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.

I have had my Mum to stay this week and we talked about how our basic dinner when I was a kid was meat and two veg, how we enjoyed lamb chops, liver and onions, the odd Saturday night steak and always a roast on a Sunday. We were an ordinary working class family; Dad was a collier, Mum was a housewife, we ate loads of meat (and veg).

I am fifty now, we have a much bigger income than our parents ever had, and meat is an expensive treat for us. Far too many of our meals are just flavoured carbs (pasta and rice dishes). And because we are never properly satisfied (only protein really hits the spot for us) we end up snacking.

I don't think that we've forgotten how to eat healthily.
We (in the widest sense) haven't yet adapted our style of eating to our increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

Drinking water isn't bad for you but we do not need 2 litres of it a day.

And we don't need 2 litres of sugared, flavoured water either. In fact we don't need any, except for the odd treat.

Ok, I am possibly outing myself here. DD has just been on a residential school trip catered by the teachers (all lovely people). For dinner she had hotdogs and doughnuts, for breakfast white sliced bread toast and jam and cornflakes, for lunch sausage roll, crisps, biscuit and fruit shoot. Oh yeah and one solitary apple. Treats were marshmallows and ice cream.

Am I really the food police to believe this is utter crap? None of the other parents are remotely bothered.

No, it's rubbish ... but, if I were catering for a random collection of children, I'd probably go for whatever they were all most likely to eat. A few days on carbs won't kill them.

Many decades on carbs wouldn't kill them, actually.

I know Garlic, it is churlish to complain. Very sad that a lack of fruit and veg is the expected norm for kids though.

I think we've actually forgotten how to exercise enough.

`Exactly GarlicJune You said it better than me!

Thanks, ppeat :) YY, Tinkly. I must admit my default children's food is pizza, though! At least it contains four food groups, if not in the desired proportions. On a tight budget, I guess you can't offer salad that might be rejected, and you do need to get calories into children.

This thread's really making me crave chip shop chips

On a residential course it needs to be quick and easy meals which are liked by the majority. I have been a leader on many a residential course and when the centre provides something away from "safe" foods it is met with complaints from the young people who don't like it or won't even try

If self catering for a large group then simple to store, simple to prepare foods are by far the easier options. Especially if you don't have spare adults to spent hours cooking and cleaning. It may not be ideal but for a few days it's the best option. We do always provide fruit though at a each meal.

So much good sense on this thread :)

Maybe we haven't forgotten then, maybe we never knew and still don't really! :o I saw a poster in the drs surgery the other day demonstrating how portion sizes have changed, there was a pic of an average choc muffin from the 70s and an average one now, the one now was literally 4 times the size.

I think people are aware of a need to have a balanced diet without much awareness of what that actual consists of (myself included to an extent) it's really hard to find good information on what is ACTUALLY required in a healthy diet. Especially for children.

I agree with a pp that people think its a healthy diet if you're having a pudding at school, crisis after school and Friday night food at home for tea. There's also a real attitude of "kids food" which makes it harder to get veg into kids.

Also, kids don't need cheap, sugary nutrition free calories! They need nutrition packed ones! I,e, not from puddings!

Yoruba - I agree with most of what you said (crisis after school made me LOL though ) but in defence of puddings, these are served in hospitals too and are often labelled "nutrient dense" - crumble or sponge and custard for example is a way of getting calcium into kids who wont drink milk. rice pudding, fruit flapjack, and melon slices are other examples of healthy "puddings" our school serves. they aren't the iced cake with sprinkles and bright pink custards that I had at school - and I don't think they serve angel delight any more either.

IlkleyMoor - I do love eggs, but I can't eat them every day without discomfort (and opening a window )

I do think part of the problem is thinks being labelled as "good for you" (or even worse certain diet companies branded food) which makes people think it is a food which is good for them and therefore fine to eat regularly but in most cases when you look it is 'good' in one way but rubbish in many others.

Mmm, chips 'n gravy. Nowt wrong with chips and gravy imo.

Anyhoo.
Yeah, school dinners are generally shite. Sugar loaded, fibre free, and nothing fresh. I also hate how kids are expected to hate vegetables. I mean, obvs they are not going to be as into them as, say, burgers, but plenty of children like a lot of different kinds of vegetables.
The thing with school dinners, though, is they are based on calorie content, and protein content, with no compunction to include anything fresh, or green, or any whole foods. The guidelines for school dinners are bogus.

:o at crisis after school. I feel like that some days!

I agree with the calcium point. But there are other ways of introducing calcium: cheese, plain yoghurt, eggs.

I've just checked our school menu and there is cake at least 3 times a week. In an email the head of the company doing them said that without the puddings they wouldn't meet energy requirements. So they are using the puddings to boost calories because the main meals are crappy and small.

It's habit forming, it sets you up to want something sweet / a pudding after your meal. I can't see that's a healthy thing to be setting up when we have massive levels of child obesity. So something is clearly going wrong!

I do cook a crumble at least once a month because it's a way of getting some fruit into DS2 (ASD and the food issues that go with it). He'll eat a blinking huge portion of rhubarb, or apple and blackcurrants, that way.

He also gets a daily cake in his packed lunch, but it's always something like banana muffins (with blueberries, when in season) or a variation on this carrot cake - I use actual butter (tastes nicer) and substitute ground almonds for some of the flour. I don't ice it, though - just sprinkle a little demerara and some flaked almonds on top.
rapeseedoilbenefits.hgca.com/recipes-rapeseed-oil/carrot-cake.aspx

The puddings on the school menu are always things like chocolate sponge or cornflake tart, though. There's Eve's Pudding once a month and that seems to be the only option with any fruit in - presumably because they're keeping budgets down.

I don't want to pick on poster who wrote this:
"For dinner she had hotdogs and doughnuts, for breakfast white sliced bread toast and jam and cornflakes, for lunch sausage roll, crisps, biscuit and fruit shoot.... and one solitary apple. Treats were marshmallows and ice cream."

...but I would love to set the challenge (to any of you) to come up with a better meal plan. Has to meet similar objectives (cheap, filling, reliable, easy). Anyone up for that?

I am the poster lljkk, it wasn't a cheap trip. I'd gladly have paid a few quid more for more fruit, something decent to drink, and a choice of whole meal bread.

Like I said I don't want to moan really, DD had a great time and I'm grateful to the teachers who gave up their time. Food was shite though.

And actually I'm not sure that cheap or even convenient should be the main considerations when feeding kids.

Porridge and fruit
Oatcakes and cheese . Humous and veg sticks . Handful of nuts . Piece of fruit.
Salt free crisps.
Beans or egg on decent toast .
Banana bread / oat and quinoa cookie / fruit .

It's not bloody rocket science . Eat it or starve .

I really dislike threads where the OP says that "we" do something, when they really mean "other people, not me, I am one of the rare exceptions".