To have thought my dcs diet was ok until I joined mumsnet?

[Meandmygirls2009]

I have always thought my dc ate ok, but since joining mumsnet and reading lots of posts I am worried that I do not feed my dc a healthy diet! Typical day consists of:
Breakfast: bagel and orange juice
Snack: grapes
Lunch: cheese sandwich, mini cheddars, raisons
Snack: 2 chocolate digestives
Dinner: home made spag Bol, strawberries

Does this sound ok? I am worried the daily mini cheddars and digestives are too much after reading what other children eat :(

Some of this is hilarious.

Is wheat bad for you? No, not for most of us, but if you eat too much you will get fat.

Is dried fruit bad for you? No. Not for most of us, but if you eat too much you will get fat.

It's not difficult.

Dried has a higher fibre and nutrient rate than some fresh. It's not as simple as one is better or worse.

DH and I do macro and high fibre etc for training sometimes but it doesn't matter for kids. If they're active and eating a reasonably balanced diet it is fine. Try to stay away from over processed and added sugars, make sure dental hygiene s good and activity levels are high, and you are there really.

Sorry high protein not high fibre. Got carried away on the fibre there. I'm a big fibre fan (it's especially good if you are high protein but let's not go there)

Tbh it's probably an improvement for a lot of people.

Me included at times!

Re the hidden veg in bolognaise: exactly how many nutrients are in the veg that has been cooked for ages? Or does it just make you feel better?

Another example, probably far too full of salt and sugar:

DC1 (10) skipped breakfast, had rice and corn cakes (because he's not good with gluten) with cheese for lunch, plus cherry tomatoes and cucumber, followed by melon. Then he went to my parents' house and has probably gone nuts on packets of crisps and biscuits (despite knowing they'll upset his stomach).

DC2 (8) has had a friend over all day. He's had rice crispies with milk for breakfast. Cheese sandwich with tomatoes and cucumber, followed by melon for lunch. A packet of crisps mid-afternoon. Veggie sausages, potato wedges, carrot and cabbage, followed by melon and 1.5 sugar coated ring doughnuts for dinner. Then DH gave him another packet of crisps later in the evening.

DC3 (3) had basically the same as DC2, apart from also pinching some of DH's toast and butter at breakfast time, swapping the cherry tomatoes for red pepper at lunch, having Organix crisps mid-afternoon, having less doughnut and not having the extra crisps.

I try to give mine a healthy diet, but most of their peers eat processed crap constantly and my older two get frustrated by the limitations I set. Plus DH thinks 'healthy eating' is a ridiculous fad, and undermines/over-rules me about stuff all the time. He'd let them eat sweets/chocolate/ice-cream multiple times a day, every day, and not see a problem with that.

The problem is that the nations children are fatter than they have ever been and for the first time in recent history children will have worse health than parents because of what they eat. My mother had no sugar in the war and not much fruit and drank water (she didn't like milk). That was the healthiest the nation has been.

Just do your best and if in doubt feed them natural stuff eg as someone said above fruit better than dried fruit in most cases particularly with a child who will hoover up food and will not eat 4 raisins but will eat a massive number. Also constant snacks are not needed if the meal times have enough good food. I think medium protein, loads of veg and a good bit of the healthier fats can be a good way to eat but my overall view has been there are two tyhpes of eating - lots of junk and processed foods which most people at and on the other side healthier foods (which might be 100% veg or 100% fat/.protein or what more of us eat a mixture thus your vegan can be healthy as can your slim Chinese on rice and veg and fish as can your eskimo on animal blubber because all 3 are avoiding processed foods)

Wartime and ration era diets looked quite high sugar. There would be no way I would make a dent in the ration, which was over 200g per person per week. I would have been looking to swap it for some eggs, which were rationed to one or two a week.

But prior to 1990ish people were much more active due to lack of cars and electronic devices offering sedentary entertainment options.

There were some nutritional horrors in the 1970s/1980s too with lots of processed food that we wouldn't dream of eating today like powdered orange drink and vesta curries.

However, sweets and crisps were consumed in much smaller quantities and there were a lot fewer 'eating on the go options'. McDonalds, daily trips to coffee shops etc were non existent for most. I remember a trivial pursuit question in the mid 80s about McDonalds and no-one had even heard of them . Fizzy pop was very much a rare treat, not something that people drink daily by the gallon like some do today.

I believe in the 80/20 rule for a lot of things. Ie, it's what you do most of the time that matters. If you mostly eat fresh unprocessed food without too much sugar, the occasional treat is fine. But a diet that is dominated by processed food and food high in sugar is the fast route to obesity and/or ill health.

80/20 sounds sensible.

