To not understand why some parents make such poor food choices for their kids?

[Quit4me]

I was standing behind a mum with 2 children in a queue the other day. One child was a baby laying almost flat in a pram aged about 3 months. The other was around 6. The baby was really sweet smiling out of the pram which is what drew my attention to them. Then she grizzled and the mum said ‘whopps sorry I took away the milk buttons didn’t I. She was feeding her (the baby) milkybar buttons. Quite a lot of them.
I then noticed that that the mum was overweight, the nan who was also with them was overweight and most sadly the 6 year old was very overweight /obese.
Why would any mum be feeding their 3 month old chocolate? Obviously the whole family and little girl could have had a medical condition but Barring that why don’t parents see that feeding them sugar and too many processed foods early on is creating so many health problems for their children?
It makes me actually quite angry and sad for the children and I cringe seeing it.
Yes I know it’s none of my business directly, but this is everyone’s business because it’s a huge problem for the UK and is going to increase multi fold in the coming years.

I agree with @Countrygirl2021 except about olives - they are high in salt and should be eaten in moderation.

A lot of work has been done on school dinners and on junk food advertisements aimed at children. Maybe a next step to focus on is children’s menus at restaurants. Iirc Ethical Consumer did rank restaurant chains on whether their kids meals included veg etc but there has been relatively little attention given to the topic. People eat out (or get deliveries at the moment) nowadays a lot more than in the past so IMO it is increasingly important for children’s menus to contain balanced meals and not just beige food or tomato pasta, to change expectations as much as anything else.

You are so right about children's menus. My husband and I call it the "and chips" menu.

It's crazy that the menu is differentiated rather than just smaller portions of normal meals.

The reason it's all our business is because of the 6.4bn a year spent by the NHS dealing with the consequences of obesity, from diabetes, heart disease, early joint problems etc. To say nothing of bariatric surgery, beds and hospitalisation. Turning and lifting a patient who is 20 stone is different from one of 15 stone or 10 stone. Not to mention the utter distress of chafing and pressure sores and the complications of surgery which afflict those with high BMI scores.

Not to mention the fact we have all had to stay indoors for a year to protect obese people

Bold of you to blame lockdown on the need to "protect obese people" with absolutely zero facts to back it up, BMI of >40 was only just added to the shielding list this month and the government's own message was about protecting the NHS, the elderly, and the CEV. Sweeping statements like yours are why people can't have a reasoned discussion on the subject.

As an FYI, the net spend on obesity is around 2% of the NHS budget.

I would be interested to hear some suggestions from those outraged by this thread about what should be done about obesity, if anything.

If there was an easy answer society would have done it by now.

Suggestions have been made throughout the thread, they involve money being invested in the problem and an end to shaming people so they're unlikely to happen.

Sorry Foxy I acknowledge what I said was poorly phrased and very blunt. I don’t mean we have been staying in only to protect obese people etc. I mean it has contributed to the poorer health of society which has in turn lead to a higher death rate, more hospitalisations, and therefore more lockdowns and restrictions.

Incompetent leadership, ineffective policy decisions, and a catalogue of failure upon failure from the government have had much larger impact on the death rate.

I saw a toddler in a buggy drinking red bull once and yes I did judge.

I really don’t think this happened. Nobody would give a 3 month old chocolate.

My mum didn't give a crap what we ate as kids! We had Saturday morning "crisp parties" and we'd eat chocolate all hours of the day, multiple times a day. Crisp sandwiches for lunch, ice lollies for breakfast, you name it. She was a loving mum, just totally detached from what it was doing to our bodies, and I think we (me particularly), were built to be emotional / boredom eaters anyway. Definitely get it from my dad.

We definitely shed the mindless eating as we got older and took health into our own hands. I don't think it was bad that we ate those things, I just think it was bad that we had so much and were totally unregulated!

My mum was/still is the kind of person who eats purely for taste and I think she just let us do the same lol. She didn't like to cook either so we ate a lot of convenience foods / pasta / noodles which probably weren't very filling and didn't help kerb our snacking. She also worked 3 jobs, my dad worked crazy hours, they were busy but between them were there for us in every possible way growing up.

I forgive them for feeding us so much crap as kids, for not meal planning, for not realising that I was overweight as a teen, for giving us big portions. It has all helped me to visualise the kind of parent I want to be, but has also made me less of food snob than I otherwise may have ended up as. In my case they truly didn't know any better and everything they let us have came from love - not wanting us to feel restricted in what we were allowed to have! x

I do remember being in hospital with my then baby DS and I saw another couple with their baby who was maybe 10-12 months old. They seemed really reasonable and we exchanged smiles. The Dad popped over to the vending machine for a bottle of Coke then gave the baby it. I was a bit taken aback and yeah, I did judge.

I don’t think this story happened though. Surely a 3 month old would spit chocolate straight back up. My 7 month old still spits most of his solid food back up.

Not really Fox - government decisions only affect how many people contract the virus, not how likely the average citizen is to die from it. For example for every 100 people that contract covid in the UK, 2.9 will die. In Switzerland it is 1.8.

