UPF, poverty, obesity.... children’s healthy eating - an impossible challenge?

[PaminaMozart]

This is truly frightening: Food Foundation says height of five-year-olds falling, child obesity up by a third and type 2 diabetes by a fifth

The average height of five-year-olds is falling, obesity levels have increased by almost a third and the number of young people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has risen by more than a fifth, the report by the Food Foundation said.

Aggressive marketing of cheap ultra-processed food, diets lacking essential nutrition and high levels of poverty and deprivation are driving the “significant decline” in children’s health, researchers found.

Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added.

Babies born in the UK today will also enjoy a year less good health than babies born a decade ago, according to the report.
Baroness Anne Jenkin, a Conservative peer, said children’s health had “never been worse” but warned that almost no one was talking about it. “This is a timebomb waiting to explode if action isn’t taken.”
Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, said: “When the height of five-year-olds has been falling since 2013, and we’re learning babies born today will enjoy a year less good health than babies born a decade ago, every mother and father in the land will be concerned and shocked at what is happening to children through lack of nutrition, living through the hungry 2020s in food bank Britain.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/19/uk-children-shorter-fatter-and-sicker-amid-poor-diet-and-poverty-report-finds

I think the government should take a leaf out of Japan’s book and involve employers.
Not to the same degree (I am not proposing measuring everyone’s waist and fining employers if too many of their employees are over….) but I do think the possibility or impossibility of eating a healthy diet while you are at work should be seen as a health and safety issue. We look back in horror at people having to operate dangerous machinery without safeguards but we accept people being expected to work long shifts with no time to do more than grab a Mars bar at your desk, or workplaces with nowhere to eat, or only junk food vending machines available. We spend a lot of our waking hours at work and it’s clear from talking to a lot of people that their job tends to undermine their efforts to eat healthily.

I never used to eat very healthily but I was always skinny. Then I went on a medication that made me really hungry and I put on weight even though I eat more healthy now. My teenage son is naturally skinny and he eats lots of biscuits and noodles and I can't see him ever getting obese if he tried. I don't think it is to do with quality of food it's how much you eat

This is just an excuse.

Similar to that poster’s neighbour we never had sweets/chocolate/crisps in the house growing up although we did have chocolate biscuits.

It never became “forbidden fruit” - I just grew up not liking or wanting it.

Same here.

I don’t know if forbidden fruit theory is true for some. I do know though that I have seen an awful lot of people on here using it as a reason to not restrict their child’s diet at all. I don’t know whether they genuinely believe it or not, maybe there really are parents out there who think they’re doing the right thing by not limiting their child’s junk consumption.

The government are going to drag their heals on UPFs in the same way they did with tobacco.

It's incredibly sad.

Life expectancy will continue to fall.

It can become forbidden fruit. I had an incredibly healthy diet as a child and now eat too much chocolate. I don't eat crisps though. I am just not interested in them.

I think the idea that we should just feed children what they will eat is very damaging.

I can't say I haven't restricted my daughters diet at all, I definitely have, but I have gone down the everything in moderation route, which I'm happy with. On the whole she has a great diet, but like @peachgreen I had a terrible relationship with food, which I had to work really hard to repair so I'm super conscious of getting the balance right.

How do you know you wouldn’t have eaten the same amount of chocolate now if you had been allowed it as a child?

Similar to that poster’s neighbour we never had sweets/chocolate/crisps in the house growing up although we did have chocolate biscuits.

It never became “forbidden fruit” - I just grew up not liking or wanting it.

I agree. Whenever that theory is said on MN I always think it's bollocks. Growing up, we didn't have squash or fizzy drinks, and never had chocolate bars or crisps (I was born early 90s so other children would have chocolate bars etc in lunchboxes). They weren't demonised, they were just not bought. I didn't grow up unable to contain myself around mars bars and cans of Coke. (We did have some home baking so sweet treats were totally banned)

Obviously you don't want to be really restrictive and controlling and tell children they mustn't ever eat "bad" foods, but simply not buying fizzy drinks isn't going to create a child who is obsessed with them. If I'm being honest I think that's just what people who buy them want to tell themselves.

