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

It’s a processed ingredient according to the Nova classification. I don’t think a substance that is basically still what it always was but with one additive would count as ultra processed.

Go for the coarse sea salt (although more expensive) which doesn’t have it.

This is worth a read - loads of baby products including Ella’s kitchen ones are upf:

https://www.firststepsnutrition.org/upfs-marketed-for-infants-and-young-children

Thanks. I will have a look and consign the table salt for makinb playdoh.

I, somewhat irrationally, hate those squeezy, sucky pouches which are designed to remove any engagement from eating at all other than mindlessly sucking straight from a packet.

Exactly.

Beating obesity in children doesn't need to involve lentils, avocados or any other imported foods. Potatoes mashed with a knob of butter or a splash of milk saw many of our forefathers live into their 90s in excellent health. Simple food. Pure food. From the ground. And every child I've ever known bloody loves the stuff. I'm not convinced that it's all about poverty. I do believe there's an element of effort-avoidance. A sack of potatoes gets you a lot of meals. As does a large sack of rice. Our slim and fit grandparents had cheap, simple food with the same local veg repeated during the week. Meat once a week only in many cases. Don't get me wrong, I love my Taco Tuesdays and my Carbonaras. My kids don't need those meals to be healthy though. Convincing ourselves that they do is half the problem I feel. People swing the other way entirely when there's a world of simplicity between homemade fish pie and frozen chicken nuggets.

@LadyKenya I don't know what the other minded children had packed up for their lunches. It's probably less work for the childminder if all the mindees turn up with packets of finger food / squeezy pouches. Our child needed a plate/bowl, use of the microwave and, when they were older, cutlery.

Pouches seem to remove a lot of context of food from the experience of consuming it - e.g. a pea puree arrives at the child without them experiencing the colour, sight, smell, texture of the food. I've seen in the past some pouches include things like apple and pear juice (i.e. sugar) in foods that would never contain them normally (e.g. something like a veg chilli or bolognaise). The fruit juice's purpose in those is to ramp up the sugar content. The child then unsurprisingly likes it and eat more of it, and the parent continues to buy it.

Pouches seem to use an awful lot of plastic whilst also being a way of introducing food in way that people tend not to use when they're older (maybe pro cyclists sucking down an energy gel is an adult version of sucky feeding). I get they'll be really convenient, but they also seem to be used as a default way to feed babies when out and about, when there are more sustainable alternatives.

I think that’s quite a generalisation tbh.
There are many first generation immigrant kids at our school and I’d say the prevalence of obesity is definitely comparable to their British peers.
I’d say it depends on many different factors.

I genuinely believe that when we scrutinise and obsess over small things like this, we alienate people and they give up. We can't deny the difference in an anti-caking agent added to salt so it does not stick together in the salt shaker and the long list of emulsifiers, preservatives, gums, sugars etc in a supermarket loaf of bread/cake/ready meal which is designed to be hyper palatable so you eat far more than you need to.

We need to let the small things slide. I cant even begin to express the frustration on a UPF FB group when people say there is no point baking bread because the yeast is a UPF. Less than a teaspoon of yeast goes in an entire home baked loaf. It is still a million times better for you than supermarket alternatives

I agree. It's sad that people feel like they've failed when they've made a wonderful, nutritious casserole / stew / soup, and then discover than their stock cube had a small amount of emulsifier and colouring in.

I get that artificial emulsifiers are seen as pretty awful for the gut, but when someone's managed to switch from, say, stopping off at McDs for chucking stuff in a slow cooker and adding a stock cube, they need to be feeling pretty darn happy with that.

I wonder if a disconnect between supermarket foods and what we grow has added to the trend for UPFs?

My dad was from a farming/fishing background. There was rarely anything served that wasn't grown or butchered by them. He was one of the first to see the value in organic farming and the dangers of additives for animal feed or interfering with the natural growth of the animals.

Mum, a city kid, grew up with food poverty and was malnourished as a child. She had some basic cooking skills in time, but it was actually my Dad who taught her a lot of cooking. He taught her how to make butter and bread, how to pluck a chicken and gut a fish, how to make pies and pastry. Drinks available in the house were milk from our cow, water, tea or instant coffee. We never had anything fizzy except on a very rare occasion. He was deeply suspicious of modified foods and ready meals, wondering what shite they add to give it the shelf life. That extended into fertilisers too, he always used organic natural methods to fertilise his crops - I don't think we ate fruit or veg that didn't come from what he grew. We had the kind of food that a rural kid in the 50s might have had, in the 80s. If it was up to mum it would have been tinned pies jars of veg, and freezer meals mostly, interspersed with takeaways because that was her background.

Each of us kids are quite foodie, and so far none of us are overweight (well I'm getting a little menopausal plumpness now.) All of us love cooking from scratch, as 'raw' as we can start with. And I really think that came from how we grew up helping out with the farming.

When DH got unwell and was out of work, the first thing I looked at was cutting back on groceries. But my Lidl receipt has gone from about €70 to well over €100 most weeks and that's with me being more frugal than I was before- the price of food has gone up drastically. It's gotten more difficult to put something healthy on the table and I like cooking lentils!

