To believe we've forgotten how to eat healthily

[Yoruba]

I'm so completely fed up of the school serving up so much rubbish, with seemingly no understanding that its unhealthy. It is really really hard to find good evidenced advice about healthy eating for children. There seem to be contradictory reports coming out all the time, and I say that as someone who is really interested in this subject so it must be harder if you don't.

The school meals are utter rubbish. They have a sugary rubbishy pudding every day, sweets at every possible occasion and now they have seen fit to start selling ice creams after school to raise money.
Im not even THAT strict I don't think, I'm happy for her to have these foods but evidence shows that eating them regularly alters your taste buds and makes you crave them more. I think they should be occasional foods we eat as PART of a healthy diet, not every day.

But at the moment I'm feeling like a lone voice and I hate dd feeling like she's missing out in not having what her friends are. I don't want these things to be "forbidden" objects of desire.

It just seems as though there is very little knowledge now of what is actually healthy for children.

Been away, but would like to respond to Worra and CorusKate - by struggling with my weight I mean I find it hard not to slip into the overweight category. I'm a healthy weight (top end for my height but still within). When I eat the canteen sandwiches for a week there is a definite difference in the way my jeans fit and my weight will go up by between 1 and 5lbs depending on what I've eaten the rest of the week. I do understand that the canteen food alone is not going to make me obese but it certainly doesn't allow me to eat a healthy balance of other food in the week. If I've had those sandwiches then I know I need to knock other treats on the head. It concerns me that as an adult then I know to do this but teenagers don't know, in their minds' if they've 'only' had a sandwich then they've no reason to think that they've overdone it with the calories. An alternative is to encourage teenagers to count calories but that is very dangerous.

Hope that clears it up a bit, I really think that the sandwiches are calorific, particularly the ones which contain mayonnaise. On any given day the ones without mayo are always plain cheese on white bread and there are only a few of them.

GarlicJune it makes me cringe when I see the plates of chips and gravy being served up! it's the only day where the lunch queue is heaving too. I have no idea how they get away with it but I do know that it's the company which owns the building and not my school. My school is sort if at their mercy with rent and with food. If we want to hold any event which sells food to students then we have to seek their permission first.

I'm not sure academies have more freedom over the meals they serve, I'd be interested to find out though.

I think people have lost the plot! A healthy diet for a child is not the diet that an adult goes on to lose weight. Moderation in all things.
Eat less, exercise more and you do not need constant snacks-the body is supposed to feel hungry by a meal time!
Keep off processed food most of the time. Drink plenty of water.

Yes, it's not food that has changed, it's calorie demands due to laziness, indeed almost universally foods and diets have improved (probably other than the much lower amount of offal in the food chain).

But the high carbohydrate, low other calorie foods whilst perfectly good food, only work as long as your overall calorie demands are such that you can use all those carbs.

As you get more active your energy needs (that can be met from fat or carbs) increase more than your protein and essential fats needs. So cereals, potatoes etc. which are high in carbs and low in protein are fine, because the overall demands are still being met.

If you're not burning enough of those calories though, your body will remain hungry ('cos it knows it needs the essentials) and you'll overeat if you focus on the primary carb sources.

If your kids aren't active enough to have a few sweets and afters or a sandwich at school though, you have more to worry about their health than that, and the solution is getting more activity into them. Activity is much more important than diet.

If I buy brown or wholegrain bread from the shops, then why is home-made bread healthier ? Is it because it doesn't have any preservatives?

I think a lot of the problem is lack of education and harping on about 'must be healthy' all the time which makes bad food more appealing.
Just cook and eat a decent balanced diet and it's healthy. Don't label it good or bad. The odd ice cream after school is ok, it's not 'bad'.
Every second day there's something about being healthy. Not cooking or actually educating about how to cook stuff.

