British children shorter due to poor diet

[Catosaurus]

Experts have said a poor national diet and cuts to the NHS are to blame. But they have also pointed out that height is a strong indicator of general living conditions, including illness and infection, stress, poverty and sleep quality. Food experts point out that a diet of cheap junk food makes people simultaneously overweight and undernourished.

Has it really become this bad? I’m not from England, but this is on the news today.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/21/children-raised-under-uk-austerity-shorter-than-european-peers-study

True, but it's not just the UK. Not every country in Europe has a healthy Mediterranean diet. Sometimes not even Mediterranean countries.
It's a complicated mix of convenience, cost, working practices and culture.

" Also crisps is really cheap in England compared to here, so probably easy to buy if you don’t have much money."

Part of a meal deal. With the meal deals you're actually penalised if you don't take the snack.

When you look at average height. British born Indians and Africans who grow up in the UK and Europe on average are far taller than whites. I think it’s the white height that influences the average as there are more of them.

If the stunted growth and obesity doesn’t get your dc, bowel cancer will

🙄

I disagree with reduced height is caused by lack of healthy diet, it's also not always genetic ethier, my cousin is 6ft 5 and his parents (mum) 5ft (dad) 5ft 8.

Very good point about Guardian reporting, @KnittedCardi . Often unreliable.

" isn’t even touching the sides of those who eat cereal, crisps, white bread sandwich with ham, chocolate bar, weird fruit twizzler thing, chicken nuggets and chips, yoghurt and that’s their day!"

Yoghurt's very healthy (unless it's the flavoured, sugary ones).
Ham not too bad?

Money doesn’t mean people are feeding their children adequately.

working parents have less time therefore rely on take aways and ready meals / freezer food more often. None of that is adequate nutrition. We should be cooking from scratch multiple times a day.

Wages are massively devalued and there is no pressure on business owners to change that . Add in that most large businesses pay nothing like the taxes they should and you've got a poor population with underfunded public services to support them.

Yoghurt isn’t healthy unless you’re buying Greek yoghurt only which let’s face it, what parents are? It’s all froobs and petit filous.

have you ever looked at the ingredients in ham? Nitrates, flavourings and E numbers, it’s not a piece of cooked pork.

Its more than seemed too. Your immune system lowers in pregnancy to stop your body treating the baby as a foreign object and attacking it.

This is why flu jag is offered to pregnant women and why they advise to avoid food with higher risk of food poisoning like shellfish and mayo made with raw eggs.

It's also why your sense of smell is so highened to make you hyper aware.

I wonder whether kids diets have just got worse over the years. I seem to know a huge number of kids who are really picky- even to the point where a meal I ran past their mum (chicken nuggets and chips, so not even anything healthy) was rejected because I'd clearly bought the wrong brands and it wasn't edible.

An awful lot of parents seem to make packed lunches because their kids are too fussy for the school dinners. Mine have school dinners- because a) learning to eat what's on offer is a useful life skill and b) vegetable eating is far more likely when presented with a cooked meal than in a packed lunch and c) they're free!!

When asked during a class discussion on healthy eating recently, my child was the only one in the class who had a healthy snack (fruit). Everyone else had crisps/chocolate type stuff. It had the opposite effect than the teacher intended as mine came home declaring me the worst parent of all for the poor snacks I provide 🤣

If what I'm seeing around me is the norm, with processed food being so cheap and so easy to feed them (fewer "eat your greens" arguments too), it's maybe not a surprise that nutrition is getting worse?

I can't imagine children in areas like the Mediterranean (as a neighbourly example) getting away with what kids round my way do!!

😂😂😂😂

this post is the exact example of why we are in this situation! That is nutritionally absolute SHITE. I completely believe that you believe it’s an acceptable diet because that’s what the food companies want you believing. They’ve done their work.

@Gwenhwyfar - ain't that the truth. My DD said she paid 50p more for a Sandwich as she didn't want the crisps the other day.

Well yes, it’s not great is it.

Some people seem to seeing this as some sort of personal attack rather than looking at it as part of the bigger picture. It’s certainly an interesting finding, not so much because height itself matters but because of what it is doing to overall development.

anecdotally but ds is tube fed for the past 4 years because of his arfid, so before his diet was very low on calories and some nutrients. He was always on the shorter side height wise (under 9th centile) but since having the tube and the proper balance for him he is now on the 50th centile. It seems the same as happened to others I know who have children who have become tube fed for similar reasons pre puberty

The Welsh Gov are trying to fix this and getting loads of complaints.
I believe the UK gov had some similar ideas, but paused due to the cost of living crisis.

No, I think those who are questioning are trying to look at the bigger picture, rather than just taking at face value an article from the Guardian.

It's a recent change since George Osbournes failed austerity measures. You need enough money to give kids a choice. If you only have enough money for marmite on toast for breakfast some just won't eat. You need enough money that you can try new foods and it's not a disaster if no-one likes it. Often people learn how to cook through various failures but if they can't afford the electric or new foods to experiment then they will be stuck with cheap ultra processed foods ( chemicals)

@KnittedCardi says ethnic mix needs to be considered, that is correct.

Many Asian migrants now have teenage children. many will be shorter than host population but probably taller than parents and relatives in home country. IYSWIM

Someone commented on poor kids back in the day being raised on things like stew.

Have you ever looked for a recipe on how to make stew or mince?

Almost impossible to find.
Maybe the BBC should be put to good use and do a series on good nutritious low cost food.
Not fancy chefs cooking up fancy food, but everyday stuff your Granny or Great Granny made.

I do wonder about what we put in everyday food like bread in the UK it lasts about a week. Buy bread in France and its rock solid the next day.

I buy Greek yogurt for my kids and add a small amount of fruit puree or smoothie for flavour and sweetness. I figure it's healthier than the more processed yogurts.

@TeddyFluff - you're right about processed meats. When I've been to Spain I'm always amazed at how much of that is in their diets.

You clearly haven’t lived in America.

Look it up somewhere else then.

1. Children are getting shorter. Not short, but getting shorter.
2. This is attributed to bad nutrition.
3. UK is known for bad nutrition.
4. Genetic factors and your own DC are not really relevant because the issue is the change over time i.e. it's not about the fact that DCx is short because his parents are short. It's about children getting shorter in general.

So will people please stop going on about their own DC or deny that height has anything to do with nutrition?