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

@Caiti19 I think it started after ww2

I honestly think our food culture is linked to nearly everything. We have a population who are endemically over fed and undernourished and to a large extent completely in denial about this. It affects mental health, sleep, activity levels, inflammation in the body (this is HUGE), stress levels and basically causes a complete vicious circle where you lack energy and motivation to make better food and real food also tastes less appetising. The more I read about nutrition and health the more I am convinced that UPF overconsumption is at the heart of it all. There’s no other realistic explanation. I don’t cut out UPF entirely as it’s nearly impossible but aim for 80/20 (actually more like 90/10) - but it is extra work and means doing things like making my own ice cream, baking more, and avoiding massive chunks of the supermarket as there’s nothing I would buy in those sections at all.

Agree the obesity and diabetes are alarming but I think the statistical decrease im height could be because of immigration from countries where people are genetically shorter. I work with a lot of Indian people and some of the ladies are under 5 foot. I'm far from a giant myself only 5 foot so my kids are pretty small I'd hate for people to look at them and think I malnourish them.

As far as I'm aware malnutrition has to be really severe to affect height.

Yes, but I think the important point is that we are one of only a few countries where children are getting shorter during the last 5 years

I do wonder what on earth happened in Belgium?

But we’re also getting immigration from places where people are taller. Ukrainians are taller than us for instance.
I am not saying your theory is impossible but I feel like it would need more evidence whereas the theory it is related to diet does fit with what we know about how diets have got worse.

We rarely had pudding in the 80s / 90s…..sometimes on Sundays after a roast dinner or on a special occasion and they were mostly homemade like strawberries & cream, homemade cheesecake or cake etc.

I had never eaten Burger King or McDonalds until I was in my late teens. We went to Wimpey occasionally as a treat, which served the food on a proper plate with cutlery etc. I find it so weird that people have McDonalds weekly or more nowadays.

Drank mostly water with the occasional squash or fizzy drink. Again, they were considered occasional treats, not everyday foods/drinks.

We also had to ask permission to have something else to eat in the evening if we were hungry. We didn’t just go and help ourselves. Rarely were we refused but it was ‘you can have an apple and/or orange’ rather than having chocolate, sweets or whatever.

That is exactly how I was brought up in tbe 80s and early 90s.

We were allowed one glass of lemonade with Sunday lunch and that was it for fizzy drinks. Pub food, fish and chips or chinese was our occasional treat food.

This.

I run a food bank which operates on a supermarket model - people choose for themselves from what we have on offer. We served 70 families yesterday, and I can’t think of one that didn’t say an enthusiastic “yes” to toms, oranges, bananas, cucumbers, peppers, mushrooms. No one wants to feed their family shit.

I don't understand the diet/height link. There is lots of research showing that people are taller when they ingest large quantities of dairy products which are full of growth hormones, so hardly great for health. Also the long term consequence of being taller is a higher risk of mortality from cancer and other diseases due to more cells and hence more cell replications and greater damage.

@PostItInABook - see I grew up in the same era. The 90s was full of of wagon wheels, sunny delight or blue pop drinks, sugar cigarettes, lunchables, and beige freezer food at home. I think between the age of 2 and about 12 I would often go weeks without eating a vegetable or fruit tbh. We ate upf probably 98% of the time.

I left home at 18 and radically changed daily diet since then so I eat very different from growing up ( mostly fresh or homemade now). I know my parents still eat terribly though and they look after my nieces who also eat whatever they eat

I could be wrong but I don't think that many Ukrainians have immigrated here to make a difference plus they're only a little bit taller than us on average. I could be proven wrong but I haven't met any Ukrainians here yet. Where I live I've noticed a lot more new immigrants from like India and Bangladesh where people are usually shorter.
I agree most peoples diet ain't as good as they used to be with all the junk food I've got friends with kids the same age as mine (early primary age) and they're constantly given a stream of junk food like crisps sweets chocolate. I get giving your kid the occasional treat but this is CONSTANT throughout the day like every drink is a fruit shoot. I get given looks of horror when I don't buy my kids a chocolate bar at the schools tuck shop like I'm some kind of miserable hag 🤣
Fyi it's not a "treat" if it's every day multiple times a day haha

I think the statistics showing a height decrease could be down to a combination of immigration from shorter countries and diet tbh.

Nothing stranger than folk.

