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 was really shocked by the food when I had dd in hospital. They gave me a leaflet about how important a high fibre diet is post childbirth to encourage that first poo but the only food provided was a cheese sandwich on white bread without so much as a lettuce leaf. I wasn’t expecting NHS food to be nice but I assumed it would be appropriate.

I should add though I don’t always succeed and my eldest I know will occasionally get KFC or Chinese curry and rice at lunchtime but he is in 6th form college and hasn’t is always active and thin. My youngest DD has educated me on stuff but at the same time it can be a worry with her as I feel she is too thin. When I lack energy though the easy oven baked pizzas or even a Charlie Bingham style meal are on occasion part of the overall diet. I would say though that other than DS portions are pretty small so we wouldn’t buy loads of pizzas etc.

It's up to parents not to feed their kids crap.

"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."

Casseroles are fab. Use whatever meat or veg, herbs and spices, add potatoes or dumplings if you like. Very easy, tasty, nutritious and only one pot to wash.

So what do you propose we do about the ones that do?

It's sad yes but it's a choice.

U just have to walk into a supermarket to see that healthy food is a lot more expensive if you are feeding a family. It's awful. And local shops/ convenience stores are really hard to shop healthily in even if you wanted to. Surely this is part of the problem (yes I know if you are deliverooing a Chinese then this is a different problem)

Casseroles are fab but if you've only got 50p left on the gas, you've worked a 12 hour a shift as a care worker and you don't get paid until next week, you're going to chuck a frozen pizza in the airfryer instead.

There's more to food poverty than not being able to afford stewing steak and a few carrots. Time, fuel and cooking utensils also have to be accounted for.

“in the real world people don't choose to feed their kids crap because they can't be arsed to cook. They do it because it's cheaper and it's all they can afford.”

Bullshit.

Both my parents worked full time in the 80s, as did I and apart from the odd occasion, never did I not have time to feed them a decent meal. Don’t get me wrong, Friday night was usually pizza out of the freezer but throughout the week there was always spag bog, meat 2 veg, jacket potatoes served.

I agree with PP’s, I think a whole generation have been brought up on upf with parents not knowing how to cook from scratch.

Yes, I agree and I think are pretty healthy. I would say that I cook more British food than most people I know but that is because that’s what I grew up on so I am familiar with it - loads of casseroles for example. However, my DC don’t like some of them so they can’t stand Chicken, cream and pear one that I had regularly as a child. In fact maybe they are thin because they push my offerings around the plate and don’t eat much of it😂 The main thing I replicate from my childhood is quite a bit of veg. I do have Scandinavian heritage that is quite far back but I think seeped into my Mum’s cooking so unsure if that is healthier, more fish I think that the average British diet. My DH is a really good cook and enjoys and is good at making an array of different styles of food but I notice he doesn’t provide as much veg as me, hardly ever offers cooked vegetables.

Back in the 60s and 70s just about everyone has school dinners

They were meat and two veg (and liver, as mentioned in an earlier post, appeared sometimes with onion gravy) with the only exceptions bring squeaky cheese pie (with mash and tinned tomatoes) and the much reviled TVP curry. Then pudding - often stodgy with custard

You were expected to clear your plate

And we were a much more normal weight as a population then

(edited - SPAG)

Maybe a slow cooker then? They're cheaper than air fryers (lots of used ones around) and can be used to make really cheap nutritious meals.
I realise there is poverty and it makes things really hard but if people knew how and wanted to, they can make nutritious meals easily. Even a bag of pasta with a tin of tomatoes, some herbs and anything else is better than frozen chips and nuggets.
We have to prioritise health. There should be no question around that anymore. We know what shit food and sedentary lifestyles are doing to us and our children.
We all deserve better.

Yes but school dinners at secondary school are terrible. Lots of ‘soggy carbs’ is how my DD describes them, not homemade so maybe that is why? For example, she tells me he pizza is Chicago Town ones cut up (???), there used to be a roast but as there is a local of table space you used to have to eat it in polystyrene container, sitting on the floor outside in the winter! The roast has actually gone for good now as probably too expensive but also why can’t school children past year 7 not sit at a table. I went to a London comprehensive that was like Grange Hill in its general level of behaviour but even we had somewhere to sit.

Children are so influenced by what they see around them. My DD has only drank water from being a baby. Obviously I like this but it’s never been forced on her - I don’t tend to have much in the way of soft drinks at home but I would buy the odd juice, squash if anyone wanted it. But she never liked anything and even at parties would just choose water. As she’s got older (she’s 10 now) she’d start to ask for soft drinks when we were eating out, but would always take one mouthful and leave the rest. I unpicked that she likes to have them, because that’s the norm and she likes the feeling of sitting with the glass or bottle in front of her, but she doesn’t actually like to drink them. Basically I do think a lot of kids use drinks and food as a kind of status symbol. I think it was Andy Warhol who commented that Coke is a leveller - the president can’t buy a better Coca-Cola than the man in the street, so the brand names are a way of buying a bit of status for yourself.

