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

But the government shapes the choices we have, and the environment in which we make those choices.

i think this is a very good point, overworked and time poor parents aren’t going to be able to focus as much as they’d like to on health. Factor in a lot of people even working long hours will also still struggle financially and things are just too difficult, something has to give somewhere and we hear it a lot don’t we from when our dc are tiny it starts off ‘fed is best’ which is true but then carries on to things like ‘ if everyone is alive and been fed at the end of the day you’ve done a good job!’ which yes reassures but then suddenly we have this explosion in overweight dc and health issues and concerns over UPF but parents have to make hard choices and they prioritise a roof over their heads .

@LakeTiticaca the haribos will be a bribe for getting them dressed and out of the house on time lol

I have seen a small (pre-school) child eat a large pack of haribos which were given to the child to keep them quiet during a christening service which lasted about 25 minutes . . . . (the service, not the haribos ~ the sweets only lasted about 15 minutes 😂)

Some of it is stupidity and ignorance or lazy parenting, not just poverty. Two of my step children and some of their friends at school are obese, but their parents absolutely refuse to acknowledge this. My DP tears his hair out over it as we have them 50% of the time, have a very healthy (made from scratch) diet with lots of fruit and vegetables and reasonable treats (2 biscuits after dinner only unless it’s a birthday or something). We also do as much exercise as we can with the kids (swimming, going to the park etc.) and we are not rich and our food shop for the entire family of 7 each month is circa £500 each month.

We’re by no means perfect but my children are a very healthy weight so it’s obviously not the diet and lifestyle in our household causing the step-children to be obese.

in the other 50% of my step-children’s time, however there is a constant stream of junk food. His ex spends far more money on food than we do (obvious from all the branded stuff they name, meals out and take always they mention or what we see in their lunch boxes) but she refuses to accept that there is anything wrong with this or that her children are obese despite the fact that their BMI has said otherwise for 5 years, that they are visibly overweight and need plus size school clothes.

You just can’t tell some people that they’re not giving their kids the best start in life when all they want to be is a lazy Disney parent.

I was an obese child, and morbidly obese for most of my adult life. When my daughter was 2 my previously fit and healthy DH died suddenly and I decided I had to make sure that I'm around for my daughter as long as possible so I totally overhauled my diet. To be honest, even when I was obese it wasn't terrible – I certainly wasn't eating chips and chocolate and takeaway every night – but I did eat UPFs including jarred sauces, white bread, cereal etc. I moved to a high protein, high good fats, low carb, low sugar diet which meant I was forced to cook from scratch every night, and as a result I pretty much cut out UPFs entirely, mostly by accident rather than by design. The transformation has been unbelievable. I've lost 6.5 stone, my skin is better, my hair and nails are stronger and shinier, my energy levels are transformed... And I'm not religious about it, I'll still eat out and get the odd takeaway but in general I eat whole foods.

This of course has also changed my daughter's diet – I'm even less strict with her and she does sometimes have chicken nuggets or McDonalds or a pasta ready meal, and she has school dinners which are no doubt full of UPFs! – but mostly she eats what I eat, so whole foods cooked from scratch. Preiously she was on the 90th centile for weight and between the 75th and 98th centile for height. She's now 6 and is 75th for height, 50th for weight, and is tall and slim. I am far from a perfect mother – she goes to gymnastics and swimming and we do a lot of dog walks but I wouldn't say she's an unusually active child, and as I said, she has school dinners! – but I genuinely think her not having UPFs and therefore not getting addicted to them has made all the difference. We don't have them in the house (because my willpower is rubbish!), so for her a snack is fruit, Greek yoghurt or wholemeal toast – she's never really had easy access to crisps, cake and biscuits and doesn't seem to think anything of that. She enjoys them at parties etc and I don't police what she eats outside of the house, but her self-regulation is just so much better than mine was as a child – she'll have half a slice of cake and leave the rest, whereas I would have been trying to figure out how to wangle a second bit!

Anyway this is a long and anecdotal way of saying that I truly believe UPFs are the problem and without government intervention, it will only continue to get worse. Another side effect of my diet rehaul is that my grocery bill has increased DRAMATICALLY – it's easily doubled, even taking into account inflation (which means it's actually more like tripled). My food bill is more than my mortgage. I'm very lucky that I can afford that, but I'm very aware that a lot of people can't. Imo we need better access to locally grown whole foods, with subsidies for producers of those paid for by a tax on UPFs.

