To think that the middle classes have an unhealthy obsession with fruit?

[FunnysInTheGarden]

DS1 won't eat so much as a grape. So many other parents (and schools) seem to be obsessed with getting their children to eat fruit. AFAIR we ate biscuits as children, as a rule, and not raisins.

BTW the acid in fruit rots a childers teeth faster than you can say 'coke'

The research shows you need 8-9 portions, but it was cut down to 5 to make it seem acheivable. Each portion is quite small though.

"You are what you eat" no but you are affected (good and bad) by what you eat. Fruit and veg are good for you, whats not to like.

Yeah, I know that what you eat will contribute to your general health, but it's not who you are! It takes no account of exercise or mental status, or personality.

A mountaineer, or long distance cyclist might eat in excess of 5000 calories a day- they are NOT what they eat. They are shaped by what they DO.

OMG!! tinned manderins....it brings back memories what a treat!

i always saw fruit as a treat, nice to eat.

i have a bowl and the kids can help themselves

as a tip i also used to let them pick one lot of fruit each from the supermarket - then they would barter

This five a day is a load of baloney, especially as it relates to fruit. The fructose in fruit is not healthy at all although there are good vitamins there but you can get those from veg. This video is long but really interesting about sugar and fructose in particular:

To the OP: can your DD take carrots instead of fruit? YANBU to object to this sort of misguided interference.

I remember as a kid always eating 'an apple a day' as my after school snack.
For pudding we'd have tinned fruit + icecream, half a grapefruit + brown sugar, sliced banana in milk or homemade apple or rhubarb crumble (yummm!).
In winter we had satsumas, + summer was time for treats like peaches + cherries.
But i don't remember having more than about 2 portions of fruit + 2 portions of veg a day.
In the 80s at school: mid AM snack was a small kitkat, + lunch was a ham or cheese sandwich, carrot sticks, bag of hula hoops + a small choc fairy cake. Also a flask of squash. My classmates ate similar but only 1 or 2 (I was very slim) were fat.
IMO fruit is a low cal but high sugar snack - 2 or 3 low GI + high fibre items daily such as apples + pears are best.

In OZ it's 5 veg and 2 fruits.

LaraJade you're right. Apples and pears are the best. Mine like apples, pears and strawberries diced up and mixed together.

At work we often find that diabetic patients who suddenly start to have high blood sugars will have started eating lots of grapes.

Jumpty, to quote that lecture (which is great by the way), 'are you kidding me'? That lecture points out that fruit is more than OK, because it packages a limited amount of fructose with a healthy amount of fibre (not news to anyone) plus the vitamins of course. The five-a-day campaign makes it clear that you shouldn't have more than one of those five as juice - Robert Lustig would argue against even that one I guess, but the campaign does take it into account to some extent. What the lecture goes on about at length is high-fructose corn syrup, a highly processed product which is added to highly processed food. To use that to demonise fruit is a poor idea, IMO. The five-a-day campaign is IMO a good thing. Are you saying we shouldn't teach children anything about food, or alternatively, that we should leave all teaching about food to commercial interests, so that we are taught that a burger, fries and milkshake (cf mcdonalds) /Shapers sandwich, low-fat crisps and diet coke (cf Boots) is a balanced meal? That's like leaving all teaching about sex to the peer group IMO.

I do think it's easier for a lot of children to feed them vegetables rather than fruit, and that we are used as adults to the high acidity of fruit, which to children is rightly overwhelming - we assume they will love it and they frequently don't.

Maktaital, we'll have to agree to disagree because I did not at all get the message that "fruit is more than OK" but that the downsides of fruit (the fructose) is mitigated by the fibre but that doesn't mean you can't get the same benefits without fruit. Plus the five a day campaign doesn't talk about fructose at all so you could take it to mean five fruits a day would be good, which would be too much fructose. We should definitely teach children about food but not the food pyramid or so-called Eatwell. I teach my kids that burgers, fries, milkshake, shapers sandwiches, low-fat crisps and diet coke are all terrible foods and meat and veg are good and healthy. Real food doesn't have labels and I talk to the kids about this every day. I get frustrated at having to tell my kids that what they are taught in school (food pyramid nonsense) is all wrong but that's not to say that I don't teach my kids about food health.

Not all fruit is equal though.

Pears and berries are much better than grapes and oranges.

