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 had a Ukrainian family with young children to stay for a couple of years and when they arrived we were gobsmacked by how good their children were at eating proper food. The little boy particularly loved liver and I remember him demanding, and polishing off, 5 pieces.
Needless to say this didn’t survive contact with the British UPF swamp and by the time they left they were just like any children here rejecting vegetables and demanding pizza. But the parents’ habits changed too - they kept on cooking healthy food but gave in to buying lots of snacks. It was depressing to see.

I make a very nutritious, cheap meal: vegetable soup which has a whole cabbage, whole celery head, three/four carrots, couple onions, 4 cups chicken (or vegetable) stock, add some spices. Add shredded chicken for protein. This makes enough for six servings and add a bit of seeded bread and very cheap per meal. Easy too. Stick it in a thermos for school/work.
Even an omelette with a bit of veg and cheese thrown in is quick and easy and fairly cheap.
I think it is easy access to processed foods. These are low value in terms of nutrients and are engineered to make them addictive. But also remember all those stories of parents giving crisps/McDonalds through the school gates when Jamie Oliver was trying to implement healthy lunches at some schools? Some parents are doing their kids no favours.

quite, and te marketing of UPF right form baby weaning is incredibly successful. Just look at the utter shite in the baby food aisles- crisps, biscuits, cakes...,all marketed as "baby" food. But you think it's what babies must eat, because it's int he baby food aisle ... you're conditioned to believe that crisps are essential food for babies, and convinced of your choices because instead of calling them "Cheese Wotsits" they're called "Organic cheesy puffs" or "veggie nibbles" or whatever. So you have the swathe of parents feeding their kids Wotsits happily, a swathe of parents merrily feeding them cheesy melt puffs with tomato powder (and feeling smug / superior to those Wotsit givers...) - so like the majority of parents happily giving their 8 month old baby some wierdly-formed corn based snack covered in favour powders ... both forms of which are UPF and utter junk. Babies are being weaned on fake/junk foods, of course they're then going to struggle to enjoy a stick of celery!

Yes!
If a child doesn’t drink anything except milk and water they won’t ask for juice or fizzy drinks.
Same with candy and crisps, why give it to a toddler who would otherwise be happy with apple slices.
Just because there is an ice cream van doesn’t mean you can’t say no to your child.

Isn’t the point that the kids who are 5 are shorter than ten years ago. Maybe you are thinking of older kids, my DD is 13 but has some giant friends. We we are at a huge summer party with friends and lots of children and many commented on how my Dd is not very big, one even said she looks pre-pubescent. She is about 5ft5 but skinny and small features I suppose, I don’t think she is particularly small but in comparison to some of the younger children, a couple of whom were a bit overweight she did look quite small.

I think part of this is that many people have lost the concept of what a 'treat' is in terms of frequency

E.g. My DN has 2 children . . . she quickly found when her DC's started school that many children were taken to McDonald's (other fast food outlets are available!) every Friday as a treat whereas other children were given a small treat on the last day of term. There's a lot of difference between a fast food meal every week (and I'm sure these children were given other treats as well) and an ice-cream or hot chocolate once a term

We seem to have lost the concept of a treat as being something occasional to look forward to and relish . . . in many households treats are given so frequently that they become the norm so, when a treat is genuinely appropriate, whatever is given is escalated in terms of size or price to make it more special IYSWIM

I work at a school and the kids are honestly huge. From reception to year 6 with some exceptions of course.

Yeah I agree. I think people are looking for one solution to a very complex issue. The obesity rates are lower among more affluent, but they are far from 0%. What is a good predictor is actually parent's weight and this works across different income groups:

A child with one obese parent has a 50 percent chance of being obese. When both parents are obese, their children have an 80 percent chance of obesity. (https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/conditions/obesity#:~:text=A%20child%20with%20one%20obese,gain%20varies%20for%20different%20people.)

I think one of the reasons for ubiquity of UPF comparing to other European countries is also cultural. Don't get me wrong but I think in general other nations care more about quality of their food. Not just in France & Italy, but also in Central Europe the quality of fresh produce, bread, meat sold in Tesco or Lidl is much higher than in the UK.

