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 tonnes of junk!

My DD would eat a cheese or egg sandwich, but they're not freshly made and they only have the very cheap pre-packaged sandwiches.

One of my dc is extremely overweight. Eats very healthily and not too much, we think it’s due to steroids for allergies and severe asthma but we get so many comments when out. In some ways it’s lucky she’s also autistic as she doesn’t understand but some people can be cruel

Also parent of a year 1 child in a London state primary in a middle class area here and similar story. They do seem
to offer an unlimited “salad bar”
alonhside the upf burgers and pizza but I’d be surprised if any of the kids ate it.

Weve just started sending DS in with a packed lunch as they’ve now introduced dessert every day.

Ah, the days of Sure Start. Don't forget that's all been scrapped. Our local centre used to run cooking classes for children and parents in the school holidays - it was amazing!

Yes, it is unbelievable that the Government would be so short sighted, as to close such a valuable resource. How on earth could they not see that it is vital to invest in very young children, and that support must continue as they grow.

@crackofdoom A while back someone published excerpts on Facebook of his diary as a young man walking the Ridgeway Path in the 1970s with his two mates- it was really entertaining, but what stood out for me was the low availability of food. They were on a low budget, and seemed to exist on mostly rice. On the rare occasions when they encountered a shop that was open they couldn't afford much- maybe some oranges, or on one occasion they found a chip shop and enjoyed the luxury of chip butties! In the photos they look incredibly skinny.

Nowadays, every village Spar would sell you 100g Dairy Milk for a quid, or a 2 for 1 offer on Pringles, or a packet of value biscuits for 50p.

I remember as a treat on a Saturday night, we’d have a Mars bar, but not to ourselves, it would be one cut up so that that we all had a small piece.

When you're really on your uppers you need meals that you know your DC will eat, and which can be prepared without using a lot of fuel. You might live in a food desert (ie no handy large supermarket that you can reach, only a local convenience store whose stock will be predominantly long-life ie UPF foodstuffs)

You won't have the time/energy/money to cook a range of different meals, some of which might be rejected by the DC - yes, you can by repeated exposure get people accustomed to a greater range, but if you have no alternative fuel for them during that time then they go hungry and no parent wants to see that.

We have a food industry that is completely geared up to supporting cheap, long-shelf life foodstuffs as those are the most profitable for them

So yes, a lot of people are very, very stuck.

And it's the nation's health that pays the price.

I'd like to see a return to Home Economics to the curriculum, replacing food technology. Even if that doesn't solve all the factors in an obesogenic society - particularly the impact of relative poverty - it would cover useful things about diet and running a household which people could draw on as and when their circumstances allow (assuming anyone remembers what they learned as school - but even a faint recollection might nudge someone in a useful direction later)

We need to un-do so many decades of food misinformation. Most of it driven by large scale manufacturers. I don't think it's just kids who are from low income and low education suffering under nutrition, although that is a serious concern. An awful lot of middle class people I know are eager to have all manner of intolerances. They think gluten/dairy/anything with fat in is bad for you and these are people who are actually interested in health and diet. They buy weird vegan spreads because they think a bit of butter is bad for you. Many of their kids are denied key food groups with the misguided idea that they are bad for them. I would guarantee that a few are actually malnourished. All starting from birth. Look at the figures for CMPA then read around it and the rise in diagnosis (don't want to detail the thread with this). The drive of all of this results in people eating less whole foods and more UPF. I don't think it's all coincidence!

People don’t WANT to have food intolerances. They are a pain in the neck.

If you had said the rise in intolerances was likely driven by our fucked up diet I would agree with you. There an argument that the Chorleywood Process of bread manufacture is behind the rise in gluten intolerance, for instance. That is far more plausible than people doing it for fun.

My dcs primary school serve quite healthy food. Things like a chicken and rice dish, a veggie option like butternut and vegetable pastry, there's always jacket potato. My dc don't like it though because they're too healthy and don't put salt in anything. I think a bit of salt would make it more enjoyable for most.

The problem with many families is they just don't cook from when their dc are young and then it's hard to make the changes as the kids are used to high sugar processed food.
Some parents just can't manage it.
I remember working with a young teenage girl who was fed up of frozen foods and said "I wish my mum would cook something like a spaghetti bolognese" she'd had it at her friends house and really wanted a family meal where they all ate a proper meal together.
There's a lot unsaid in that kind of setup and it's so valuable for children.

This is so hard to remedy, I have an interest in it and still don't really know where to start. The only things that I have in my cupboard that are not upf are extra virgin olive oil, porridge, fruit and veg and frozen fruit veg and fresh and frozen cuts of whole meat or fish
Every other cooking oil is upf, every breakfast cereal, or biscuit, cake, yogurt except real greek, every soup, loaf of bread, ice-cream, drink other than milk or water.
I'n Asda every single loaf of bread is upf even the fresh baked.
None of that could have been purchased 100 years ago and we have not evolved to eat it - or the additives, flavourings, emulsifiers, stabilisers in it.

