British kids and eating habits - IABU ?

[lovemycoffee2]

I have two young kids and we live in the UK but we are not originally from here.

At home we cook everyday from scratch our food and we take that food at a lunch box at our workplace. We have a light dinner again made from scratch.

The issue is our kids which are of course going to school/nursery and they love to copy their friends!

In the UK it's healthy if a kid eats sausages (god knows what the meat has inside), or for example Heinz baked beans which have 10% sugar and 20% salt (leaving 70% being actual beans) or if they eat fish fingers which are pre-fried (even if you bake them they were already fried before got frozen) or chicken nuggets (again pre-fried which god knows what was the oil quality).

It's also acceptable to drink juices which have no sugar but plenty sweeteners.

Also, it's perfectly fine to have a ham sandwich for lunch which has ready made processed bread full of emulsifiers and ham which (like sausage) god knows what ingredients has.

It's ok that primary schools offer desserts, even if they are small portions and low sugar on a daily basis - not on a weekly or as special occasion! I don't have a dessert everyday, why my kid is offered one?

Honestly, are all these things ok? Am I paranoid?

I am very worried that the kids will either end up obsessed. with diabetes or with other health issues given all the processed food and the fact that we are what we eat.

YABU - are you crazy?

YANBU - unfortunately this is a "balanced healthy diet" in the UK!

Can we please stop lumping all diabetes together please, you mean type 2, type 1 is very different, and anyone’s pancreas can choose to stop working.

Was it naice ham? That’s the question!

English diet is utterly disgusting.
It swings from crap takeaway ready meals to greedy middle class Guardinistas salviating over how much cake they will shove down their throat .
Look at the physical state of us.
Not just fat but grossly so, and pasty unhealthy fat.
There was a cult trilogy of films by Lindsay Anderson in the 60s and 70s IF, O Lucky Man and Brittania Hospital
The middle one has a nightmarish scene of a hybrid pig/ human fed by tubes.
Thats us now.
And the soil is crap and the produce is terrible since Brexit.
And then theres M&S style food porn 'Because you deserve it"

But in the end, its the self justification for feeding ones kids poison that drives me mental.
Keep doing what you are doing and be aware Junk food, sugar combined with fat particularly is incredibly addictive.
Low zinc B vitamins etc contribute to the issue but its a vicious circle.
Soil Gut Brain
We now have the highest rate of Dementia in Europe because of this.

Yes. No one should bring a child into the world if they aren't prepared to give them three organic, made from scratch meals per day, ignoring of course the OP is talking about food served at nursery/school anyway....

So when I asked if you are currently a child I was sort of close.

Your experience is very different to mine. My 2 are older now but we have always eaten mostly healthy, home cooked food from scratch. We have the occasional "bad meal" or takeaway. My friends are the same.

When I had their friends to tea at primary school I played it safe and gave them chicken nuggets / fish fingers etc but that was definitely a treat not the norm.

You will have to get used to hearing what every other child is allowed. I can guarantee yours will be the only child in the whole school who is not allowed to have chocolate in their lunchbox / a phone / to stay up to midnight / play fortnite etc and you just have to agree how mean you are and ignore the pleading.

OP YANBU, I am also not from England and was similarly shocked. Most school lunches at my DC’s school have a tiny amount of veg (once 5 peas and two tiny carrots). In reception let your child eat the school lunch as that’s easier with their friends and make sure they have healthy food at home. Then when they are older most kids will have a packed lunch and most schools don’t allow treats like biscuits or sweets anyway. My DC has a packed lunch nearly every day and of course has treats at parties or special occasions.
but generally I agree that unhealthy eating is very common in the UK and you are not unreasonable to be concerned. A significant number of children at my DC’s primary are overweight at age 10 and it’s very sad.

No one thinks Fruit Shoot is healthy.

When I au paired in Italy, the girl would have an ice cream basically every day of the summer, sometimes twice a day. Here it would be a once a week treat.

Heinz beans has 2.6g salt in a 415g can. That's 0.6%, not 20%. At least get your facts right when you're being smug.

The NHS guidance is 6 months.

You are wrong.

Are you really saying go back to where you came from on a public forum?

People get so defensive!

It is a shame that this thread has turned into a culture/country war...and that most people are not willing to have an open discussion about this, most british people feel attacked because a foreigner dares to point this out...

Of course no country is perfect, and there would be kids eating badly in all countries, but there are differences. As a poster mentioned earlier, you wouln't be served that menu at a school in France/Italy/Spain. Individual families can eat what they want/can. For me that type of menu, with pudding everyday In a school is giving kids an awful education about food.

I am also european, and I love the UK, by the way, thats why I have settled here. I clearly like the UK more than my home country on the whole, otherwise I wouldnt be living here, that does not mean foreigners cannot have a negative opinion about something...

Mine take the lunch thermal pots to school. Normally with pasta and homemade sauce. Loads of kids have this plant the schools they go too. The school cooked food is all fresh and loads of healthy options.

It's all about balance. Some less healthy options aren't going to make them diabetic if they eat them on occasion. I think you are being paranoid but it's ok to want your child to have the best start in life :)

Did you mean to be such an arsehole?

Disgusting! OP is allowed to have views and opinions on UK food. Not everything is perfect here! Will report your post

There''s nothing wrong with a proper sausage.

Thank you! Well written. It’s not a culture war people!

Feed your kids what you want.

Parenting is dealing with the wants and can't haves.

I'd relax a little though. You'll be begging them to eat a sausage if they end up with an eating disorder.

Life is about everything in moderation. And making good choices.

Where are you?

I do find it odd that you've met more than one adult that doesn't eat vegetables. I mean of course there's always one (not that I know any) but multiple? Myself and my peers are vegetables and salads with dinner every day too. And that's what we cook now.

We had probably maximum of 1 takeaway per year when I was young and it was Chinese or Fish and chips. We did eat out in restaurants for special occasions. We have many more takeaways but lots of different choices now and we always have lots of salad and vegetables, just because that is our preference (ramen, Turkish/Greek - nothing wrong with takeaway pizza now and again if you like it!) and we have it for a special occasion. I don't know anyone who eats takeaway every week because it is expensive!

That is surprising about the squash. Was that recent? It was always only water and milk when my DC were at nursery.

The majority of the comments here suggest they don't think the diet is healthier but that OP is being very stereotypical, especially when her own country has higher obesity rates than the UK.

Er, I always ordered one of those shitey little pizzas from the kids menu. Because eating out was a treat and I was allowed to! Just because you see it on a menu doesn't mean it is what happens at home. I also loved to play on the zip wire in the park. Didn't get one of those at home either.

They do. If OP was wrong, people wouldn’t need to be defensive. School food is pretty unhealthy, people are scoffing at OP identifying ham sandwiches when they are literally processed crap. It’s a shame we can’t want better for our kids and start making xenophobic comments when a ‘foreigner’ points it out. There’s a reason we have an obesity epidemic in this country…

You dont need to be rude or be offended. People are free to have opinions.
The time you spending replying to me you could be in the kitchen cooking decently

Yes, school dinners are shite and packed lunches aren't great either, at least in my experience, because schools can't refrigerate them and that vastly limits what you can take in. That doesn't mean British kids' diets are rubbish, or British adults either. Sure, there are plenty of people who eat crap too often, but there are also plenty of people who eat well and are health conscious.

Most people I know cook from scratch, limit their kids' treats and keep an eye on their fruit and veg intake; that hardly makes you special - sorry.