Re food allergies (which btw I’m not denying are real, and often very debilitating), the increase in their prevalence and increasing caution around them can also make it difficult for parents to provide healthy food in school, even if they do want to avoid the terrible UPF school dinners.

I’ve taught in lots of schools, and some of those I’ve worked in are so prescriptive around food - one had banned all nuts, seeds (so no hummus, pesto, seeded bread, seeded flapjacks etc), strawberries, kiwi, tomato and mango. Another banned all dairy products as well as nuts. A third had banned nuts (a given really), seeds and grapes (due to concerns around choking). It can be hard for time-pressed parents to work around these rules, making it tempting just to bung in a white bread ham sandwich and some pre-packaged snacks that have already been checked for all possible allergens.

Then you get to home time, and they’re all handing out packets of Haribo for someone’s birthday…

There’s an interesting psychology around some of this stuff I think - there certainly seems to be a perception in some people’s minds that because if comes in a packet it’s somehow ‘safer’, in that it won’t cause allergies, spread germs etc. My own DM is a case in point - she will only buy her fruit and veg shrink-wrapped from a supermarket and won’t touch markets, farm shops, greengrocer’s etc because of ‘germs’.

If you let a child get so skinny that they are emaciated and it affects their health, it's child abuse (rightly so).
If you let a child get porky, and it affects their health, it is just modern Britain and nobody is allowed to say anything.

I really fear for future generations. I swear there were not as many overweight children even 10 years ago. They were in the minority.

I don’t know. I only know two obese children around here and it’s a council Estate. One of them is autistic. The children nowadays in primary school are giants.

Microplastics have been found in semen, not in sperm; they are not in our DNA.
They might cause mutations and damage to the DNA, but they are not part of its structure.

Also where there is support e.g. breakfast clubs and free school dinners, the budgets are poor affecting food quality. Breakfasts are beige (white toast, cereals) and school dinners increasingly have heavily processed foods. Many schools don't have fully functional on-site catering and just re-heat industrially catered food. Portions are also often poor which exacerbates snacking culture as it's not substantial enough to last until dinner time, and not adequate enough to be the main meal of the day for families that struggle with providing an evening meal.

This is really important in my view. DD's school recently relaunched their meal offering to include "healthy vegetarian and vegan" options. Except that they didn't. They offered Quorn. And pasta with jar sauce. And low fat yoghurts.

We need educators and HCP - and I say this as an HCP myself - to stop encouraging people to eat chemical shit and call it healthy.

This is absolutely for the government to solve, they need to react in the same way they did for smoking.

People have had decades to start eating nothing but lentil soup and bananas or whatever but they haven't done it. This is a pressing public health issue and has to be solved without pointing fingers. Btw there are many studies showing cico is worthless.

Personally I think all food advertising should be banned, sugary drinks should have ugly unbranded labels like cigarettes, and full ingredient lists should be posted everywhere - the fact that in-store supermarket bakeries don't have to post their ingredients is a disgrace. Additives and food that is just industrial byproducts like refined soybean oil should be highlighted on the label. Corn syrup should be banned as well.

*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 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.*

I agree with you on animal welfare, but on the whole I'm wary of claims that organic = healthy. I won't pay extra for organic fruit and veg that is going to be peeled. As for rubbery chicken, a casserole with chicken thighs is unlike to be rubbery unless cooked to oblivion and you can make a decent kfc fakeaway by soaking chicken in lemon juice & yoghurt to tenderise it before adding spices and breadcrumbs.

School lunches drive me mad. So much UPF crap. So many cheap (usually UPF) carbs. So many stodgy "low sugar" desserts. Nursery also doesn't help - more UPF, and they seem to just eat constantly. And it really pisses me off that in addition to this our local council have now started pushing "plant based" vegan meals on environmental grounds, which means, you guessed it, even more of a deluge of cheap UPF just so they can tick the "environmental" box. Either find suitable whole food alternatives like lentils and beans, or just feed the children some bloody meat, fish or dairy with their vegetables fgs.