My DCs eat loads but dont get sore tummies because they eat lots of wholemeal bread too.

'Fruit is OK' was the precise quote from the lecture, so I guess I overstated it, I'm good at that

The five a day campaign makes it pretty clear that a range of stuff is good. I think the campaigners take the view, which I share, that if you are not eating any fruit and veg, that five fruit portions is a big step forward from that. With regard to the original post, I actually think that British culture is ridiculously suspicious of fruit - I was told when breastfeeding by more than one source that too many grapes would make my milk acid. I think then and now that that is nonsense, although I recognise the high-GI impact of grapes and some other fruit.

I would agree that the way food messages are given at school is dreadful - a lot of 'this is bad' 'that is good' which I hate. Don't mind the food pyramid though.

Not sure it's a middle class obsession though. I'm from a working class background i.e. single SAHM, council estate and we always had a fruit bowl.

I don't really object to children being made to haved a bit of fruit at breaktime it's not like they're force feeding them fruit all day.

have not haved

I used to have a big, sugary, jam doughnut for my snack at High School (early 80s). - they were delicious... Still, I also had a cheese roll and chips with salad cream for lunch every day for about three days.

My DD(3) will eat fruit but not keen on vegetables (except peas or potatoes). I was quite pleased until I remembered about the sugar. For some reason, I've always assumed that bananas are good. Are they as bad as the rest?

I just think it the culture in the 70s has been for fruit as snacks and thigns then I, and many other people I know including my Dh, may not have the weight problems and the food issues they have today.

My biggest fear for my daughters is they will end up with our weight problems and have their lives curtailed, socially, mentally and health wise as I have had,.

We grew up eating fruit - fresh, stewed, preserved, whatever - thanks to living in a fruit (and wine) growing region of NZ. More orchards than you can shake a stick at. The only biscuits and cakes were homemade.

I have 2 fillings (both acquired since I left home) and am slim and healthy. My brother has no fillings and is slim as anything.

My DS loves fruit and has plenty of it throughout the day - again, fresh and stewed.

People will argue black is white. If you think fruit is a bad choice, and would prefer your DCs to snack on biscuits, what's stopping you? I will continue to give mine fruit. I will also continue to brush their teeth - reputedly a good way of not allowing teeth to be harmed by all manner of things, including fructose.

Fruit is not bad, it is very healthy. However of your 5 or 6 or whatever a day intake I believe veg should outnumber fruit as it has more of the stuff your body needs and does not have the high sugar content.

Sadly my DCs will barely touch veg so I let them eat a fair bit of fruit but not a ridiculous amount.

Philip Schofield reckons kids don'tneed 5 a day as a rule. Their little bodies only absorb so much of the nutrients anyway. That'snot to say 5 a day is bad for the littlies but no point fretting that little Annabella hasn't had all of her 5 portions of exotic fruit.

Kids have small stomachs but huge energy requirements, so they really need denser, more calorie-packed food than adults in general. That's why they have a sweet tooth; sugary stuff (including fruit) tends to be more calorific than veg or greens so they naturally gravitate towards it. generalisation of course, not all kids are the same!

Of course this all evolved back in the days before kids were sitting at a desk all day, playing video games, being driven to and from school, and generally getting next to no exercise outdoors. A few thousand years ago would have seen kids eating lots of calorie-dense fruit (and fatty stuff) otherwise they wouldn't have survived. Something like grapes or dried apricots would have been perfect for them.

Nowadays I would say there's more risk of kids being overweight than underfed but that's in big part thanks to constant snacking, convenience foods and unlimited advertising to kids telling them all the great stuff they're missing if they don't eat x, y or z.

If I had to pick between letting my kid have a chocolate bar a day or an apple a day I know what I'd choose. But I wouldn't force them to eat tons of fruit if I knew they were eating other good stuff instead. I would however limit the processed food and nutritionally bereft sweets. And I'm never understood why in this country biscuits are considered one of the basic food groups. Maybe I'm too middle-class.

I ate loads of fruit as a child (cheaper than biscuits)

As does DD. So what?

YANBU. I think orange juice is a con. I'm happy when my children eat one piece of fruit a day, and one portion of vegetables, I really don't believe they need five a day, especially when they are very small.

I'm obviously mc then because we were only ever offered fruit as children, not biscuits (except birthday tea or christmas).

1 dc eats fruit, 1 doesn't.