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!

It's not a British thing, it's a class thing (which, of course, IS a British thing).

No idea what all the uproar about pudding is. I have something small and sweet to finish each meal. This is a fairly common practice across most European cultures in my experience e.g. coffee and a little biscuit/chocolate. It doesn't have to be a huge wedge of cake.

Your attitude to food is terrible. (And if you know anything about cooking, you know you need to balance out the acidity of tomatoes with something sweet).

Thanks. This entire thread appears to be an attack on British food.

This thread really makes me want to wangle a sausage in the OP's face!

I take it by your username that you love coffee. I don’t. I hate the stuff. It raises my blood pressure and makes me feel
like shit. I think it has terrible side effects and yet “continentals” drink it all the time. They also eat lots of sweet things - pastries, pains, cakes. And drink a lot more than people in the UK.

I’ve lived extensively in various countries all over Europe. Let me tell you what I’m sure you already know; lots of “continentals” also have big issues with smoking too much, and rural communities are rife with domestic abuse, and alcoholism along with terrible educational/career prospects. Crap for kids basically.

In my mind this is worse than eating a sausage so I’ll stay here and take my chances with the UPF

I didn’t say I just eat fruit salad for breakfast, I normally have my fruit with kefir, Greek yoghurt, nuts and seeds.

I don’t have any issues with how I eat, I was merely saying the sweet thing for after dinner is bizarre to me, especially as we didn’t do it growing up much, but my parents do it daily now.

Plus I’m an ex-vegetarian so black pudding is the devils food!

JollyPinkFox
understood. Have a good evening x

But is it exclusively British? I lived with a French family for a while and they always had pudding. Mostly a yoghurt or little chocolate dessert, true, but still pudding.

Yes, I am absolutely sure that Italian children don't eat pizza, that French children don't eat frites, that Belgian children don't eat waffles and German children don't eat bratwurst sausages (sorry for the stereotyping, but just using these as a very obvious example)

I genuinely mean this nicely.... giving your children a ham sandwich every day is definitely not healthy. As has already been said, processed meat like ham is a proven carcinogen. If you make no other changes at least alternate it with cheese sandwiches or tuna etc.

There are lots of British parents who despair at school dinners too. It’s the state school dinners budgets that’s the problem. I do wish they’d spend the pudding budget on vegetables and scrap the pudding though.

Not all parents have the time or the money to do healthy packed lunches. But if you have the time to do so, just send your kids in with a healthy packed lunch and a bottle of water. As long as they’re eating healthily when you are controlling their meals they will be fine if they have sausage chips and ketchup on the odd occasion they stay for dinner at a friends house.

As for baked beans, i buy the Tesco’s organic ones - they seem fine to me. My kids are fussy despite my best efforts and I work long hours so they often have baked beans on toast for dinner (homemade bread). Or eggs on toast. Or peanut butter on toast!

I agree OP. I also disagree with PP who say it's not just a British issue. OK, the US are just as bad but the majority of Europe does not eat like this.

DD is now 6 and I already feel like we are that weird family that doesn't eat like everyone else. She had friends round the other day and we had these natural low sugar juices and her friends said "do you like this? It's so sour!". I'd never thought of them as sour at all, they're delicious, but I guess they would be compared to the sugary squash they have daily.

I'm even starting to feel my own standards slipping as DC used to eat anything and everything but have only become fussier with age and the food they get at school.

OP - where are you from?

The school meals don't bother me much but DD's primary school drives me crazy with how many times she comes out of school eating sweets!
Asked school not to them straight to her and give them to us instead (she's just turned 6) and they said it's not upto them because other children bring them in to share 🙄

Now I'm not the sugar police but I don't want her eating a packet of haribo every bloody day (almost) for the next 5 years.

Well it isn't meant as a condemnation of any individual but a general observation. If people have full trolly and its all pre-packaged ready meals and unhealthy snacks then it seems unlikely they are buying all that and then popping back for some celeriac, fennel and other fresh produce on a daily basis. People who don't eat a lot of convenience food may have things like pasta or tins of chickpeas and bags of flour but they don't have a microwavable chicken korma, packets of instant noodles, snack bars, crisps and the like. It is fairly easy to see what kind of diet it is likely people have and much of it is poor.

Now when I say all that I know it is a privilege to have the time, skills and money to cook and eat good quality food but the question was about the quality of peoples diet and it is for the large part of bad quality in the UK.

I doubt most parents give their children a ham sandwich every day for packed lunch. There will be children due to their disability who will only eat certain food who are likely to eat ham every day.

BTW My DD, who can't eat cheese, would eat a fish sandwich every day if I allowed her.

We don’t have juices or squashes in our house as I think they’re bloody awful, so your holier than thou attitude has let you down a bit there.

You aren’t ‘weird’ at all, plenty of families have healthy diets. Some will eat just like you, some will be better and some will be worse.