I can't imagine the added struggle for people who have dietary restrictions or just find cooking a hated chore, as well as not having much money to spare. I can totally understand them reaching for a box from the freezer.

I fully agree with you that home grown - see my post further up.

But I've noticed that I could buy a bag of potatoes and a few days later they are sprouting. Many people would chuck them in the bin, but they are fine. I couldn't buy a big sack because I've nowhere to put them and not enough people to eat them!

Knowing what to do with leftovers is another big skill that looks like it's being lost. I'm doing what I can to educate myself more on that, as well as learning about foraging - I've not bought a pot of jam in over a year - I went out blackberrying last summer with DS and forgot how bloody delicious it is on a fresh scone with proper butter.

I agree - I try very hard to keep my UPF consumption down. I'd always preferred to cook stuff from scratch because I'd grown to dislike the ready-made stuff we got served a lot as children and had read about UPFs a while back so was already cutting down. But reading Ultra Processed People shifted that up a gear.

That said, I'm not going to beat myself up if the only UPF I've eaten this week is 1) a couple of teaspoons of stock powder, 2) a tablespoon or so of harissa paste and 3) some crispy chilli stuff in a stirfry.

And you'd have to prise my occasional McDonalds out of my cold, dead hands. The difference being that it's occasional - when we were kids a Wimpey was a huuuuge treat, as was something like a Vienetta or cake. We've lost sight so much of what proper food is that we don't realise that we're eating "occasional treats" all the damn time.

And on top of that, I've had people comment about what I eat and buy: "Oh you're so HEALTHY" (when eating a salad) or "Where's all the proper food" (a comment on my shopping sitting on the conveyor belt, which was mostly fruit and veg and wine ) Why is this seen as weird?

Snacking is another thing that wasn't around when I was a kid.
If you were genuinely hungry between meals occasionally you got homemade brown bread with home made butter or homemade jam!
My kid would happily "snack" on a family size bag of doritos and then 30 mins later say he was too full for dinner if he was allowed. He's done it before so now he gets offered a couple of crackers and cheese and if he refuses, well, he's not that hungry!

I was about to make the same comment so glad someone said this. Lentils are nasty imo. I don't know why they're praised on here as the ultimate cheap healthy food. What happened to mashed potatoes and some cheap mince. With like carrots and frozen peas in the mince. Great childhood meal for me and my kids still eat it now. No use moaning your kids won't eat healthy food when you're serving them some nasty lentil concoction.

No offense meant to anyone who has mastered the delicious lentil recipe, I'm just saying there's other options

In defense of the humble lentil, we all love a lentil curry. But my point is that our brains shouldn't navigate to asparagus and avocados and other expensive, imported items when we think "healthy". Healthy food is unadulterated food. Our grandparents only had local, unadulterated foods. I always recommend introducing baby potatoes with skin on into child's diet as early as possible. They are delicious steamed and zero prep.

Compare the comments on this thread to the comments on this thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5100015-to-have-given-her-extra-food

And you might start to see where the issue lies.
I should add that the OP didn't return after the first half hour. Make of that what you will.

It’s so sad to read. I think it’s a mixture of things, mostly parents being time-poor due to both having to work or work more due to COL crisis. Meaning they don’t have time to cook nutritious meals from scratch or take their kids to the park/play football etc and do sports with them.

And secondly fresh food is so much more expensive than UPF, as well as sports clubs out of school etc also costing a small fortune.

Also a lack of education in the UK around cooking and nutrition. My DH’s are Scandinavian and their lifestyle ie constantly outdoors, healthy eating and cooking is so different to ours and much healthier tbh.

@User8746422 the unpalatable truth is that formula milk is linked to obesity and diabetes in adulthood and is full of rubbish but you are a horrible person if you ever dare to mention this

Parents are more influential than they realise especially when the children are tiny
lots of cheap fruit and veg around .. a pressure cooker is a god send for me lately .. healthy curries etc .. electric pressure cooker is my go to .. food banks my bottom .. obesity is part of the massive issue for the NHS.

Only it's simply not true!

Agree. I actually know several people where that kind of attitude totally backfired.
I think a balanced and more relaxed approach to food is more beneficial.
Fwiw, our kids also really like vegetables, even though we never forced them to eat them.
We just always offered veg/ salad with meals, that worked well for us.
Also, the total ban on sweets - why?

Not an impossible challenge at all. It is a challenge that needs to be challenged at multiple levels. Parents need help with budgeting, cooking healthy meals and getting kids active. They also need robust conversations when their children are obese. I’m not talking a little puppy fat as that is often normal in growing stages. But professionals need to start having conversation with parents that are focused on facts and not the parents huer feelings. Parents are creating lifelong health issues for the children and it’s just not fair

You probably wouldn’t even have to get off tiktok tbh, plenty of cooking videos on there too!
I agree with you though - there is so much information out there, so many recipes and step-by-step tutorials.