Look, I fully understand allergy. I have a dc with severe allergy. But a lot of people decide that certain food groups are bad for them and it's based largely on a load of old misinformation. For example the idea that fat in your diet is bad. They end up filling the gap with UPFs because essentially humans need to eat a balance of certain food groups and a certain number of calories per day to be healthy. I see this all time within a certain demographic in my social circle and they push these ideas on to their children too.

Food technology lessons are good to impart some knowledge and practice but we all know that people often do what they know and experience growing up.
Those who want to do things differently will do regardless and seek ways to do so.
I'm sure most people are aware that processed food is crap but just don't care.
I've raised my dc on home cooked food but they'd still probably choose Pringles, frozen chips, instant noodles and processed meat like salami if they were given a choice. Maybe not daily but definitely every now and then.
Good job they don't often get a choice.

Tinned food tends to be the better end of long life as it's the heating and canning process that preserves it rather than using additives. Most of it passes the "could I buy that ingredient", and the :100 years ago" test.

There is a distinction between food being processed to make it edible or conserve it, and the ultra-highly processed foods made with products that can only be made through industrial processes and therefore digest differently because of the way they're already broken down.

If the majority of your diet is made up of foods that are whole or a fairly lightly processed form (e.g. baked beans- it still digests like a bean) then there's not much to sweat over.

Is this just a statistic in uk?

We are Central Europe now, Ds goes to a mixed age kindergarten which is 2.5-6.5 years approximately. 70 ish children. I don’t think I have seen a single overweight child there the last two years. The school is next door, 6-10 years olds, I don’t think any there stand out as overweight either?

The shops still sell junk food also. Although at kindergarten they are only allowed things like bread with toppings, fruit, veg, similar.

It's a sad situation that doesn't look as if it will be resolved soon.

So much has changed since I grew up in the 50s and 60s. At school we had weekly cookery classes that taught the basics of nutrition, and we cooked a meal to take home.

We had plenty of sports provision - gym, hockey and tennis, and children regularly played out with their friends.

This isn't possible any more, due to the increased level of traffic, and far more children on screens (another separate issue that will surely have serious repercussions).

I do think there is a bit more awareness filtering through now, after the publication of 'Ultra Processed People.' That book was a real eye opener, and it clearly showed how chemical additives in food are affecting the body.

I agree with you about the income related problems but the problem is beyond just that now, it is also about how to cook vegetables. I did t watch all of it but I remember some programme Hugh Fearnly(?) made where he pulled up in a vegetable van in a more deprived area and didn’t have many takers for his vegetables.

I’m not sure about kids height falling. Kids are bloody HUGE. The height of them blows me away.

A report on micro plastics being found in every man’s sperm tested in a study is what shocked me recently. We literally have plastic in our DNA now.

There are many excellent and salient points about food poverty contributing to this but I feel this lets off the hook the people who just can't be arsed to make good choices. Standing outside the school gate yesterday, I watched a huge amount of fat children walking out of the corner shop eating an ice cream accompanied by their fat parent. It was genuinely heartbreaking, seeing a primary school child's t shirt strain over their wobbling belly is appalling.

People really, really shouldn't need to be told that feeding their children ice cream and crisps is making them unhealthy.

I see parents walking children round to school past my house every morning. Often eating a bag of crisps or haribos for breakfast. Pretty sure they could find a couple of quid for a box of cornflakes and a couple of pints of milk

This. It has NEVER been easier to get fresh, healthy food delivered to your door. It's as easy to get a Tesco shop of veg delivered as it is junk food.

Vegetables are much nicer in the 21st century rather than the soggy over-boiled roots and cruciferous veg of my childhood. Both the range and cooking methods.

A significant proportion of children won't touch them on camp (we tend to do "deconstructed" foods to maximise what they'll eat and cut waste. They're also getting picker about fruit over time. Bananas (sweet, reliable taste/ texture) go down most. Oranges which are most faff with peeling are barely touched.

Incidentally my autistic child likes consistency and is not a fan of fruit (veg lover fortunately) so it's only really tinned fruit that he'll eat because of the natural variations of pips, taste, sweetness etc. There are some such as melon or pineapple that he copes with better than the usual oranges, apples, strawberries etc.

One of the nice things about catering for children is when they try something for the first time or done differently and they find that they like it.

When we do cooking nights, we try to stick to functional cooking so they learn practical skills. (Totally not because the hut oven is rubbish and burns cakes )

You have a generation of parents who don't know what real food is because they were fed UPFs by their parents.

It's a loss of key information for a whole generation that will now keep passing to the next.

they could -but they don't want to - because they think it's fine to give crisps for breakfast. Money often isn't the issue, its the attitude/education/understanding and perception that cooking with ingredients is hard .. more expensive.. time consuming and "oh well the kids wont; eat x, y ,z" (well, of course they won't if given the choice between crisps and porridge) - that's the problem