Everywhere in the world children eat what their parents eat except in the UK, US and perhaps Australia.

Yeah I wonder if it's to do with the lack of time we have and how long it takes to create a traditional meal. British cooking is actually a huge faff as it often involves many pans then an oven too. Or a stew which needs a good couple of hrs to cook. Maybe this is why people resorted to chips with something?
British people need to get inventive to get quick home made meals on the table that everyone eats as frozen food as a daily choice is harming everyone.

Agree!!

And it's not just the marketing that's an issue either, a few years ago, myself and my husband decided to lose weight, eat fewer calories and better foods (our diet was shocking) we lost a large amount of weight, and we assumed that we would save money not eating takeaways and such.....wrong!! Fruits, veggies, lean proteins etc. are so so expensive, anyone on a low income would really struggle to eat well I think!

The next government, whoever that may be, really needs to make this a priority.

Sweeping generalisation, my DC absolutely do and it costs me a bloody fortune as nearly all of it is organic! That said, I’m not saying they like my concoctions as I do improvise loads if I don’t have an ingredient, we had sweet and sour Tuna the other week for example! My eldest definitely eats junk though but he is 17 and very thin and can eat anything. What I worry about is not weight though with him it is the junk that he has out and about. That said, this is I think one of the healthiest cities in the country, lots of green space and many teenagers go around on foot. You don’t see loads of overweight children where I live. My DD is really fussy about skin outbreaks etc. so won’t touch school canteen food due to UPFs.

This is the best thing you could have done for your daughter, you quietly fill her diet with good whole healthy foods, but don't make treats a huge taboo, so she won't crave them and binge on them as she is older! It's exactly what we do.

Here’s the thing. There is of course a correlation between poverty and a high UPF diet due to the low cost and availability of these frankenfoods, however what gets overlooked in these conversations is the fact that the middle classes are also overindulging in unhealthy food but are often completely unaware of the fact that supposedly healthy food items are far from that. A list of posh junk:

ready made hummus (far fattier than homemade and usually made with sunflower oil instead of EVO)

coffee shop coffee ( we used to be a nation of tea drinkers and now coffee shops are everywhere. Lots of these drinks are full of calories and younger and younger kids are being allowed to drink Starbucks coffee etc which is madness. Too much coffee can increase cortisol, disrupt sleep etc, all impacting weight gain and other health factors.

Pret A Manger - overpriced UPF sandwiches probably not much better than McDonalds

Sourdough - if it’s bought from a bakery fine but a Quick Look at the ingredients from the supermarket stuff will reveal it’s actually UPF with a bit of the “mother” thrown in.

Cured meats (think prosciutto, chorizo etc)- terrible for you (nitrates, high saturated fat, sodium etc

Out of season fruit and vegetables- most people, including poshos, have forgotten how to eat locally and seasonally and expect to eat grapes all year round when there are health benefits to eating according to light and weather patterns.

This is just a short list but it would be very long if I had the time!

I would agree with this but the 2hrs for your typical British casserole is a pain when DC are young as mine were impatient but now I have teenagers we often eat about 7 or 8 so if I’ve WFH it is something we have quite a bit.

I have to say the kindergarten does very good lunches.
two courses, there’s no choice though. It’s either soup and main, or main and desert each day. It depends on what’s been made. So they roughly get dessert 2 days a week.

Today it’s vegetable broth with pancake strips. Then local white fish (forelle), mash potatoes, green beans and a sauce.
Yesterday was chicken schnitzel, potato salad, and green salad. Then apricot dumplings and custard.

They work with local farmers who also drop off fruits/ veg taht can be eaten raw for adding to morning snack. although we have to all send own box of morning stuff also, this is just supplemental so children try things they might not have at home

Takeaways are non existent tbh. So it forces us to cook

The opposite side of this...

How to avoid middle-aged spread: go to private school

www.thetimes.com/article/21ec4609-0590-447c-8695-d51a2599f7a4?shareToken=c1602b5dd667a47103bdad5312d3eb0b

Why do you need to eat organic all the time? ai don't think it is a generalisation. There is really no such thing as children's meals in most of the world. Your DC are the exception( as are mine, but we don't eat a British diet mostly)

I dont really understand this organic thing. We eat mostly veggie and mostly wonky old veg.