Completely depends where you are in the UK. I live in a popular holiday area where it's the culture to enjoy outdoor activities- swimming, surfing, walking, teenagers jumping off high things into the water 🙈 etc, and there is not a single obese child in DS2 's Y4 class. Pretty much none in the school. They are also extremely rare in DS1's secondary (which offers a massive range of extracurricular activities, including shedloads of sport).

When the summer holidays roll around, I swear the average BMI of the county doubles. You see a lot of very big holidaymakers, usually with Northern or Midlands accents.

It's just easier to be active down here with such lovely surroundings and the coast I think, plus so many people have come down here because of that that it's become the culture (so not much pushback from school parents if kids do/ eat healthy stuff at school). It's definitely not income, because this is one of the poorest counties in the UK!

Also, if you live in a village there are no takeaways and JustEat doesn't deliver, and it's a right faff going to get a takeaway, so it's not an easy option for us.

I have to admit I had popped into an Asda near work to do a top-up shop and honestly got the ick of what I had put in my basket. Petit Filous. Cheese strings. chicken bites. Crisps.

All alone in moderation, fine, but if I had popped into M and S I wouldn't have picked any of that stuff up. I just did it because it was there, and cheap.

Products also aimed at being 'Healthy' - picked up some sort of dried fruit bar and almost fainted looking at the sugar and the calories in it.

But then are cornflakes not also a UPF and as such not particularly nutritious?

It's an important point though as sometimes the food guidance can be overwhelming and contradictory.

A slice of toast with say peanut butter or a bowl of cereal is of course better than a bag or haribos, but it's easy to say UPF and throw hands up in horror.

Few people have time or inclination to make their own bread - DH is the exception- so sometimes it's about the least worst option. So say a dinner of frozen breaded fish, boiled potatoes and frozen peas could be deemed as not great because of the processed fish, but it's still a heck of a lot better than KFC.

This

I think something that isn't talked about is time. Both parents work outside of the home there just isn't time to cook from
Scratch every night for many. I batch cook but only because I do it on weekend evenings, I can see why people wouldn't.

Sorry it should have said
The kids that AREN'T fat were brought chopped veg, salads, berries, oatcakes, wholemeal bread, hummus, flapjacks.

Hope that makes more sense.

I'm also not saying that poverty isn't a huge factor in this and being time poor (though actually think this is more marketing than anything as the quickest meals to make are things like stir fries and veg pasta. Whereas I find I always burn chicken nuggets etc!

Every time I go to ASDA I get the rage. There's one very close to DS1'S school though so we do end up going sometimes, and I end up stalking the aisles muttering "What are we even doing here, it's all shite?!" It's not even that cheap any more.

I much prefer LIDL- it has a far higher ratio of simple, unprocessed ingredients to food adjacent substances, which I ascribe to the German influence.

Another aspect of this is that children used to eat what their parents ate . . . there was no choice other than 'eat it or leave it'

Nowadays we have the concept of 'childrens' food', packed with goodness-only knows what additives, marketed to be appealing to children and generally on special offer making it more attractive to cash-strapped parents

With a freezer full of these products, children are able to demand their favourites, so that one child has a burger, another has chicken nuggets and a third has pizza.

I know some children who have this set-up at home and their diet is extremely limited as each child only ever gets given the few products that they like. The children love it, the parents find it easy but it doesn't bode well for their future health . . .

Absolutely agree. The only levers that will work here are money. Humans have evolved to seek out high calorie, high fat food for survival when famine was a frequent event. That's not the environment in the UK anymore and the government needs to start taxing food by calorie content and nutritional value, ban UPF advertising and special offers. Ringfence the tax to allow discounting of unprocessed food and healthy food retailers in deprived areas. All this is under government control and doable by changes in food VAT. They won't do it though as ironically it would be a vote killer. Plus obesity is shaving years off life expectancy which will save on pensions and social care.