I think it is what you eat most of the time which counts. I can never understand MNetters getting uptight about the birthday child giving out sweets or making out McDonalds is the work of the devil!
It really doesn't matter if doesn't happen normally. It is counter productive if you make it an issue.

It is easy at home- just don't buy the stuff. Snack foods are addictive. It is very difficult to only eat 3 crisps- you eat the packet! They do make a big difference. When I was growing up there were 2 flavours of crisps and they only came in small packets. They were not an everyday food.

Food wasn't an issue when I was a child. No one would have had conversations about the sugar content of grapes or raisins! We didn't really think about it. I can't remember any children being overweight. We got lots of exercise. We all walked to school and back for a start. ( however traffic is a huge issue now when it wasn't then)

I do think children are over fed snack here a snack there especially toddlers so by the time they have grown up a bit they are in the habit of snacking that is my theroy anyway

They are actually supposed to be hungry at mealtimes! They will never get that if constantly snacking.

Yeah i agree they are supposed to be hungry at lunctime .

I wonder whether some children ever know what it feels like to be hungry.

I work with under5s and some of them barely eat lunch and pick at it their mums will say oh they had something before they came out or you will see the little tupperware boxes being sneaked out of bags just before lunch sigh

dancer Some nutrients (Vitamin C for example) do degrade slightly in the cooking process. Other nutrients (Lycopene, for example) are actually extracted in the cooking process. A lot of the problem with cooking vegetables when boiling is that the nutrients are leeched into the cooking water which is then thrown away, however as you are serving the liquid you are cooking the vegetables in when you make cottage pie/Bolognese/etc. you have less to be concerned with.

You are making Bolognese and you use 2 red peppers which contain 698% of the vitamin C you need in a day. You lose approx. 30% of the vitamin C when you cook the peppers for 30 minutes. Let's say you lose 200%. That's still nearly 500%, I normally make 10 portions, which gives everyone 50% of the vitamin C they need in one day.

I am usually pro snacking, as a person who needs to eat frequently to keep my BMI up. We give DD (2) snacks, but she's always hungry for lunch dinner, etc. But when my friends said that that their DC never eats much at lunchtime, I did think (but not say), 'that's because you just let her eat a whole packet of crisps before lunch'.

We're on holiday, so DD is having more treats than usual. Yesterday she had:
Non-sugary cereal with milk
A plain croissant
Peanut butter sandwich, grapes, strawberries and a plain rice cake
Some chocolate buttons (4 or 5 small ones)
Homemade spaghetti bol, a yoghurt, and some flavoured crisp-type rice/corn snacks

At school they give the youngest children (3-5) lunch at 11:45am. They start school at 9am. The nursery children get given toast at 10:30am. Parents have to send a piece of fruit in each, which is eaten at 2pm. They finish at 3:15pm.

I noticed that DD's fruit was coming home uneaten. When I asked her she said she wasn't hungry. When I asked her teacher (at parents' evening) whether she ate her school lunch she told me she rarely are much. She didn't seem to get that a mid morning snack was probably filling them up!

DD will eat when she's hungry, not to a timetable. I always have a snack for her just in case, but she doesn't routinely have any. None of us have eaten yet today. We naturally tend towards later mealtimes I guess.

Yesterday my Son (4) had
Weetabix (1) for breakfast with whole milk with a banana
Lunch was roast chicken, broccoli, carrots, BNS, green and runner beans, new potatoes
Mid afternoon he had a small piece birthday cake at a party
Dinner was a grated cheese sandwich, grapes, cherry tomato, small handful of crisps and a yoghurt with strawberries.

He can't eat too much whole grain/fibre as causes IBS flare so we stick to white bread and limit to one weetabix or porridge for breakfast

its I'm not sure I understand your figures but I doubt Spag Bol which has been simmering away contains 50% of your daily vit c. For starters, a lot of water is lost as the sauce reduces. It's better than nothing though. But doesn't work for children who pick out every single bit of veg

Basically you need to remember that food that is processed in factories is almost all bad and ought to be avoided.

I do wonder if some people actually get any real enjoyment from food and sitting and eating a leisurely meal with friends sharing a bottle of wine and a chat.

It's all very well wanting to eat pure foods and only eating what is currently deemed good for you (I say currently as the rules seem to change all the time.) but where's the enjoyment, the social aspect of eating a meal, the pleasure in delicious tastes, etc. ???

I heard that it was best to stick to food your grandparents would have recognised. I find that any easy way to think about things.

So yes to pasta, bread, pulses, vegetables, eggs, cheese and fruit. Not too much red meat and no fruit roll ups, cheese strings etc. Cake on Sundays.

I don't exactly stick to it but that's my standard of healthy eating.