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

Where are you buying tuna that it's 70p a tin? I eat tuna salad for lunch most days. Tuna is usually over £1 a tin.

ASDA Skipjack Tuna Chunks in Brine - ASDA Groceries
Just googled this. I usually buy in packs of 4 so price checked this. Accept that it might cost more elsewhere. (But not a fortune)

It's prohibitively expensive to cook from scratch with fully healthy ingredients. We try to do that for the obvious reasons mentioned in the title and the price of raw ingredients, especially organic meat and produce, add up to eating out in a restaurant. We're only 3 people and an average meal at home costs £30-£50 in raw ingredients.

It can be more expensive to eat healthily, but it doesn't always cost over £10 a person per meal. That is ridiculous.
Using the cost of organic steak as an example is silly - people don't need to eat that in order to have a healthy meal, and even if you do eat, it's not all the time.

Just explain to me who exactly would be 'suffering'? Do you mean people who wanted to eat non stop UPF?

Just out of interest what are schools serving food wise now? My kids went about 10 years ago and they used to eat total crap at school. Processed junk that they would have only had rarely at home.

Cooking and also budgeting/financial skills should be taught at school. They could be made into academic subjects the same way that sport has gone

A lot of things people are suggesting didn't suddenly change in 2013 though. The focus here has been very much on obesity as that always creates quite a stir and that has obviously been increasing for a while.

But it's the height thing that really is the change. The uk is an outlier here. Other places are getting fatter but dont seem to be getting shorter.

My children didn't even know about desserts until they started school. Until then if they were still hungry after a meal they could have a bit more or some fruit, there was no expectation that every meal should end with something unhealthy and full of sugar. And the amount of stodge they get fed! Pizza, sausage rolls, pasta... They rarely got a large enough portion of protein or more than one portion of their 10 a day.

It's prohibitively expensive to cook from scratch with fully healthy ingredients. We try to do that for the obvious reasons mentioned in the title and the price of raw ingredients, especially organic meat and produce, add up to eating out in a restaurant. We're only 3 people and an average meal at home costs £30-£50 in raw ingredients.

This is total nonsense though. Cooking from scratch can cost a fraction of this.

This is not a money issue. It can be an education issue, mental energy issue, skills issue - but cooking cheaply and well for yourself is more than possible.

I agree, @BarHumbugs .

AFAIA, for many kids the school dinner is their main meal of the day. If this is crap,what hope is there........

I think the key issue is that cheap food used to be items you would buy from the butcher or grocery store and used recipes to make nutritious meals.

Nowadays cheap food is UPF mostly. Also food is everywhere - WH Smith trying to sell you a chocolate bar when you're in buying a magazine.

DS was overweight up to about 15 when he got massively into the gym and healthy eating. I'm not sure what I did wrong, we rarely have takeaways and eat a reasonable diet, but he refused to eat eggs and many sources of protein. I worked more or less ft and had a health condition when he was young.

There are no easy answers here.

I'm sure poverty is the biggest factor, but could immigration also be a factor? People from 'shorter' nations moving here?

Opposite problem here, financially comfortable so we eat out a lot. But we tend to choose things like lebanese restaurants where we can get a grill, hummus salad etc (DD still wmats chips though).

I think it’s time poverty a lot of the time, more than anything else. We eat a lot of meat and still eating at home is cheaper. Porridge and milk or a few eggs and some toast isn’t overly expensive for example.

It starts at home.
Parents need to not get their children into UPF in the first place. And that means not plying them with shit when they’re toddlers.
It is always cheaper to give your kid a banana or an apple and some kind of horrible rice crispy treat.
If they start with good habits, they’ll be somewhat resistant. But if parents are ill disciplined, then forget it.

If you’re obese and living on takeaways your child will do the same, regardless of what the school or state says or does

But you don't have to do that
I cook from scratch but I don't use organic because I can't afford it
So lasagne with Aldi pork and beef mince, tinned tomatoes, herbs, béchamel from scratch, the only thing I didn't make was the pasta but I used fresh pasta sheets

Or a jacket potato with tuna and salad or an omelette

Unlikely, asian children have a sharper growth curve before 5 and slower after 5. Theres not much difference in height up to that point.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Boys-and-girls-height-cnm_tbl2_15218733

Also most immigrant communities will be cooking at home if they are first gen, fewer UPF’s.