It cannot be put down to a glaring disparity in healthcare as many countries with a lower standard of healthcare also have a lower death rate than the UK. It is logical to assume it is because the UK is unhealthier, and we know obesity is a risk factor for covid.

I think it’s possibly just a lack of education. I’m guilty of giving my own children far too many refined carbs. Mainly pasta and rice during this pandemic as me and my husband both lost our jobs. So I’ve been bulking the dinners up with cheap carbs. They’re active and we keep all other added sugar intake low but I still don’t feel great about it. New job starts soon so I’ll be able to buy better food.

It was the Soil Association who looked at children’s menus, for anyone interested. They have a campaign called Out To Lunch and the criteria include the number of portions of vegetables, whether they push sugary drinks, and pudding portion sizes as well as stuff less connected to health like food provenance: www.soilassociation.org/causes-campaigns/out-to-lunch/

@PattyPan I love that link! DS is gluten intolerant and it makes it so hard to get child sized portions when we go out to eat because so many places have breaded fish/chicken and pasta as the options available. Most of the time if I ask for a smaller adult portion of something he can eat and will enjoy like a curry, they’ll make a fuss. It baffles me as to why more restaurants can’t just make smaller versions of their adult menus.

if your from a low income family, 3 frozen pizzas for £5 that will fill the kids up, or a selection of fruit that's not as filling

But stew is cheap to make, as it cottage pie, vegetable curry, 3 bean chilli can all be made under £5 and fill you up.

People can't be bothered to / don't know how to cook. I also come back to this strange concept of what to feed children where pizza, animal shaped breaded things, chips and baked beans is considered a meal.

If you have never fed them a turkey dinosaur they don't know they exist so don't ask for them. If children think food is rice, veg, meat, potatoes from early on then you can encourage healthier diets.

I came back to why do parents put squash into water to encourage a sweet taste?

I’ve just found out it’s actually illegal to be fat in Japan! You don’t get imprisoned or fined but there is a law prohibiting being above a certain weight. Elderly people get yearly health and weight checks. We are due to visit next year so I’m going on a swift diet.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

I would be interested to hear some suggestions from those outraged by this thread about what should be done about obesity, if anything.

If there was an easy answer society would have done it by now.

The answers are there, it's the political will that's lacking, fears of being unpopular with the population and lobbying from junk food companies.

There are already a lot of low key measures- healthy eating classes, weighing at schools etc. @Gwenhwyfar you hit the nail on the head- the cheap sugary food brings in the money and is heavily promoted. I’ve found Waitrose tends to have a huge fruit and veg area in my local town and it does encourage me to buy more fruit and veg. Lots of people are in denial about their eating habits. Food is also seen as a treat to be eaten as a reward, or after a long day. If it was viewed in an Ayurvedic way- as medicine, I am sure our eating habits would change.

But stew is cheap to make, as it cottage pie, vegetable curry, 3 bean chilli can all be made under £5 and fill you up.

They take longer to cook though and there is a link between food poverty and fuel poverty. Lack of skills and knowledge also comes into it. If you know how to cook frozen pizza and chips but don't know how to cook vegetable chilli then you'll cook frozen pizza and chips, not everyone has the wherewithal to know how to find or follow a recipe, believe it or not but there are people living such chaotic lives that it is a hindrance to their day to day function. There are also access issues. As discussed upthread, people in food poverty are more likely to only have access to corner shops/mini-marts for the bulk of their shopping where prices are higher and range is limited so they might know full well how to make a three bean chilli but that's no good if the shop doesn't stock the ingredients. Over one million people in the UK live in a food desert, if a big name supermarket isn't in convenient reach then you can't take advantage of the cheaper prices (I know my nearest one is a £6.90 adult return fare away plus £3.45 return per child). Online shopping requires a bank card and a minimum spend of £40, not much help if your budget is less than that.

"But why can't they just do/make this" doesn't address the underlying issues.

I understand obesity is a relatively recent current generational lifestyle issue. Therefore perhaps we need to carefully examine the recent lifestyle, catering and food supply choices to eliminate the crap and return to more healthy foods and drinks and ban junk. I am sure there was less ultra processed chemicals passed off as marketed foods back in time. Plus people knew how to self cater and had a passion for cooking and not watching Netflix and ordering in yet another fast food takeout while seating on the sofa forgetting to exercise apart from lifting a finger for the remote control and smartphone app for food delivery.

A bit in jest perhaps but it's not far from the truth is it in many households fat and not so fat!

Cheap food should not be the toxic supermarket ultra processed junk but taxed like cigarettes and this junk highly processed convenient food tax used to supplement and lower the price of real food etc.

This thread has prompted me to think about what nutritional advice is actually offered to women in pregnancy. Turns out there is quite a lot:

1. Healthy start fruit and veg vouchers for low income pregnant women
2. Free weaning courses at children’s centres (I attended one, it was brilliant)
3. There’s a whole NHS page on diet in pregnancy with meal ideas
4. Low income women get a maternity grant that can be spent on health food etc if they wish

I think that is a fairly reasonable level of education and support.