GameOfJones
This is where lunch is a chore, he doesn’t eat cheese sandwiches and I’d never subject their tiny classroom to tuna or egg. Sometimes I give jam which I know is a whole other problem but it’s literally to tide them over to get them home so they can have home food instead!

I read a while back that catering companies were complaining about the rising cost of food, and school lunches were now costing 95p per pupil per day for the actual food (not preparation/transport/other costs) instead of the previous 85p.

95p?? It’s no wonder they’re serving shit.

You're absolutely right about poor eating habits being rife in the UK.

Unfortunately, we have followed the US (as we tend to) into 'normality' being eating lots of convenience foods that are riddled with UPFs.

Of course, it's not everyone - many kids eat healthily here - but poor diet is very common, especially in children.

The trend for starchy puddings with school meals started in the post-war era, when kids, if anything, needed fattening up. Maybe encourage your kids to take the yogurt or fruit option, instead of cakes/puddings?

It is interesting that 2 of the examples you give of 'junk' foods, baked beans and fish fingers, are two of the UPF containing foods that experts state children should still eat, as the nutritional value outweighs the minimal poor ingredients (fish fingers are not pre-fried, by the way).

It sounds like you're doing a great job of cooking from scratch at home. A few treats here and there won't hurt.

My kid’s nursery is lovely - great location for playing and fantastic staff - but I hear you on kids food. Ditto bars and restaurants. It’s pasta with garlic bread, cheese and crackers and not a bloody vegetable or bit of fruit in sight. Why can’t kids eat salad and protein same as adults in these places? Often it’s nuggets or fish and chips on the menu and I end up ordering my daughter a starter because it is a better option.

i think challenge for schools and at home can often be cost of fresh high quality ingredients so I do get the issue plus if parents are working multiple jobs can also be challenging to cook from scratch. Certainly mince and options like carrots and frozen peas etc can make options like bolognese and batch freezing a viable option but I think the cost of living crisis and pressure on people to work crazy hours is responsible a big driver.

fyi my partner is French and he complaints about the quality of ingredients in UK as a limiting factor and I moan right back that he (and his folks) are too free and easy with the brioche, chocolate so I think also sometimes just what you’re used to! 🤣 no country is perfect

The sweet at the end of the meal, either before or after the cheese, is a northern European trope. You will find it in both France (cheese then sweet course btw) an also e.g. Germany. It's a different tradition. It's not a bad thing and the British are renowned for their enormous variety of puddings, both hot and cold (and also savoury as well as sweet).
NB I can't know you are an ex-vegetarian, but again black pudding (and white) are northern dietary tropes based on pig husbandry. You will find them both in most northern European countries, or variations upon. I did not like black (blood) pudding on reputation but tried it and loved it - in my first marriage I was 98% vegetarian, too.

OP you don't say what country you originate from, but many European countries have unhealthy options - just different ones.

European countries generally invest more money into school lunches than the UK so lunch nutrition is better.

The option of course is to send your child in with a packed lunch.

It's undeniable that obesity is currently higher in children in UK than many other countries. It's probably a mistake to think this is all nutrition based though. We also work longer hours, have worse weather, have a more crowded island - they all contribute to making choices around exercise and recreation more difficult.

As a parent, it's your choice how you feed your child. UK has many more things going for it, lower child poverty, free healthcare, lower child severe health issues, free vaccinations, better education, the list goes on.

Oh you give your children juice, do you? Mine only drink filtered water.

Just everyone stop with the ghastly food snobbery and chauvinism.

Everyone’s doing their best. In general, food in the UK is good, having overcome the privations of years of rationing after WW2. School dinners are badly underfunded but some children like them. I’ve had good and bad meals all across Europe, and noticed plenty of fast food joints and processed ready meals sold in supermarkets there. Someone must be buying them.

Also - I had to check my hunch - but OPs country has some of the highest rates of obesity in Europe 😂(Malta, for those who missed it).

Just a little something for the OP here ...

Croatia and Malta (both 64.8 per cent) had the highest proportion of overweight people in the EU. Almost two out of every three were considered overweight in these countries.
20 Dec 2023
Adult obesity in England. The Health Survey for England 2021 estimates that 25.9% of adults in England are obese and a further 37.9% are overweight but not obese.

All parents have a choice in what they feed their children. Most parents with young children I know restrict sugar and cook healthy meals for their children, from 'scratch'. School meals are not a very good example of British cuisine to be fair. Schools receive funding of around £2.50 per meal but remember that's not just the cost of the food as schools have to pay for staff, energy to cook the food etc etc., so the budget doesn't really lend itself to avocado, spinach and organic chicken. Most schools that I know also have a salad bar for children to help themselves to. As I said though, you have a choice whether you want your kids to eat them. As a final note, if the meals were super healthy and without any sugar, and all boiled or steamed for example, then lots of children probably wouldn't want to eat them. In an ideal world they would but of course ...