healthy, even in a cheese sauce. Margarine was considered healthier than butter. It’s taken decades for the effects of UPFs to become apparent. They weren’t psychic.

I remember speaking to my GP as a teenager because I was worried that I was overweight (I was a size 10). He told me to eat only one potato and one piece of bread a day for a few weeks, and that would “sort me out”. It was a different world!

Yy. When I was breastfeeding my DCs, my nan got quite wistful because she had been told formula was better when she became a mum.

Completely agree. A lot of parents even today don’t realise because it’s dismissed as being alarmist, just look at MN threads on the topic. But yes that reminds me, growing up mum always went for the sugar and fat free where possible, marg etc, but now we know that’s likely much worse. But she didn’t know that.

It's like we're running out of things to blame our parents for. Is this what we're left with?

They were the generation who were encouraged to formula feed, it was seen as more modern and healthier. Box cereal was a healthy breakfast (especially Special K), a Milky Way was for in between meal times, Cadburys contained a glass and a half of full cream milk, heavily processed marg was better than butter, drinking PLJ every morning helped you burn calories, fat was the devil. Everyone I knew smoked - over the baby, in the car with the kids, wherever.
A lot of things were seen as different and new, a more modern way of doing things. Women released from drudgery.
It was such a different time.

My mum used to never salt cooking water (because she had internalised “too much salt is bad for you”) but she would happily sprinkle a pack of seasoning mix into heated up leftover roast and gravy, or do a “just add milk” packet sauce. Both would have had salt as a much higher percentage than a bit of residue on pasta or potatoes from the pan water!

I do agree that we are far more aware of how to eat well these days than we were 20 years ago. However, a McDonald's was a treat for my school friends and we would have thought nothing of having it 2-3 times in one week. You can't absolve parents of all responsibility for things like that.

Yeah true. I just remember watching a program about how much more crap they put in the chips these days. It may well have been the US.

It used to be beef tallow and a bit of veg oil and a bit of salt. Now there are many more ingredients including lots of additives/ sugar and beef flavouring! (this is defo the US).

I think most people are talking about the 70s and 80s which were 40+yrs ago. 20yrs ago we did know takeaway wasn't ideal.
We didn't live near a McDs, so I was an adult before I had one (Although our cash n carry burgers were probably worse!). There was much excitement at a Wimpy opening near us.

The chips are potato, rapeseed oil, (was sunflower until Ukraine), salt and dextrose at certain types of the year.

Yeah 20 years ago was only 2005!

I loved a Wimpy..!

Seems to be the case for most of us 80s or 90s kids, unless you're from a rich family, or have a mum (usually wasn't a dad) who didn't work. I can only think of a very few exceptions from all my school mates, in the different places I lived, and as I've got older, when I talk to friends, workmates, again that seems to be the norm.
Honestly didn't think it was a big deal until fairly recently. I try to reduce them, but like many, cost and time is an issue.

That’s good to know. Must be the US ones that are markedly different to the 70s/80s.

I don’t think that’s a generational thing, that’s a parental thing. McDonald’s and takeaways were a very rare treat for us, for health reasons as much as money. UPF is a different thing, which is what you’ve mentioned in your title. My mum thought she was being healthy, but now we know that the UPFs are likely more harmful than the sugar and fat she was trying to avoid (not blaming her for that, of course).

We didn't have loads of upf because they were expensive.
However, I think we had a mix. Dm was raised in the 50s and 60s, so knew how to cook cheap and boring food.
Our 80s and 90s week could look like this:

Bf- cereal. Especially if it had a toy in.
Dinner- white bread and sandwich paste, penguin, crisps. Juice in a flask.
Tea: burger (hockey puck) or corned beef,real chips in the chip pan, spaghetti from a tin.
Or
Boiled spud, carrot, peas, pork chop or chicken
Or
Spag bol
Or
Microwave pizza.
Always followed by biscuits/ cake.

I probably follow a similar pattern of good and shit. Never ill and never been overweight. Dc the same. Parents the same!

Growing up in the 80s/90s, my mother was slightly crunchy granola for her time, and what we would now call UPFs were strictly verboten in our house (she was also very anti-antibiotics, unusually for the day, but I thank her for that now).

I used to get very excited about going to a friend's house where we would have Pot Noodles for tea, and I didn't have Smash until I went to university in 1997 (what a let-down: it was shit).

However, she was a DREADFUL cook - lots of overcooked vegetables and mince - so my sister and I learned to cook out of self-defence.

In saying that, I've always been a healthy weight and still am at 46, I eat anything and everything (apart from okra, which is evil), I'm an excellent cook, and I have a good relationship with food, so she didn't do too badly, in the grand scheme of things.

Thats my point, people are giving examples of what they're saying is UPFs in the 70s but foods then were not like they are now, bread, yoghurts (didnt eat many yoghurts in the 70s to be honest), sugary cereals, well we had all bran and bran flakes, porridge, ready brek which has never been a UPF, cornflakes, plain rice crispies as my mum refused to buy cocoa pops!

Your own children will think you’re just as useless as you think your own parents were.

We had a mix. Lots of home cooked stews, fruit from the garden and some butterscotch angel delight 🤤

If it's any consolation, I grew up on good home cooked food. I didn't eat a crispy pancake (v popular in my childhood) until I was 21. My sister and I thought 'shop bought' cake was a treat, the more artificially coloured the better.

Yet I am a fussy eater and love beige food. The person who cooked this wonderful food is now very elderly and now she is just cooking for herself is also not adverse the few upfs.

And why is that exactly? I can guarantee you you're wrong.

I grew up in the early 80s and we lived on UPF food but it’s had no long term effect on me, I left home to go to uni and when I did I wasn’t particularly bothered about trying new foods but turned vegetarian in my early 20s and have been really into cooking ever since. My parents weren’t hugely educated and we were poor I suppose (although I never felt we were at the time)but they did their best and in their minds put food on the table and we were never hungry, which I think they’d both been when they were young.

We weren’t allowed squash or fizzy drinks and sugar was very limited so I suppose that was their way of keeping us healthy.