AIBU to ask what you think of change 4 life’s two 100 calorie snacks campaign?

[Whichschool2020]

Just that really.
www.nhs.uk/change4life/food-facts/healthier-snacks-for-kids/100-calorie-snacks?gclid=CjwKCAiAhMLSBRBJEiwAlFrsTqs_fnt21P4WV_BemO5Y9dDhFcbwbqOSpokPT1KtNVQk2dNPmSD_ahoCS1cQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds#yPkpO8E27jIrGUT2.97

Raising awareness of healthy eating patterns is surely a good thing, but like many pps I’m worried about the push towards artificial sweeteners. As mentioned above, they are very widely studied, but the overall landscape is far from reassuring. There is no good evidence that they help with weight loss overall, and a lot of evidence that they interfere with metabolism, giving dysregulated blood sugar levels and increased risk of disorders such as obesity and diabetes. Several studies list children and pregnant women as populations among those most at risk from adverse effects. Given this huge body of evidence it is ironic that they are being pushed in order to reduce childhood obesity. I can only assume that this is yet another case of the official guidelines not keeping up with the science. (These are arguably the most studied adverse effects as any pubmed search shows, but sweeteners are also linked to other problems such as renal toxicity.)

A selection of reviews are below, but a quick pubmed search will bring up many more for anyone interested.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23850261
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27298490
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27129676
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26430511

Yes our idea for what is a healthy weight may be entirely out. Including those who think seeing a child's rib cage is the best measure.

www.sciencealert.com/the-healthiest-weight-might-actually-be-overweight-massive-study-finds

BMI is just a disaster and should be got rid of or we need to redefine healthy to include a significant amount of the overweight.

What we don't teach is that we need to be balancing our energy requirements with out food intake. BALANCE. High fat could be a disaster for some people and snacking isn't a problem if you snack within your calorie allowance. The advice is neither entirely wrong nor entirely right. Neither is many of the other bits of advice on this thread.

Exactly Buster. It's like a marathon runner coming on here to dismiss advice about 30 mins of exercise a day. They know the advice is not for them, they just want to reinforce how active THEY are, in case anyone hadn't noticed 😉

I had to laugh at the outrage on the front of the Sun because parents wouldn't be able to feed their child a full size Mars Bar as a snack because its 230 calories! If your giving your 5 year old a full size mars bar every day, then you need the guidelines more than most I would have thought!

"incredibly difficult to get the right nutrition during the day"

It is but this is regardless of snacking. 10 portions of mostly vegetables a day and I still wasn't getting it. Especially iron and calcium, either of which would have tipped me well of my calorie allowance for losing weight had i tried to get them via diet alone. That's when I opted for a decent multivitamin

I know what you are saying Wonder but it works for him and he is healthy and has a reasonably good diet, he snacks on fruit, veg or other less healthy stuff but to be honest he's fit and healthy, he'll never eat like a health food blogger but he doesn't survive on Turkey Twizzlers either. He gets his fruit, veg, protein and dairy intake and that to me is what is important, if he has a packet of crisps or a few Oreos on the way then it's not the end of the world, if he was to start to get plump I'd rethink my/his choices.

My son actually eats about 1/4 of what I eat

It's not a competition of whose dc eat the least . IF your 9 year old ds truly only eats meals a quarter the size of yours then either you are massively overeating or he is massively under-eating and you need to try and get more calories in him. A 9 year old boys calorie requirement is a lot more than 1/4 of that of an adult woman.

And I've never had a job where I can't snack! I've always managed to squeeze in a tea break, but as a adult if I don't get a snack I am mature enough to handle it!

There have been threads on here about parents who turn up at school collection times with snacks for their kids, where the practice has been hotly defended by parents who say that their children are starving by that time, they'll be grumpy and horrible all the way home if they don't get them, etc etc. Maybe the campaign is aimed at weaning those parents off turning up with packets of crisps and Mars Bars?

Hopeful he eats what he eats, I'm not going to force feed him or make him clear his plate, yeah I'm a fat bitch and eat a casserole dish each evening! 😂 like I said he eats little and often, I eat 3 meals and snacks. I'm not overweight, he's not over or under weight. Wether you like it or not it works for us!

they'll be grumpy and horrible all the way home if they don't get them

They will be if their body is expecting a sugar hit or whatever at 3:30, they will have to adjust to not getting it and this will take perseverance from their parents.

BashStreetKid yes probably.

When I was a Lollipop Lady the same parents would meet their kids every single day, with all manner of shite snacks.

Not all of those kids were overweight (yet) but all of those parents were.