I think the over emphasis on healthy eating is causing a lot of problems for this generation

the 'drink plenty of water' thing is bollocks too

When did the idea that school meals were 'a light lunch' come in? Up until at least 1995 in my area, school dinners were DINNERS - the main meal of the day for most children. Roasts, stews, cheese flan. And sponge pudding and custard or a milk pudding. Tea at home would be something on toast.

I don't do school lunches, mine get a packed lunch so I know what theyre eating and how much. I don't know where the school lunch stuff comes from so I don't want mine eating it.

why is home-made bread healthier ? Is it because it doesn't have any preservatives? - Not really. I put Vitamin C in mine as a preservative & yeast booster. It's to do with the way bread rises. In factories, they pump gas through the dough to make it fluffier and faster. When it's baked the old-fashioned way, the interaction of the yeasts with the wheat proteins makes more of the nutrients available to your metabolism. They tend to put extra sugars in factory bread, too, though that's not the end of the world.

Activity is much more important than diet EH? Are you talking about health or obesity Fred ? How come that champion runner \jogger dropped dead then? Sorry it just NOT the case.

I'm now regretting not picking up a punnet of cherries in M&S, this morning.

I really fancy some cherries dipped in dark chocolate :o

Some good news ouryve dark chocolate is GOOD for you my dentist said recently that in tests it has performed in a similar way to fluoride in protecting teeth !!!

When did the idea that school meals were 'a light lunch' come in? Up until at least 1995 in my area, school dinners were DINNERS - the main meal of the day for most children. Roasts, stews, cheese flan. And sponge pudding and custard or a milk pudding. Tea at home would be something on toast.

I have visited many schools in my borough to look at their lunches (through being a school governor).

The roast dinner for example will be 2 paper thin slices of meat, 3 roast potatoes (about the size of a very large strawberry), 1 small yorkshire pud and a spoon of veg. Desserts would typically be a tiny pot of ice cream or a slice of water melon.

That ^^ is served to all children aged between 4yrs and 11yrs old, despite the fact some of the 11yr olds are taller than the staff.

But it's the way it should be, because they'll then go out an run around the playground or do a PE lesson.

School 'DINNERS' should not imo be a heavy or main meal of the day, and in this borough they certainly aren't.

ppeat Absolutely it's the truth, activity is much more important than diet in terms of health. And obesity is of course mostly a symptom of lack of activity.

Even ignoring the fact that activity reduces obesity (so most people getting sufficient activity won't be obese), lack of activity is a bigger risk factor:

www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf

I don't think bread is evil but it also isn't a light snack as many think. There is this weird English obsession with only being able to 'manage' one cooked meal a day. mil (overweight) huffs and puffs about how she can only possibly manage a sandwich for tea if she's had a meal at lunch and I just don't get it.

Me neither. Your MIL is one of many who say 'I'm not very hungry, I'll just have a sandwich' and they probably think they are 'saving' calories.

But, if you consider the number of calories in a sandwich that has cheese and mayonnaise in it, for example, it could easily be 500, 600 or more.

Many people will have a sandwich with either crisps, chocolate bar or cake for lunch and consider it a light meal, even though it could be about 800 calories and not a vegetable in sight. I don't think that sort of meal is very filling, healthy or satisfying.

And then the other problem is that almost all the ready to eat food is just processed junk (Sandwiches, McDonalds, Greggs etc).

I much prefer hot food and to eat larger meals earlier in the day. Given the choice, I would almost never eat sandwiches. I don't get the British obsession that eating more than one hot meal a day is somehow both a massive extravagence and requires an inordinate amount of preparation time.

But then there is the other thread on here where people claim taking two minutes to make an omelette for breakfast is something that cannot be realistically achieved by normal working people.

The lack of lightness of bread and sandwiches is most clearly illustrated by the food that is 'allowed' on the slimming world diet.

Bread is severly restricted. Realistically you can have two small slices of wholemeal bread per day (not the 'normal' sized loaf, but the very small ones). If you want white bread, or more bread than this, you basically have to give up your treats allowance. Ie, instead of a small glass of wine or some chocolate, you could have a smallish amount of white bread instead.