@OneAzureBiscuit I couldn't agree more- the two supermarkets convenient to my flat are lidl and Waitrose, I read labels and waitrose stuff has tonnes of crap in it as does lidl products. I would place them as equal for UPFs.

Interestingly, I spent a bit of time in Italy recently, and the Conads and Carrefours (so about the sainsburys equivalents) had much better quality food in terms of ingredients and products I tried than the lidl.

I worked in the NHS for many years ~ early in my career all the food was cooked on site and was generally ok in terms of nutrition, pricing etc

In the last years of my career the food was provided by external caterers and we constantly complained about the food and pricing system. Chip based meals were the cheapest and salad based meals were the most expensive. A piece of fruit was the same price as a large mars bar.

I used to feel very sorry for the dietitians . . . they tried so hard to get the right messages across but the staff canteen (which was also accessible to out-patients and visitors) didn't reflect any of the 'healthy eating' ethos the Dietetics Department were trying so hard to promote

I found this mind boggling - when my Dad was in hospital long term I was so surprised to see the canteen did not have ANY fruit. There was some sad veg. It was mostly beige food.
The shops are the same - all sweets etc.
It just feels really counter intuitive.

School lunches are terrible. Burgers, pizza, fish fingers and chips. We could learn a lot from Japanese schools where food is properly healthy and it's drummed into the children how important that is.

I wonder if part of the reason children are shorter, is due to steroid inhalers? Both my children are on them for asthma. They really do struggle to breathe without the brown one, as soon as they get any respiratory virus. Last winter, one was hospitalised as couldn't breathe - the children's ward was absolutely packed, as many children was the same. NHS staff were speculating at the time, the the reason it had been so much worse, was people not putting the heating on. Presumably also things like not being able to make repairs to houses, to reduce mould etc.

Thank you @Mulhollandmagoo. I’m so aware of the fact that my own relationship with food is absolutely fucked and I really don’t want that to happen to my daughter so I have spent a lot of time and headspace trying to figure out the best approach. I really appreciate you saying that.

Have only read the first 3 pages. Don’t know what the answer is.

Part of the difference nowadays….
when my mum and dad were little, they might go to the park or play out for a couple of hours after school, they’d arrive home for dinner - home cooked from fresh of course…. But cooked while they were out running around.

I do take my kids to the park after school, but I…. Go with them of course! So we get home, they’re starving and have to wait while I cook. Eldest has got better at waiting out that hungry bit, I do chuck the younger one a snack to keep him going, otherwise I would never get the cooking done (safely). Luckily this is a kid that loves fruit and veg so his snack is usually a carrot 😂 . But I do think that’s a difference.

Not saying their diets are perfect. I have recently given up refined sugar myself and am now on a mission to rid all the families diets of UPFs. It’s ridiculously hard though.

also yes they go to parties, they get given sweets when it’s someone’s birthday at school… I don’t want to “ban” all those things and make them more desirable!

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.

This is so sad. I still remember my children, sitting in their high chair and eating a range of raw or barely cooked vegetables - carrots, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower....... roasted aubergine even - plus tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce.

The problem nowadays is that people are so used to UPF that their taste buds have basically been obliterated because they've been assaulted at every meal for years. It takes time to get used to the more subtle taste of vegetables.

One of my sons never cooked and largely existed on packaged food and take-aways. Over the past year he has slowly turned things around and is now eating mostly vegetables and stir-frys. But he only started doing this in his 30s, when he was beginning to see how the stuff he'd been eating was affecting him.

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel that some kind of government intervention and a drive to educate people is needed.

Well I don’t know anybody that gives their children separate meals, friends, parents of DC’s friends my family with children, I live in one of the healthiest cities in the country and in my locality, in my children’s schools it is rare to see overweight DC. I would therefore not say I am the exception. I am on one WhatsApp group where a Mum sells homemade Organic Kimchi and Sauerkraut that is designed to appeal to children!

Where I can I try to buy organic seasonal fruit and veg and organic meat, fish as I want to limit the pesticides ingested and chemically pumped meat is not good for your gut Flora which is linked to many health problems.