Making small changes is key. If someone is giving loads if sweets and sugary drinks then it makes sense. My kids are not very active imo so they only get fruit as a snack and then I limit it. 3 meals a day, there is no need for loads of snacks if they are not doing loads of sports

Nothing wrong with eating low fat dairy if you want to reduce your fat intake (other than flavoured yogurts). It’s reduced fat sweet snacks thar are the problem.

For me it's a bad campaign b/c

I don't know who it's aimed at. 3yr olds? 15 yr olds?

The blurb talk about sugar as much as calories

I don't know what the objective is: lower sugar or reduce obesity?

It's performance eating, to impose strict rules, instant easy fail (I admit I have an anxiety about failure, and would rather fail than worry about failing). When I've tried to keep to 3 meals a day, I overeat b/c I'm scared about getting hungry before the next strict food time, so I have to stuff my face as much as possible whenever food is allowed. Whereas I can relax and only eat to hunger if I snack, and only snack when hungry. No Snacks = recipe for obesity & bad food relationship, for me.

if this morning, DC don't eat anything until 11am, is that a 'snack' or is that breakfast? How do you know?

Obvs. I don't insist on large meals, either. I think there's some other assumptions being made, about other food intake in the avg family, that don't apply to us & I don't know about.

I've always put change for life stuff straight in the recycling as it usually suggests stuff that is less healthy than our kids already eat. I know it's generalised advice and my kids aren't typical kids (eldest refuses to eat ice cream and loves vegetables - nothing to do with me he just likes that) but he does get wound up about not following the same 'rules' as his friends when he brings these leaflets home from school.

Wonkylegs, I think you have just hit the MN healthy eating thread bingo jackpot there.
Congratulations!

I must admit the thing that confused me the most about it is that surely witg the likes of the boiled eggs where you would have to boil then wait to cool then shell etc,

Or making the popcorn

Surely if you have time to do That then there would be time to make a more substantial breakfast or lunch erasing the need for a snack in the first place?

If I'm home to toast malt loaf and chop up strawberries then I'm home to chuck a stir fry together for a slightly earlier tea...

Something does need to be done to address the issue though. It's such a sensitive issue- how do you tackle it without offending people and causing upset?

No idea on that.

The chances of an absolutely honest unbiased campaign are probably non existent. As long as companies are set to make money from sponsoring and just happening to provide the very snacks being recommended, then honesty will be lacking.

I take no notice of anything Change for Life tries to push.

I once filled in one of their questionaires and it didnt like I was giving my child soya milk...what the fuck you are supposed to do with a CMP intolerant child ?

Plus dont they push skimmed milk and low fat shit for young DC's ?

It's such a sensitive issue- how do you tackle it without offending people and causing upset?

You can't. Because noone likes to be told they are wrong and chances are whatever they say is wrong for someone. Noone likes to think being overweight or their child being overweight, is their own fault but it is, and even then that's not right because it fails to take into account all the reasons why we haven't controlled our weight in the first place. Eg health issues, mental health issues, its social to eat, people's at school puts a large number of children off exercise. That's a lot to fix.

Campaigns like these are designed to stick a bandaid on the worst excesses and show the govenment to be doing something. They are not going to solve the issue because the solutions are actually really personal to each individual

Something does need to be done to address the issue though. It's such a sensitive issue- how do you tackle it without offending people and causing upset?

You can't. You can only ask them how offended/upset they might be when their kids are still suffering from weight problems later in life and blaming their parents for it.

Much like those who say now "I was made to clear my plate as a child".

While talking to my dd9 about the new guidelines, we chatted about what she eats. Usually she has a packed lunch for school, on the odd day a school lunch. Last week in the first day back lunch was:

Baked potato and cheese
Chocolate milk
Strawberry ice cream

She could have picked:
Baked potato
Water
Small tub of grapes

But she's 9, so picked the junk. I was gutted that the school (or local council rather) thought it was ok to feed their kids that, no wonder she has a sugar dip after school. I've really really encouraged her to make better choices. She knows there's no way she'd get that in a packed lunch etc.

Saving for a holiday now though, so it packed lunches anyway

I have a work colleague who is rather large and so is her child, I've observed that they'd both happily polish off a family size packet of cheese puffs. Children learn from their parents. But the fact is she doesn't see anything wrong with it and is often quite proud that he wears adult size clothes (for the waist) at age 11. It's just very sad. The mum is forever eating during the day, like I've said I like a snack but she takes it to a whole new level and eats whenever she gets the chance. These booklets are made for mums like this!