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

https://healthyfitnessmeals.com/homemade-beef-stew/
Here's one. Just the first hit when I googled it.
Don't know how good it is.

@Sugarfree23 Is French bread made from a different type of wheat flour?

"You clearly haven’t lived in America."

I think it's pretty well-known that north America is worse. It hardly makes the UK diet OK.

But that’s because recipes like that used to be handed down families so it wasn’t needed in print. You just grew up with it.

My basics recipes came from my parents. Who learnt from their parents.

sadly for a lot of families for whatever reason that’s been lost

When I read that post, @Sirzy , I went online and attached the first one I saw. There's loads of nutritional and dietary help out there.
You're right about recipes often being handed down though.

"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."

No, plain yoghurt is healthy. It doesn't have to be Greek. I eat Skyr personally, but yoghurt is good too.
Unfortunately, I can't get on with Kefir which is what you're supposed to have for the pro biotics.

"sadly for a lot of families for whatever reason that’s been lost"

The growth of processed foods in the 70s and 80s.

Oh come on!! I'm all for taxing greedy rich bankers and using the money to fund state education, but...there comes a point where parents have to take responsibility. If a child is "weeping in class because they're so hungry," as you put it, then that's the parents fault. This isn't 1850. You don't need to be rich to buy brown bread and potatoes and apples and nuts and things like that.

Some people do get themselves into a mess through no fault of their own. And trauma, mental illness, etc are real and crippling. But in the majority of cases laziness, ignorance, selfishness, addiction, and sheer stupidity are to blame. The children are probably "weeping" from hunger because their parents have spent their benefits on an X-box. I'm sorry, but I see this again and again. My cousin lives in social housing and hasn't worked for years. He's got three kids, yet still manages to drive a secondhand BMW and go on fishing trips. My friend's brother also lives in social housing (or, rather, the council seem to have given him the council house that he and his brothers grew up in). He's a vain, arrogant pig, with a fake tan and a gym membership. The guy is six foot of honed muscle, yet he's never had a proper job. Like my cousin he lives on benefits. There are potholes everywhere, but he's sat at home watching daytime TV.

Children coming to school with no lunch is dubious to me, because a loaf of bread (Sainsbury’s finest wholemeal loaf is £1.20, so the normal version may be cheaper).

Even if just coming with bread, butter and jam is incredibly cheap, so I can't help but think parents are being lazy to send their kid with NOTHING

Why is it that in my 90s primary school we had white bread cheese or ham or jam sandwiches, a penguin or wagonwheel, a packet of crisps and a yoghurt as a standard lunch for years but yet now the height is going down because of diet..

Our snack at break time would have been a babybel, a dunker, or our packet of crisps from lunch.

My friends had deep fried food on a regular basis. I was only allowed chips from the chip shop but a lot of my peers had chips and nuggets regularly. We all had TONS of sugar on cereal, tea and fruit. Then the cakes, choc ices, angel delight, artic roll, those frozen mousse things.

Yet now the kids don't get white bread, sunny D, nuggets, crisps etc and our diet is somehow worse? I don't know if I believe it. Kids aren't growing up on findu pancakes and angel delight after their white bread, penguin and crisp lunch. Dcs lunchboxes are filled with fruit, crackers, brown bread or hm pasta pots, it's changed for the better yet the height thing has gone down.

I've lived in Spain and Portugal and noticed a real difference in the way the poor eat. In the UK poor people seem to survive on ultra processed foods and junk foods/cheap take aways. In Portugal and Spain I noticed the diet of poor people included a lot of fresh produce such as stews and soups full of vegetables with pulses and a little meat, soups, salads, small amounts of chicken, snacking on seeds, fruit etc. Basically all meals were cooked from scratch. People knew how to create nutritious meals from very little. Here in the UK I do feel like a lot of people just don't know how to cook and that's a huge problem. It leads to a real reliance on processed foods.

