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

Proper butter is way nicer than anaemic Lurpack. Decent bread is almost a meal in itself - made without preservatives.

Cheap bread can have HUMAN HAIR protein in it - revoltingly Pig bristles and feathers can also be used to create an amino acid that makes it last longer.

THAT is obviously why ''halal'' labels are on some brands of bread!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/01/does_your_daily_bread_contain_human_hair.html#:~:text=That%20is%20a%20little%20odd,does%20not%20include%20human%20hair.

You think wealthy people have diets of UPFs? I think that will vary depending on where you live and culture of the place. I actually thought you were going to say in the sense of having tastier food which I think is more likely😂

For many young parents today the dice is loaded against them .They have been used to growing up with parents who work often FT, and lots of Single Mums who struggle economically through no fault of their own.Good food is expensive, and cooking stews and meals from scratch quite labour intensive as well.When school dinners were around, a large part of childrens diets were catered for .Maybe Labour could bring back some funding if they are elected?

I was going to say that they eat tastier too, but thought it would be rude!

Ok, maybe more accurate to say immigrants eat better than wealthier people because they usually have food knowledge. I take it back.

I just don't buy that cooking tasty and nutritious food is only for the rich. Because we weren't and neither was anyone around us.

'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.'

I know several families where the kids eat crap because the parents can't be arsed. And they do regular takeaways and spend £££ on fizzy drinks, sweets etc so it's not an affordability thing. The thought of a vegetable or piece of fruit fills them with horror. They're modelling seriously bad habits to their children.

If course there's room for government involvement, of course there are families struggling, where just getting food on the table is an achievement, but there are very many families who need to take a bit of responsibility.

A lot of wealthy people also eat high UPF but are largely unaware due to high prices and fancy packaging of their posh junk.

I use my slow cooker, quite a lot to cook stews. It cannot be any easier than throwing in some meat, veg, and stock, and leaving it for a few hours. I even put in potatoes, if I do not have the energy to make separate mashed potatoes. I recall countless times, posters here decrying the slow cooker, saying that everything they cook in it tastes the same, and it is not worth it, as the food is unappetising. I do not know what they mean, as there are countless ways to make each dish taste different , with spices etc.

Also the brand name oat milks count as UPFs, but Lidl's own brand doesn't (no gums or emulsifiers).

Also just because you eat pasta, doesn't make you fat. It's what goes on it that matters. Also the volume. Portions are enormous, people have lost sight if what constitutes a normal sized meal. Plates are 1/3 bigger than they used to be. As pps, snacks are seen as normal. The constant grazing on nibbles and sucking on juice is pretty revolting tbh.

Back in the day, I am old, we had breakfast, lunch, dinner. Sat at the table. Drinks with all three. No supplemental snacks or drinks during the day. We were out and about most of the day, so no access to food or drink, we had no pocket money to buy them. It was the 70's so no lack of processed crap available, Angel Delight etc, but I suppose we just didn't eat much of it.

No, I agree with you, when I was child we had a takeaway maybe once a year! We would eat in restaurants on holiday but it just wasn’t a thing. As a teenager I’d have the occasional burger from Burger King with my friend but that was the cheapest, smallest one and I was 14 so not tiny.

I would say though my DH is a good example of where it can go wrong, he loves cooking and tends to only want the best. It is annoying as I get it, his food is tasty but sometimes it is better that we just have some hot veg and a piece of fish and perhaps not fret about it being restaurant standard every night. Many British people in the past cooked dishes that are probably not that interesting but at least it was from scratch. My Mum was like this and my Mum and Dad had other interests like poetry and composing music, politics. When they were first married my Mum was never around as always out in the evening and as it was pretty sexist then so late 60s, she was expected to provide dinner, she would leave him one of those air dried curry’s to make on the hob with boiling water! She said it was fashionable at the time due to space missions etc.

Actually, although as a family we didn’t have takeaways very much, I do remember my Dad sneaking a Indian curry in occasionally on a Friday if he’s worked late as he commuted to central London and walked past a South Indian restaurant at night on the way home. I say sneaked as my Mum had of course made him something and he probably didn’t want to share with us as we became teenagers!

I can't see anything changing until:

• healthy school meals are universal
• cooking is properly taught in schools (so that children can make basic healthy food on a regular basis. Not once per term if you are lucky and you are only making sausage rolls type job)
• exercise is done daily on schools (something like Zumba in the mornings, rather than games where you spend 80% of them doing nothing)
• sweeteners are banned
• the are can/bottled drinks options that aren't just alcohol/fizzy/highly sugared or just plain water
• very unhealthy foods are just banned (such as fruit loop breakfast cereals)
• food is made less sweet
• public transport/cycling/walking is the default way of getting around
• healthy premade food is actually made affordable. Most people aren't going to spend £8 on a non filling salad when you could buy a burger for £2.

I agree with other pps on here that although some of it is driven by poverty and lack of education regarding food, the majority of it is down to parents who are not in poverty.

You see it on here all the time regarding snacks for children, they never seem to stop eating, an attitude that the children are going to die of starvation if they are not constantly eating. It also seems to be the case with adults on here anything to do with weight loss talks about snacks, people do not need snacks, they do not need to eat every hour on the hour. There seems to be a totally fucked up relationship with food.

