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!

In my experience if you let them eat what they want at parties so they can join in etc. they don't get sweet obsessed. My 2 haven't.

🤣🤣🤣

You have them in your supermarkets?

You have unhealthy school lunches???

Because boiled beans with no seasoning tastes awful for you really cook up a pan of beans in water and slop that out with no flavourings?

Sausage and mash is fine ffs! Decent quality butchers sausages, carrot and swede mash, broccoli and gravy is fine!

Other meals my children have enjoyed recently..,

Home made spaghetti bolognese.

Chicken with stir fry and noodles.

Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with whole meal toast and tomatoes.

Vegetable rice with chicken kebabs.

Nuggets and chips (because every now and again it's absolutely fine!)

Sushi ( went out for dinner)

Home made soups

Tortilla "pizzas" made at home

.shock horror frozen pizza

OP stop being a judgey cow and just worry about what you feed your own kids.

(Also what have you got against sausages? Your horror at the thought of anyone eating them is most amusing tbh! )

Ah Japan. That place with the highest suicide rate in the world and a tumbling birth rate because young men spend all their time with avatars rather the real human women. Such a perfect place

I agree, they learn to self moderate.

Tbf I am British but live on the continent and where I am the kids diet is abysmal. No school dinners so kids just eat packed lunch cheese sandwiches every. Single. Day. I take mine to the swimming pool at the weekend and I get them apple juice in the little cafe afterwards so I don't feel bad giving them their healthy packet lunches while the families around us eat chips, ice cream and hot dogs. I think it's like most things - it just varies. I don't judge as the families here really have it sorted in other respects and probably think some of the things we do are mental.

I’m guessing you don’t realise it could easily be the case that people are fat in England because we eat loads of junk food and people eat a healthier diet/less processed food in Malta but are fat because they eat too much of it? They’d still be healthier than putting loads of processed meat and crap into their bodies.

@Mirabai

i didnt say that. And im not invested enough to be banned by saying what I think.

i am merely making the point that food when eating out is not representative of food at home and implying that it is is disingenuous. My husband had an amazing steak when we went out the other week. He's certainly not eating that at home on a daily basis.

I have no kids, I've no skin in the game. But what you might consider a treat isn't necessarily what a 6 year old considers a treat.

If this was true we wouldn’t have such an obesity problem

I don’t think childhood obesity and tooth decay are something we should patriotically stand by but ok

OP is absolutely right. We are setting our children up for a lifetime of poor health, and it’s tragic. We need more people pointing it out, not less.

There is a primary school opposite our road and at LEAST half the children have bellies straining against their school tops. Some of them can’t even walk, they actually waddle. There’s a newsagents next to the school and if the parents don’t bring snacks straight to the pick up, you see them being shuffled out with a mars bar or (favourite round here) a Tango ice blast. Their skin is dull, their teeth are appalling. Toddler siblings are sat in buggies drinking Capri Suns and sucking lollies or ice pops.

I think soft, permissive parenting has a role in this. People can’t seem to parent now without food. Food as a reward, food to stave off a meltdown, food to keep them quiet for 5 minutes, food as a distraction, food as a bribe to get them to do something boring or even walk for 10 minutes. Endless snacks stashed under buggies and wheeled out every hour. I think since we stopped traditional discipline and told parents to always ‘be kind’ they’re at a loss how to get their kids to behave and food helps.

Kids who dislike healthy food because they’re too used to junk are having their aversions affirmed rather than challenged.

Kids don’t need snacks (yeah Mumsnet heresy but they don’t). They need 3 square meals a day, to include all their food groups, not beige shit from the freezer and top ups of Pom bears and biscuits.

Tonight we had chicken with homemade sweet potato wedges, cauliflower and corn on the cob. This is the type of meal they should be having in school, with milk and water.

Yes I said so? The supermarkets in Spain aren’t wildly different from anywhere else. Lots of freezers full of pizza, chips etc, a fruit and veg section, tins, meat counter… I’m surprised you don’t have those where you are but perhaps you’re so far off the beaten track that they’ve not reached you yet ;)
My kids don’t go to school in Spain. I said up thread we’re Anglo Spanish so we’re based in the UK and go to our Spanish home in the holidays.

Our school lunches are utter rubbish. But everyone I know thinks that. That's not the food we feed our DC at home.

It's not 21% salt - that would mean 87.5g of salt in a tin. It's 21% of the recommended intake - so about 1.5g in the portion (100g).

Learning to read labels and perform some basic mathematics would assist.

I agree with you .
but unless you had the foresight to campaign and make great impact on school meal policy a decade ago you are stuck with the dismal offer that they currently get served.

so I work hard on making sure the meals and snacks served at home are nutritious and natural.
but am at peace with what is served at school.
of course I could give packed lunches, but at my kids school packed lunch diners eat at a separate table to school dinner diners. And the quickly decided they wanted to be school dinners.

I hear what you are saying but I have made it to early 60s with good health so far after a 70s childhood filled with suet puds, pies and spam bloody fritters and a healthy dose of sweets courtesy of parents who grew up during rationing.

😂😂😂 so glad the European kids don't have temper tantrums over food hopefully you can let my Spanish neighbours kid know cos all she does is screams and shouts about everything 😂😂😂

The people I met who didn't eat vegetables were all from Manchester. It was an unexpected discovery!

The squash was in 2019. They apparently did it as a treat for birthdays, so on average at least once a week 🙃

I really hope you (and others) didn't take my post as judgemental - it was an observation rather than a judgement. I prefer the Swedish way of doing things when it comes to food but a British person would probably be horrified... No desserts after lunch or dinner but adults have "fika" (coffee and cake) every day and then Fridays we eat an absolute tonne of crisps and Saturday more pick'n'mix than you can probably even imagine 😂 so not sure it's necessarily a healthier society, just a different one!

Edited to add that in Sweden we don't do nuggets on the kids menu! Instead, we do pancakes with jam and whipped cream 😂

All Western countries have an obesity crisis. But some countries’ general diet are healthier than others. The Greek diet is seen as one of the healthiest in the world for example but they still have high levels of overweight/obesity.

I think soft, permissive parenting has a role in this. People can’t seem to parent now without food.

@Rainbowsponge spot on. IMO one of the worst modern day sights is a fat child eating a junk food meal sat in front of an iPad, in public, to keep them quiet while they eat their barely edible meal

Oh and Jamon ? Shall we chat about salt 😂😂😂😂😂😂

And defensive, faux ‘hilarious’ comments like this is the kind of denial that means we have reached a point where half of kids are overweight before they set foot in secondary school.

The food’s amazing all the same.

Why are you so defensive about other countries? It smacks of insecurity.

Well, that would depend on how many people follow the practice, surely?