No, I completely agree that it doesn’t make the UK diet okay. But having lived in America and been appalled at the UPF and sugary snacks being fed to young children as standard, when I see the general diet in the UK I recognise more positives.
Also, I may be incorrect, but I think northern Americans also came out as being taller than UK?

I buy Greek yoghurt or at least Greek style yoghurt. Massive tubs from Aldi so it’s really good value. Normally had with a little bit of local honey and sliced banana. Pretty sure it’s cheaper than the pre-portioned stuff.

Dc really like it. Interestingly none of them will eat yoghurt with artificial sweeteners in. Muller light type stuff etc

I always think you have to normalise unprocessed food within your diet/ family meals and the kids will copy.

I heard these girls recently in the radio. They were lovely and fascinating. Their mums have become first friends and they visit each other regularly. The Norwegian one is taller though they’re identical genetically and doctors say it’s the healthy lifestyle. The North American one isn’t poor or fat, just not as healthy growing up.

Oh and no one had ever heard of natural yoghurt!

@Sirzy - I have many recipes handed down but my DC were not keen. Their Granny's favourite dish was kidneys 🤔, and she must be the only person I know who still buys a slice of tongue for her sandwich.

It's such a divisive issue imho because by and large parents want to do the best for their kids. Most of us start with the best of intentions and probably get a bit lost along the way. I used to hate it at primary school when kids brought in cakes for their birthdays (particularly as most of them were supermarket cakes). When the school banned this I had to keep v quiet as most of the other parents were horrified and complaining to the school. You also have to deal with constant pester power about what DC's friends have for lunch - lunchables, frubes, chocolate bars etc etc. I can remember feeling like the food police on many occasions and I can imagine that it sometimes becomes easier to give in.

Then they become teenagers and you have virtually no control over what they eat 😁

But many of today's kids DO get white bread, nuggets, crisps etc!
I agree that kids ate a lot of junk when I was growing up in the 80s but I still remember more meals cooked from scratch and less processed foods and snacking. Also, we'd play outside the whole time, for hours every day if the weather was good. A lot of today's children are always indoors gaming.

I have no idea, I just think it doesn't have additives and preservatives.

My MIL is one of these types- she'll just blame it on cooking skills and start a monologue about no one knowing how to use shin of beef these days.

I think what my MIL hasn't realised is that might have been a cheap option 50-odd years ago, but these days making a stew is no longer the cheapest option- the meats for this are fairly expensive and fresh veg is going up too. It can also take a lot of power as the cooking time for some of these cuts is long.

There are lots of recipes out there still- probably called a casserole or a hot pot rather than a stew. And to the BBC's credit, they have been running cost of living recipe articles which pop up as suggestions from their news page. Feed 2 for £xx, cheap family dinners, microwave friendly recipes etc etc.

"northern Americans also came out as being taller than UK?"

I know that US Americans are tall, yes. Not sure about Canada and Mexico.
But we're talking about changes over time, which is the worrying thing.

Agree with you on the poor food quality of the 80s/early 90s. Parents seem much more clued up on basic nutrition now.

I think there were fewer big sugary snacks and treats - huge brownies, cupcakes with half a ton of frosting, huge coffees etc…. back then.
But I think perhaps we moved more back in those days with playing fields, walking and cycling more, playing out during the evenings/ holidays etc….

Yes, the only bread that’s not classed as ultra processed is the kind that’s pretty rank by the second day and inedible on day 3. It is entirely about preservatives.

Maybe it's the lack of exercising and playing outside then. That's the one thing that's really changed. The body needs movement and exercise to get the oxygen around, kids don't move anymore!

"the only bread that’s not classed as ultra processed is the kind that’s pretty rank by the second day and inedible on day 3. It is entirely about preservatives."

Impossible for me as a single person unless I can find a bakery that sells small rolls or something. I'm not in the Uk so I could still find a bakery that's not a Greggs...

Maybe more linked to the obesity problem than the height one?