I lived in a country in southern Europe, a place that was popular with both British people living and working there and British tourists. You could always tell which children were the children of the British tourists and not children of locals or British who lived there permanently - the children of tourists were overweight, always eating crisps, sweets, ice cream, drinking fizzy drinks, would have huge portion sizes of meals, and never a vegetable or piece of fruit would pass their lips, whereas the children of those who lived there were a perfectly normal healthy weight, did not eat constantly, had much smaller portion sizes at meals, ate fruit and vegetables and would drink water.

You are what you eat and if you eat a crap diet and feed your children one you shouldn't be surprised at the outcome.

This is a fair list but you don’t need to ban anything, just tax the hell out of upf and subsidise fruit, veg, milk, eggs etc so healthy food becomes the cheapest option consistently.

he 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.

On MN there's also sometimes even a negative view towards making your own purées. There will be some "let me guess, PFB?" type comments to anyone who wants to avoid pouches, along with "why bother, they'll be eating McDonald's soon enough anyway".

There is some reverse snobbery around food in the UK, I'm not sure why though.

I don’t really agree. Basics like pasta and a sauce aren’t hard to whip up quickly and it’s very easy to make and freeze sauces, soups etc. I can make a quick risotto too, or we have stir fry (super quick). You can make up lasagnes, curries etc. and freeze them too. My laziest dinners are usually mash and veg or super lazy jacket potato, baked beans and cheese (with some UPF in the beans I admit, but you could make your own or a chill con carne and freeze that). I mean sure, if you want complex meals every night it takes time but there are lots of quick options. I recall Jamie Oliver making a 15 minute meals book and other chefs have made ones on quick cooking and using microwaves etc.

if you’re reliant on a food bank I don’t blame you for anything you cook as you clearly just cook what you are lucky enough to have. If you put chips and pizza in the oven every night because you can’t be bothered to spend 15-30 minutes cooking for your kids each night, or an hour batch cooking on the weekend, then you are choosing for your children’s health to suffer.

God yeah, it drives me mad. "Houmous is it? Ratatouille? Your kids are eating home made focaccia with olives?" The implication being that you're ridiculously precious and middle class to be eating delicious stuff made from scratch, or that it's expensive. Listen, I'm a single mum on benefits and all this stuff can be made for pence. It's all what poor people from the Southern Mediterranean eat- my only privilege is that I happen to have the cultural capital to know about it.

To appear all salt of the earth and not pretentious, it appears I have to be eating stuff like cheap processed ham, chicken nuggets and frozen pizza. Well I'm sorry, but despite what people say this all looks pretty expensive to me when I go shopping.

Sometimes you do need to ban things. If your only options are 5-6 really unhealthy things (because that is all that is stocked in the shop as they have a long shelf life), then it won't change as there is in incentive to do so. Sometimes people claim that there isn't a market for something healthy, but that is usually because they haven't been allowed to buy it (not stocked) or it's at 10 times the cost of the unhealthy version as often places seem to put premiums on healthy options.

I think it is poverty of time rather than of money that plays a big part in food choices.

There is obviously some correlation as people with less money are more likely to work longer hours but hectic lifestyles with tired parents going from work to school to home with overtired children are more likely to make poorer food choices that say in a family where one parent works part time.

I don’t rely on a food bank - I’m not sure why you think I do but I’m pretty lucky that is the case. As I pointed out I do make casseroles (frequently) as my DC are teenagers so they don’t mind waiting. I tend to cook food that I grew up with so British stuff but also have scandi heritage so probably had more fish than the average Brit growing up. My Teenagers are really thin, DD I worry loads about as she is probably too thin but my DC generally have a good diet as much organic food as I can afford - I am unsure if you are mixing me up with another poster.

Well that’s because you and your friends are clearly a cut above the general public and evidently superior.

DD's very best friend was raised by a dad who doesn't eat vegetables. His whole diet is beige. He was raised by a mother who thought white bread was 'posh' so his diet was a lot of jam sandwiches. He feeds her utter crap. Sports drinks for breakfast and no vegetables at all.

The reason this issue isn't just about parents is that it's now multi-generational. Many parents don't know what a good diet looks like, and weren't taught to value it. It's a social issue with poorer families suffering worst. If all your friends eat crap, you feel weird not eating it.

DD's best friend is overweight and depressed and anxious.

Of course, why wouldn't I as a parent of two DC think, no hold on, know it's my responsibility?

The government didn't ask me to have DC that was a decision made between my DH and myself.
I choose what to buy on the weekly food shop, the Government, nor for that matter TV advertising dictate what I buy food wise or in any other way.

If not a parent/carer who's responsibly do you think it is to bring up DC?

My DPs both worked in the 70s/80s and we had home cooked meals every evening.
The differences were I think that those days jobs and traffic weren't as full on, so they were generally both home by about 5. Household roles were more sexist and ingrained so DM did all the cooking, but she did have a repertoire and routine.
I remember ready meals were coming in in the 1980s and DM threw a dinner party where she served M&S ready made curries and that was seen as being really posh < in our neighbourhood anyway > maybe that was the beginning of the end .