I always find it interesting when people talk about there not being snacks in the past.

At my grandparents born in the 1920s we always had 'elevenses' and 'tea' in-between meals. But I agree we probably didn't have as many snacks as nowadays.

I'm battling with UPF myself at the moment. Various reasons (illness, mental health, low income) has meant we have far too much.

@Chickenuggetsticks what she said. When dd was a baby/toddler we always brought some sort of portable fruit veg out with us if nearing mealtimes and likely to hit the tired and hungry time before we got home and to ward off a meltdown. I even made scrambled eggs once to take to Chester zoo on a Surestart outing. I avoided jars of upf at all costs. I think the baby food jars are a really awful way of preying on parents who don't feel confident in their own cooking ability.
Maybe the answer lies in schools and getting kids confidently cooking- it's a life skill.

@curious79 this is true as unpalatable as it is. My Mother who was very healthy till she was around 87 was a person who would have been criticised on MN for being extremely judgemental. She really was and came out with the classic you need a licence to have a dog but not children. The only way to sort out the nations eating would be to take away choice and bring back rationing and that will never happen.

@Kendodd I am mixed race and my Dad was from a short nation which made me laugh but it is true, so it’s a fair point. Two of my women relatives are 4ft 11, I reached the heady heights of 5ft 4. I married a 6ft 1 white guy and we have a DS at 6ft 5. So my short nation genes lost out.

Or taller people leaving after brexit?

I dont know as the report doesn't mention that.

I dont know if immigration was materially different for babies born in 2012, 11, 10 etc to those from 2013 or whether shorter people started immigrating here in big numbers in time to have babies from 2013 onwards.

Where are you shopping for an organic steak to cost so much? Organic steak can be obtained from Sainsburys for much cheaper than that. Cooking healthy meals from scratch, does not have to cost so much, you are choosing to use very expensive ingredients.

@User8746422 absolute nonsense. I cook from scratch for two of us and our total grocery bill for the week (including cleaning stuff and gasp some stuff like crisps, chocolate and biscuits) maximum £85 - and we could definitely go lower.

I made a chilli at the weekend that did four generous meals with rice with a bit left over to have for lunch one day with a piece of bread.

It was made with 750 grams of decent quality minced beef, an onion, a carrot, a couple of sticks of celery, two peppers, a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of kidney beans (plus garlic, chilli, smoked palrika, bay leaves, a cinammon stick, cumin etc..).

I suspect it came out at around £3 a portion.

I like good quality fish and meat (preferabl free range and/or organic) so operate a policy of bulking it it with vegetables and pulses and buying cheaper cuts or species - we eat a lot of mackerel. I also make liberal use of the yellow sticker section. I got two very nice salmon fillets half price on Saturday. They went straight in to the freezer and I will use them tomorrow to make terayaki salamon with egg fried rice and pak choi.

Cooking at home is way cheaper for me. Eating out in London is phenomenally expensive.

Yes but with what types of ingredients? The prerequisite is that meat & eggs needs to meet the highest level of animal welfare and organic farming. Fruit and veg need to be organic and pesticide free, local if possible. This is not judging anyone who shops and cooks with different ingredients but it's an objective fact based on what level of food is deemed "healthiest", and arguable tastiest. Children can't be forced to eat healthy if it doesn't taste good.

Cheaper meat and produce often don't taste like anything and that's why children refuse to eat them. The cheapest, non-organic apples that have been kept in cold storage months literally taste like biting into cold styrofoam. How can a child be expected to eat that when they also have the option of a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps? Cheap chicken is dry and rubbery with zero flavour. How are kids supposed to eat that compared to deep fried chicken nuggets slathered with sauce.

Holy shit 😆 Makes me glad I'm a vegetarian and can rustle up a meal from scratch for under a fiver then!