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 don’t think austerity caused families to shift from healthy home cooked meals to UPFs. If you were the type of family who ate the former you’d just eat more cheap things like lentils, rice, beans, bread. However, if people have less money to go out they sit at home and eat more.

Yes I agree with this too. The “little and often”/grazing mantra we were all fed 10+ years ago has caused huge damage imo. I am always baffled that so many people seem to believe that children are unable to go more than an hour without eating. When DD is at school and after school club they give her a morning snack and an afternoon snack – when she’s at home she usually chooses to have neither (I have a free access fruit bowl so she can help herself if she’s hungry).

I think this is the major issue. The seventies was peak upfs, people were still slimmer. But you only ate at meal time, snacks were not common. Now kids are snacking at every opportunity and it makes it very easy to over eat. I think lots of children probably do not know what actual hunger feels like.

Actually the 70s (when UPFs were introduced) is when obesity levels started to rise exponentially. People were slim
in the 70s because they were born before the age of UPFs, but each generation subsequently has been getting fatter.

Imo it’s not the fact of snacking that is the issue - if people were snacking all
day long on apples and carrots they wouldn’t be obese - but they’re not, they’re eating UPFs, often mistakenly believing they are healthy (eg protein bars).

It wasn’t peak UPFs, they were just getting going. They were new and exciting so we remember the butterscotch Angel Delight and the crispy noodles but they were still quite a small proportion of everyone’s diet compared to now.

At a really basic level, people are eating far too much. Irregardless of whether they're eating only at mealtimes or snacking frequently. Or whether it's uhp or not.

But I totally agree with you about the constant snacking. People think they are not meant to ever feel a bit hungry.

I hear all the time about people having no time to cook a proper meal. Or 'from scratch' as people now say, as if it's something amazing.

I don't buy it. It really doesn't take long to put a decent home cooked, non UPF meal on the table. Nor need it cost much. I bet the same people who say they have 'no time' are finding time to watch tv or doom scroll.

It's about priorities: prioritising our children's health (and our own). It is time we got angry, it is time governments stepped in. And it is time that feeding your children crap food 90% of the time should be viewed with the same horror as blowing smoke in their faces.

The difference is that expectations have changed. There is an idea that we should all be making amazing meals every night. Look at some of the meals people cooked in the seventies that are very quick. Sardines on toast. mince and onions. These take very little time to make.

I often have to take breakfast to school for my DD and been trying to make it healthier. But the brioche and croissants I often give her are at least better than haribos and crisps!

There were kids walking to school in the seventies eating crisps for breakfast.
But for those who had a proper breakfast, it was either a cooked breakfast, toast or cereal.

Agreed.

The use of UPFs has risen exponentially since the 70's.

More recently they've risen in line with austerity in order to make food cheaper in the face of rising costs.

For example, this shit that's not actually mayonnaise, is a relatively new product made because actual mayonnaise, even the budget brands, was getting too expensive for a lot of consumers to buy.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/305431904

Other "cheap" foods have also cut the number of "real" food they contain and replaced them with UPF to make things cheaper instead of having to put up their prices.

Dinner plate sizes were also smaller than they are now

We still use old dinner plates. The difference is striking.

I think it's more they don't have the energy in the time they have. Coming home after a stressful day, picking up dc who might be tired and grumpy and then trying to muster up the energy to cook a meal is a challenge for many people.
A friend of mine used to cook and prep food after dinner for the next day as her time after work was so limited and stressful. Even that sounded exhausting to me. I'd just want to flop on the sofa but she said what else could she do if she wanted everyone to eat well.

It is!! I didn't realise until my DH bought a vintage Hornsea pottery dinner set. They must have got bigger by stealth 🤣🤣

@LakeTiticaca I will not change them because I think it does make a difference. Our plates look full of food, and would not on more modern plates.

I think probably it will have something to do with lack of vitamin A, D and K at a young age. Things like cod liver oil, liver and real butter aren’t consumed as well coupled with lack of sunlight will all contribute to shrinking height.

It is poverty. Children's heights are first determined by genetics, and then poverty.

I can't be arsed to RTFT but DH and I (lates 30s) have had to educate our parents (all in their 60s) about upfs, to the point of getting them to read food labels with us to point out all the shit in the ice cream squash and sweets they like to give DD as a 'treat' are horrendous and not to do it.
DH and I feel pretty much in a minority of removing as many upfs as possible from DD diet. We lived abroad in two European countries and found the diets/no binge drinking a bit of an eye opener.
People need educating ref upfs. It's not that difficult to read labels but it is more expensive. This needs changing.

I'd be interested to read the food labels (to the extent they existed) of UPFs that many of us ate in decades past.

Did the oft-cited angel delight from the 70s have the same ingredients? Did the boxed cereal I ate in the 90s in America have the same amount of crap it has now? When did they start putting palm oil in ice cream??

Lovely, thank you. That gives me a few ideas!

Yes, that's true. I mean we would never eat more than 2 biscuits now either. But I know what you mean about the size of bags of crisps. I don't buy multipacks as don't want them in the house. But I will get my DC a few treats at the weekend. And yes, lots of the crisps are in massive bags.

I have to say I've never taken a snack to the school gates. My DD is at high school now and gets in at 4.15. She usually has a drink when she gets in and a snack if hungry. I don't see the need for her to have a snack before that.

I have to admit I still often use an IKEA plate for my Dd's dinner and one of the bowls for cereal and she's 12! But as you say modern plates are huge!

Blimey that is a crazy packed lunch! I must admit I've never thought to fill a lunch bag to capacity. I thought the extra space was for ice packs etc

I didn't think nurseries allowed cordial? It was only milk or water when mine were at nursery. Then only water at Primary.

That's very sad though your description of grey children. And I'm the first to admit we have too much UPF and are working at getting better. But just crisps or biscuits for lunch? That's heartbreaking.