That’s interesting about the brand names.

I am from an immigrant background and I can tell you first generation immigrants are poorer than anyone else, and yet eat better than most well off British people.

When you review the foods available over the last 50 years you see UPF foods

• grow more and more prevalent
• their cost get (proportionally) lower and lower
• the psychological/physiological understanding of manufacturers increase on how to make them so that the taste triggers receptors in your brain that demand more and makes you feel 'happy' when they are consumed...
• ...and package them in ways that are eye catching and attractive.

Our biology basically working against our health here.

We are all being asked to fight a war we are in no way individually prepared for, at a time when collective mental health appears to be at all all time low; when physical effort in minimised (and the time to do it consumed with working to pay a mortgage etc); and when physical leisure is curbed by greater land restrictions and the same demands on time. And then we are being blamed for losing.

I don't think people are that different now to 200 years ago. I think if you plucked a Georgian worker from their time and plonked them now, they would grow fatter. I think if you took someone now and plonked them in the reign of George iv (for eg) they would grow thinner. People haven't change; the world has changed and we have not evolved quick enough to combat it - in food and many other ways (see things like workplace stress).

It's actually an incredibly fucked up situation and the longer people try to simplify it to just one or two tweaks that need to change (like parents just not feeding their kids in for 5 years), the worse it is going to get because it is all so much bigger and interconnected than that.

When there was an outcry about the cost of Lurpack I was astonished at how many people will only buy that. I always buy own brand butter as surely it’s all the same? Switching to the supermarket brand didn’t seem to be much of a step down. But I do think a lot of people equate buying brand names with success. And they’re often not the best in terms of UPF. For example, Philadelphia is UPF while many own-brand soft cheeses aren’t.

the brand names are a way of buying a bit of status for yourself.

They are also emotive. There is a big reason the likes of MacDonalds and Coke sponsor sports events or Coke runs that Santa advert every year. It's because they want you to grow up to link their brand to memorable moments of joy, such as your team winning or to the excitement of family Christmas as a child. They want the joy and their name so strongly linked in your head that you don't even think about the link. You just somehow feel a bit happier around their brand as a result.

Like I say - fucked up.

I must be a similar era to you- Snacks were for parties and Christmas- walking to school and back was the norm, plus playing out.

There was only one overweight girl in the year, and she wasn't allowed to play out which was really sad. Her mum just didn't allow it.

The rest of us were stick thin, skipping, bicycles, horse riding- and I remember the deep feeling of hunger as a child- being so hungry I wished I could eat grass. {if you didn't like what was on offer at mealtimes, there was no alternative.

It's shocking to hear that children's heights are actually decreasing- one would expect that they would be getting taller, not shorter.

In what sense? I just don’t think that is true , it is totally contextual, where you live and availability of outdoor space, the minder of the wealthy people. My Mum lives in the midlands and wealthy people on her street are not the healthiest looking but the car is over relied upon. Our extended families on mine and DH’s side all live in different, expensive parts of the south east, they definitely eat really well and they are all hyper fit and thin! One has regular private medicals to understand how they can improve their health constantly. I really don’t think it is the case that many wealthy people are unhealthy as health is expensive!

Exactly - if you look at McDonalds marketing for the past few years it has been almost entirely focused on the experience rather than the food. McDonalds as a facilitator for family relationships and friendships, a port in the storm, a place where anyone is welcome without judgment…you barely see any of the food!

In the sense that they eat non UPF because it is not a part of their diets usually. And more veggies and greens.

There was a thread a few months ago on the use of baby pouches with an astounding lack of knowledge about basic nutrition. A few posters were prepared to defend Ella's Kitchen to the death claiming that it's just as healthy as fresh veg because the ingredients say "100% peas". They refused to accept that the fact the vegetables had been heat-treated, mashed up and diluted with water might mean they are less healthy than just pureeing your own peas. Someone posted a study proving that baby pouches lose nutrition due to the maceration (mashing) process. And one poster tried to defend it by saying food gets mashed up when chewing so they lose just as much nutrition as the pouches.

The main argument for pouches was their convenience and the lack of time for making fresh meals. If there are so many mums who are unwilling to even contemplate making a baby puree from scratch, how would you expect these women to feed their entire family fresh, home-cooked food for the decades to come??? It's essentially a mindset. Even if you take the cost and time required to create fresh meals, there must still be the willingness and determination to take on the challenge. UPFs are marketed to women at the earliest possible stage and the idea that anything that comes in a brightly coloured box is quicker, easier and tastier than the natural version. Formula milk is technically an UPF but that would be opening an entire can of worms which is not worth the argument now.