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!

Indeed. My point being as we have such an obesity problem we can’t just say ‘oh well our kids will learn to self regulate with all this crap food so why bother stopping them having it’ as clearly a majority of people cannot self regulate in that way

Currently in the canaries and the supermarket has the same food as in the UK. Mn seems to think the UK diet is all chicken nuggets etc but that’s not my experience at all.

We do have good quality butchers sausages quite often - maybe once a week - but otherwise it tends to be chicken dishes, beef mince for bolognaise or chilli and veggie dishes in our house. Same as our uk friends. Occasional pizza - most posh people I know have pizza ovens in their gardens.

The hotel we’re at, all the dc seem slim and the larger parents appear to be the German families… they all seem lovely and friendly, which is my bar for judging people.

Oh come on! Saying DC don't have tantrums on the continent is hyperbole!

@Rainbowsponge not being defensive at all just found the comment funny 😂

I don’t think this is an issue for individual blame. The food industry is extremely powerful and uses its might to lobby government. For instance, how do you explain the ubiquity of artificial sweeteners? They’re a cheaper alternative to sugar AND a way to persuade the consumer to indulge more frequently because they’re sold as a diet food or a less unhealthy way to partake of sweetened foods and drinks. That hasn’t happened by accident.
We’re also a nation where a quarter of kids are in poverty. Yet many, if not the majority of those are from working families. Can you blame exhausted and poor parents for giving kids what’s convenient? For not having the energy to stand up to the nagging that children are so good at? If you reduce the problem to the stereotype of working class mums giving capri suns instead of breast milk, we’ll never resolve the issue. It’s structural.

I don't know anyone who would consider those foods healthy - convenient in a pinch and not particularly unhealthy if only on occasion and with additional vegetables.
Most parents I know make an effort to provide healthy meals most of the time, relying on some of the foods you mention if busy with work or schedules are off.

OP I am with you on the tomato sauce, but I also believe in teaching my kids to eat what they are given. My kids ate their school food. They also ate food cooked from scratch (no pudding) at home every evening. They are healthy and not fussy eaters. The school lunches you describe, while a bit junky, are not going to turn them into sugar and additive monsters. You might want to ask about them varying the menu a little, but sadly many schools had their kitchens gutted and turned into extra classrooms, so good is now brought in from an outside supplier. The days of Mrs Brown from number 23 being the school cook and buying the meat from Mr Butcher ( the village butcher) and Mr Green ( the village grocer) died out some time ago. My primary was like that in the 80s, but I reckon it was one of the last.

There's a lot of focus on food on this thread as the only lever of health, you do know that there are other wider determinants of health and food is a small part of that? To only focus on food as an indicator of health is plain daft. You can eat all the 'good' food you want but if you don't have access to certain resources your health suffers.

But the point about self regulating was in response to me saying I only have healthy food and meals at home. But I allow my DC to have what they want at a party etc. They have learned to self regulate. My friend has been too strict, I believe by completely restricting unhealthy food. Now her DC are teens she is having issues with what they are eating! On the other hand having lots of unhealthy things at home can normalise them as every day foods.

That's awful. I'd advise you complain to the school that the lunch servers aren't sticking to the standards.

That’s cheered me up no end!

A lot of generalisations from the OP here. I have lived all over the world and in each country some people cook from scratch and some people don't. Personally, I was just grateful to be experiencing another culture and didn't spend my time bitching about how crap the food was and how much better my own country was.

But the level of obesity shows we cannot rely on kids learning to self regulate, that’s my issue. Yours may well have learnt how to, although I suspect you have perhaps set a good example for them that other kids don’t have at home. It’s the same with ‘intuitive eating’, some people’s ’self regulation’ doesn’t exist and their ‘intuitive eating’ makes them very fat. I’m glad it worked for you but it’s clearly not the norm because who wants to self regulate themselves into obesity?

No I wouldn't say its insecurity on my part. I would absolutely say that I get utterly fed up of English bashing, British bashing threads on here all the time. Particularly when it's presented as the rest of the world being the benchmark by which we should live our lives. There are positives and negatives to all nations . Many places gave better diets than we have but huge problems in other areas. There is also no reason to keep living your life in a way / place you don't like. There are always solutions.

It's very dependent on the area to what school meals consist of and how healthy that is.
My sons school menu every day has a home made soup, vegetable sticks, fruit and usually either a veg pasta bake, curry or baked potato.

In comparison to school meals in large parts of Europe they would be considered unhealthy/quite processed from friends who live abroad. Same with large parts of SE Asia.