We tend to repeat what our parents did in many aspects of life, unless we are educated differently about various things and, crucially, choose to use that different knowledge to break the pattern of the more negative or less acceptable aspects in our ever changing society.

I think what is worse than being broke is being broke with no where nice to live. Because technically rustling up a cheap healthy meal on a budget is possible if you have got the know how and know where to get good cheap food but it's a different ball game when you have no kitchen or have to share a house with other people who are scuzzbags and trash the kitchen so it's too unhygienic to cook a meal. Or the other people are such assholes it makes going in any of the communal spaces impossible like venturing into the seven levels of hell.
Yeah you can probably tell I'm still hung up on it years later 😂
But seriously with rent /house prices being higher than ever this is probably more common. And all you can cook in your bedroom is toast or pot noodles with the kettle and toaster. Which according to the house rules you aren't technically even allowed in your room 🙄

Pretty sure there's always been a correlation between being poor and malnourishment. Before UPF people were just hungry and poor instead of fat and poor. I'm not sure either is ideal and they have a common factor that isn't UPF

It's interesting that the bent in these threads is tends towards limiting choice rather than increasing awareness of and affordability of, better choices. Both are about as pie in the sky as each other

Personally I'm puzzled by the take-out/deliveroo culture as I can rustle up a delicious healthy meal in 10 minutes or so.

Are you really ‘puzzled’? That people have different food tastes? That some like the convenience of food delivered? That some people enjoy certain kinds of takeaway food that they can’t cook at home? I am sorry if you can’t understand that 😔

Our childminder thought we were pretty odd for providing a pot of leftover veg and a few bits of chicken (i.e. real food) for our child's lunch, and we did do things like pack a chunk of cheddar and some cold, french beans as a snack, but eventually our childminder came around to the idea and said it was really nice to see our child tucking into their food.

Yet would not have raised an eyebrow, if they had been presented with a couple of Ella's pouches, no doubt.

Ella's pouches don't have any UPF ingredients in them.

That may be the case, but the point of the post was that the childminder thought it odd that she was given components of food with which to feed her charge. She would not have been taken aback at being given a pre-packaged meal is the point I was making. That would be seen as normal now.

I think there was an interesting thread about this. If you look at the ingredients they look really healthy but apparently the process they go through removes a lot of the nutrients.

I doubt it's the end of the world to buy them occasionally but some babies might be fed exclusively pouches because the parents think it's healthy and that's where the malnutrition comes in. Not an expert just repeating what I read on here.
Some of them smelt really nice especially the Aisha kitchen ones

How do we add a photo?

Even when you are using products you think are ok to make a healthy meal from scratch they can be UPF with various preservatives and thickeners eg coconut milk, tins of beans/lentils etc.

when you buy bread you expect it should b bread, not a chemical experiment.
the trouble is once you start looking at labels you realise the horror. And if you try to eradicate them all your food bill increases. Why should I need to pay treble for an artisan loaf when supermarkets are making profit hand over fist, poisoning us all.

if the businesses can’t be relied upon to be ethical then the government must legislate to ban those harmful substances from our food. It’s outrageous how much rubbish is in our food now. It’s a complete corruption made to take ur money for profit. No consequences to these companies.

I know in MN world cooking from scratch is cheaper because you can make a family meal for four with a lentil and a half a tomato but in the real world people don't choose to feed their kids crap because they can't be arsed to cook.

^

Just the tone of this post says it all

It's disapproving of lentils and tomatoes

Hence the obesity crisis

I recently discovered table salt is a UPF. It has something added to stop it sticking together.

I agree. What I often find with threads like this one is that people seem to be comparing extremes as if there were no middle ground.
It’s either a completely clean, all organic, zero UPF diet or frozen pizza, squash and endless snacks.
Somebody will always suggest lentils as the ultimate healthy meal, while someone else will say they can’t afford the spices to cook the lentils with, so frozen pizza it is.
We cook mostly from scratch, sometimes with organic ingredients, but more often with ingredients from Aldi.
We sometimes buy frozen pizza and breakfast cereal, but we also always have fresh fruit and veg at home.
We also buy frozen vegetables.
Some of the products we buy are UPF (bread for instance, definitely no time for home baking), but on balance I’d say we’re doing alright.

Have you ever read anything about the obesity crisis? A book, a newspaper article?