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!

YANBU. I think cooking from scratch is more difficult for some people because it takes time, but also its a skill that most don't have (myself included unfortunately). Although I very rarely feed my child processed crap.

Brit here!

Will admit to happily giving our DD baked beans. She loves them with shop bought (gasp!) gnocchi.

And I'd rather read a book, have a glass of wine with DH, go to a yoga class, or watch a bit of telly than bake bread every other evening. Guilty as charged!

how do you know whether anyone has found my joke funny?

and as I said, even if no-one found it funny, I was clearly joking.

No-one thinks my uncle's jokes are funny, but he is clearly joking a lot of the time.

You're really doubling down on the bread thing aren't you? what a strange hill to die on.

How do they reduce the fat in an olive?

another joke. clearly I am not funny 🙃

Her comment was a lot funnier than any of your po-faced posts. Give it a rest.

What on earth are you on about? No I'm not going to change my opinion on bread just because you personally can't be bothered making it! Amusing you've got all this time to argue this point but not 5 minutes to be kneading a loaf of bread though.

If you think 'are you on crack' is funny then you really need to grow up.

But I have a bread machine. I've clearly reached the pinnacle of maturity.

Bloody hell everything is off limits after reading this thread. What are we actually allowed to feed our children!? Don’t say home made bread, I don’t knead the hassle.

I hear you. I always say a loaf should cost about 20 quid for the amount of graft that goes into it!

Yep, this. Unclench a bit.

Now, now, homemade bread is the yeast you can do for your children.

Oh yeah? Prove it

You can feed them chicken. Just not too much. The whole chicken should feed your family for a week. Oh, and apparently homemade bread. That's it otherwise you will be judged by the MN vipers.

Someone once told me that the biggest difference between UK food and say food from Europe is that it’s packed full of preservatives because we import a large amount.

I don’t have the stats but I love the quality of European food- it tastes better - I’m born and bred British with lots of French relatives , and I loved the foods we would have in France. OK, it was still junk - lots of biscuits and bread (bakery or baguettes) and Jam. Compared to being at home where we had spaghetti hoops, fish fingers and we did have lots of sausages- but we did in France too - it was normally the super processed one that tastes delicious but is 50% meat.

My daughter loves veg though. I agree children are heavily influenced by the culture and I remember wondering why my dd will choose chicken nuggets over actual chicken. But as a teen she prefers home cooked stews with carbs over the horrible frozen stuff.

20% salt in baked beans LOL 😁😁😁😁

I’d prefer to provide them with a wholemeal.

If they’re anything like the desserts in my school they’ll be made with beetroot, carrots, oats etc and very low sugar. Often they end up in the staffroom as they haven’t all been eaten, especially on a day where there is frosting on the sponge so not all UK kids are obsessed with desserts. Most children don’t have the dessert every day, they only take the ones they like and on the other days they have the bread/fruit/soup option.

If your kids are complaining about wanting dessert maybe let them have it sometimes, otherwise once they’re teenagers they’ll be sneaking it behind your back. I was allowed sweet treats whenever I wanted them as a child and as a result rarely ate them and could have just a few sweets then leave the rest. My friends with strict parents gorged on sweets whenever they were at someone else’s home and stole money to buy junk food once we were at secondary. Your approach to food isn’t as brilliant as you think it is and can be setting your kids up for a lifetime of difficult relationships with food.

My friend whose mum served her main meal on side plates and didn’t allow sweet treats has been on a diet for the past two decades, her weight has fluctuated massively and she’s never managed to get down to a healthy weight. It’s possibly time to review your attitude…

Since we are being pious……

Homemade bread is far from ideal. Children can get carbohydrates from far better and healthier sources.

You’re being unreasonable and frankly xenophobic.

Sausages and beans aren’t healthy or considered to be so. We’re from the UK and know precisely how to feed our children healthily, thank you very much. My DS prefers brown bread, eats vegetables, fruit and salad, enjoys fish, home cooked meals and unusual tasting food.

Most nurseries prepare nutritious, balanced food. If yours doesn’t then look for a different one.

As someone who worked in a school for many years and often supervised at lunchtime I very rarely saw a healthy lunch and one tiny cupcake for dessert was common !

As a previous poster has said, there are enormous systemic financial issues with how school meals are funded and budgeted. In many schools the main focus is getting children fed because that might be their only meal that day - caloric intake, not a varied menu. If you want your child to eat other things then remove them from school meals and take the hit with their complaints. In the meantime, if you feel very strongly about it write to your MP and ask them about the financial deals various local authorities have struck with meat and dairy companies to ensure that it is written into policy that children must have a certain number of portions of meat and dairy per week. There are vegan companies out there who work in private schools, could work in state schools at a comparable cost to the current meals but aren’t allowed because of these bullshit policies. Bucks, I’m looking at you.

I make my own bread of all sorts. (irony: I have diabetes and can only eat small amounts of it!) Now, I do it because I enjoy it and because it's cheaper than the nice bread; cheap American bread is as rank as you've heard. But unless you want to do the most basic bread machine white, it takes time and planning. I've been baking bread for near on 20 years, so I've got it down pat and know how to adjust timings, make bread prove more or less quickly, use the fridge, etc. But I would never breezily suggest someone take it up. Health wise it depends what you make. I can make a lovely brioche or a Japanese milk bread, and they are melt in your mouth delicious, but they're full of added fat and sugar. I can also make a nice hearty wholegrain sourdough.

Also Europe is not all one food culture. I've heard some howlers about Norwegian food particularly. Speaking of pizza, it seems Norwegians consume more frozen pizza per capita than anyone else and the frozen pizza aisle of the supermarket is massive. (So says a friend who lived there.)

Fat and salty. Nothing is healthy in an olive. Unless you eat it fresh from the tree but you'll find them disgusting! Olive oil IS healthy however. In small amounts.