I wouldn't say that means all brits eat terribly and a lot of it is dependent on upbringing and what your taught by your parents. Typically if your parents can't cook kids grow up not being able to either.

I went to the school in the 90s primary school meals every few months were deemed inedible/food poisoning risk in London (came from a central kitchen) we would end up with chip sandwich or cheese sandwich so to me they seem to have come a very long way!

Op I'm not from here either and I agree, but most people can't see it.

Look at the obesity statistics for Europe and the UK and you’ll see that France and the UK aren’t that different from each other. It’s a myth that French kids are eating only whole foods all day.

I do blame parents, yes.

A banana is around 25p.

A mars bar is 85p.

A tango ice blast is £2.

This isn’t about poverty. This is about a junk food culture which, although parents didn’t choose for it to happen, they’re more than happy to go along with because we now provide them with a convenient list of excuses so they can give themselves an easier life through appeasing their child.

We’ve taught parents to ‘be kind’, show love through food, use food as a parenting tool, give their child what they want ‘or they’ll get an eating disorder’. We’ve taught parents that ‘body shaming is bad’ and that ‘everything in moderation’ means having what you want all the time. We’ve taught them that children should take charge, ‘anything for an easy life’ and ‘never to judge’. We’ve taught them that fussy eating or an addiction to beige food is a ‘dietary need’.

It’s part of the bigger picture of modern parenting trends. You can look like a good parent without having to put the effort into actually being one.

Parents think being a good parent is fancy days out for Insta and a referral to CAMHS when the kid feels sad. Ignoring the fact the absolute basics of fresh air, decent food, decent sleep and socialisation are missing.

We hosted Ukrainians and their diet easily out-beiged ours. It was 95% carb and most of that was sugar with the rest being pasta with butter on, or bread. They said only farm animals eat vegetables. 😳

I don't know why you think British people think processed crap is healthy?

Some people can't afford artisan air dried Parma ham from an Italian deli, or organic flour to make their own bread from scratch.

Feed your kids what you eat. When they have money they will choose some of their own food. Same as in any country.

I didn't eat nuggets or fish fingers and beans as a kid in the 80s, and neither did any of my friends.

My favourite dinner was prawn and veg stir fry or home made curry.

What rubbish. We have come back from France and the only things on the menu for kids was nuggets, burger, pizza, ham and chips. In 12 days I found one restaurant offering tomato sauce and pasta. The options for adults were not much better- rich cheese sauces etc. This is not a just a UK issue

The defensiveness and self justification on this thread is to be seen to be believed.
TBF to suggest to Brits on any forum that their diet is bad always gets this neurotic response "Dont mess with my comfort habits!"
The honest truth is as a nation we are fat greedy pigs second only to the US from whom we absorbed the lifestyle.
Wish it wasnt so. We used to be a reasonably restrained society.

Tbh a bit more 'fat shaming' would be healthier.

Personally I'm increasingly repulsed by the colossal young women in overstretched leggings wobbling down the street like jelly in clingfilm

Its a gut level animalistic response to seeing so many of our species in such a grostesque self inflicted state.

ITS NOT HEALTHY OR NORMAL

Do people live longer in your country than in the UK @lovemycoffee2 ?

If they do feed ypur kids the diet you make. If not stop worrying.

My dad was a chef (he wasnt from the UK eother. But he was never home so my English mum home cooked food every day from scratch but had school dinners.

My DCs had home cooked food most nights. Nuggets etc were a treat only, but arguably, as we ate out a lot too so no doubt we ate too much fat/salt etc 🤣🤣🤣

It's fine if all in balance.

My message to you is YABU, stop looking down your nose at what you think Brits eat. We dont eat that all the time. Not even those on low income eat it all the time because it's expensive. And sausages are pretty good if bought from the right place, but like any meat, you need to have a good butcher or buy from a farm shop.

Slim has nothing to do with the fat around your organs or your cholesterol level.

YANBU to describe those foods as very unhealthy.

YANBU to say that such foods are too prevalent in many children's diets in the UK.

YABU to assume that most people think they're healthy, and even to think that they're ubiquitous - it vastly differs according to social circles.

For my children, tinned baked beans and supermarket bread and so on are a rare treat 🤣.

They eat incredibly healthily most of the time, and as unhealthily as they like at parties/friends' houses. My husband and I eat what they eat until they go to bed, and then we have an unfortunate chocolate bar/crisps/junk habit which we haven't yet broken 😳