But you are allowed to eat unlimited amounts of lean meat, vegetables, pulses, fruit, eggs and salads. Add in a small amount of dairy and think of the variety of cooked and filling meals you could make - roast dinners, chillis, curries, stews, soups etc etc.

As long as there is very little fat, sugar or bread, you can make an endless variety of healthy meals that will be much more satisfying and keep weight down much easier than the miserable tiny sandwich that you could otherwise have.

Interesting thanks fred

fred - "Five leading risk factors identified in this report (childhood underweight, unsafe sex, alcohol use, unsafe water and sanitation, and high blood pressure) are responsible for one quarter of all deaths in the world. Reducing exposure to these risk factors would increase global life expectancy by nearly 5 years."

Only one of those factors is linked to low activity levels. One is linked to inadequate diet.

4.1 million children died of micronutrient deficiency (malnutrition.)

It is ridiculous to say that insufficient activity's more important than diet. Will marathon training make a starving woman healthy? Will it improve her breast milk?

Of course activity is important for health. Just not more important than food.

I don't get the obsession on mumsnet about eating eggs for breakfast. Personally I can't think of anything more nauseating.
And drinking fullfat milk. It tastes rank to me.I would never have milk at all if semi skimmed milk didn't exist.

I'm not sure eating eggs is a MN 'obsession'!

I ate eggs for breakfast long before MN existed. I eat them because I really enjoy them. They have to be good quality organic, or free range eggs though... I can tell the difference.

my dc don't have school dinners but this week DS did as it was a BBQ/treat. They had a small hot dog (proper sausage), chips and a 1cm slice of cucumber and 2 wedges of tomato - to me that is NOT a portion of fruit/veg for a child, yet it looks like it when its written on the menus as "salad" . This was followed by ice cream. NO problem with this as a one off, but would have liked a more generous salad.

DS came home and had an apple for snack, shepherds pie and 2 veg, followed by melon and strawberries. Others I know will have gone home and had another meal of sausage/chips/nuggets/waffles/biscuits etc, because their parents think they need 2 proper dinners a day. Some parents still bring a bag of sweets or crisps up for an after school snack every day and yet still feel they are only giving the occasional treat or saying "everything in moderation". I agree with pp who said when these things are all sneaking in most days, its not a treat or moderation!

I don't mind PTAs having the occasional cake sale or sweets at fetes etc, but when the Y6 business enterprise week is all about pushing fizzy drinks, sweets, candy floss, cakes, doughnuts and biscuits every play time for a week, it really annoys me! I'd rather send them £2 in at the start of the week than feel obliged to let DS buy tonnes of sugar. How the teachers cope with them that week I don't know!

Eggs are the perfect fast food. Very nutritious, filling, cheap, quick and easy to prepare in a variety of ways.

Sadly they have been pushed out of the way as a breakfast staple by multinationals like Kelloggs and Nestle selling crappy sugary cereals that are closer to chocolate biscuits than proper food.

Both DP and I have two eggs each for breakfast most days, we easily eat a dozen each a week, and no, this does not cause any digestive or chlolesterol problems - those are myths that have been quite rightly discredited.

I do see eggs recommended for breakfast quite a lot on here, but usually its in response to parents saying they don't have time for anything quicker/easier than a bowl of sugary low nutrition cereal or some white processed toast.

eggs are quick, keep you feeling full for longer and very nutritious. would not serve them every day though.

You are never going to have a healthy diet when people won't accept that drinking water is good for you and insist on adding sugar and flavourings - or worse.

Eggs are fine for people who like them. I can manage them later in the day . I could never eat them for breakfast, and neither could 2 out of my 3 children. They just would refuse to eat them.
Growing up in the 60's and 70's we occasionally used to get a cooked breakfast as a 'treat', it used to make me feel sick for the rest of the day. Thankfully we were given cereals most days, though not sugar coated . With milk that you could pour the cream off the top and pour it down the sink give it to someone who liked it.