@Mirabai I have no idea. I might just love chocolate and find it hard not to eat too much whatever my mother did. I do love healthy meals as well and vegetables.

It can become forbidden fruit. I had an incredibly healthy diet as a child and now eat too much chocolate.

But loads of people eat too much chocolate - people who had loads as a child, people who had none as a child, and everything in between.

I was allowed chocolate, crisps and some home made sweets but not everyday and in small quantities. Like 2 squares of chocolate, not a whole bar. No fizzy drinks. I did the same for my DC.

The cry of " Your kids will get an eating disorder if you restrict junk " always goes up on MN. But more kids are obese than have an eating disorder.

The thing is, as much as people jump up and down and shout about drug adled parents feeding kids cans of Monster for breakfast and everyone forgetting how to cook, these are societal changes, eg. changes that happen gradually at different rates through different sections of society.

That's not what is happening here.

The obesity crisis was a sharp increase in obesity that began in the early 90s. Unless everyone, from every section of society (every race, religion, class etc) all forgot how to cook, across the western world, all at the same time, lack of skill in the kitchen is not what caused this.

What did change in the 90's was a sharp increase in UPFs being used.

Ditto this recent change in childhood obesity, unless every new parent, from all sections of society in the UK have suddenly turned to drugs, become ill educated and forgot how to cook, that is not what is happening. What did change at around the same time was austerity.

The average MNetter might be able to rustle up a healthy, nutritous meal for the same price (including fuel costs and time) as a frozen pizza, but evidence shows that is not the case for wider society.

To be honest, fizzy drinks are a hard line for me, it's always a no, as are sweets, and mad cereal like fruit loops and frosties and the like.

I'm a bit more relaxed with chocolate and crisps

There is no real excuse nowadays for those proclaiming they can't cook. Most folk have a smart phone and Google is full of recipes and step by step guides . It's seriously not rocket science. Get off tiktok and bloody educate yourselves!!

I don't buy fizzy drinks and juices and my Dc can take them or leave them. They're happy with water.
When I do buy fizzy drinks, I really try to find ones without too much crap like appletiser.
My dc enjoy them when we eat out but we hardly ever have them at home.
I do buy crisps occasionally because we all love them.
We bake cakes and biscuits at home rather than buy them and the dc can bake really well now. I'd love to get to the stage of baking bread at home but that's still occasional. I can't keep up with the demand.
With the price increases, I think there's not much difference in the cost of baking a standard loaf of bread at home and buying it. Probably the same for some basic cookies and cake.
Way better for you though.

People lack fundamental skills. Like they have never peeled a potato etc.

I tend to buy belvoir cordial, and mix with sparkling water, if I want a fizzy drink. The ginger cordial packs a punch!

you might be more inclined to feed your children food you know they will eat,

But why is the food they will always eat the crap stuff? Who introduced this stuff into their diet in the first place? They aren't born wanting crap food, it is provided by the parent/s.

I agree this is what happened, along with following the low fat/high carb advice from the US.

I believe it was Giles Yeo who wrote (paraphrasing) "a world that can't decide on a common language or currency and that is in some cases in active armed conflict didn't collectively agree to lose their dietary willpower forty years ago."

I think it's partially snacking culture, I grew up on a diet of high UPF but was always skinny because I wasn't getting enough calories to gain weight over whatever I needed at the time. I wasn't allowed fizzy juice and don't like it now.
Nowadays the snacks seem relentlessly available

What did change in the 90's was a sharp increase in UPFs being used.

What also changed in the 90s was increase in availability of food and increase in quantities consumed - of all types of food.

By way of example - growing up in my area of London in the 80s - the high street had several old pubs, a MacDonalds, a Wimpey and a tea shop. That was it. Now, it is wall to wall cafés and food shops.

Everywhere you go in London now there are food shops and people eating.

That fasting between meals is really important to keep insulin levels stable. People aren't aware of this anymore and eat constantly.