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!

Was there any vegetarian food in Germany? I'm going there in August!

I don’t think this is particularly new, because schools spend less on lunches than we do on prisoners, but to say it’s gone downhill in the last five years as school budgets have declined is an understatement.

Still I think you are unreasonable OP. No one moves to the UK for good food, which is an act of will here. You want nice food you are never getting it in any State institution either.

Keep giving your kids the good stuff. You may really save them from serious disease when they get older.

I have gallstones and buy sausages with very little fat content. They are well flavoured (I don't like plain sausages) and are delicious.

😂
the first time I saw chocolate spread on a breakfast table was when I was 12 on a German exchange. Nutella,processed meats or processed cheese.

I was amazed at the size of the Nesquik tubs in French supermarkets in the 1990s!

I agree - it is something that concerns me. DM would tell you that she cooked from scratch but I remember a lot of Angel Delight, jelly and packet puddings like cheesecake and lemon meringue pie. (She did make a weekly cake from scratch.) She also used the delightful Smash with the laughing space aliens in its advert. She will talk endlessly about how once she bought a freezer she'd go to a farm and buy half a sheep etc but I recall a lot of fish fingers, frozen burgers etc as well as Sunday roasts and weekday stews.

I can see it’s interesting to look back and compare memories (recollections may vary, as her Late Majesty memorably said …)

But why does it concern you? Are you worried that you’ll wake up one day and be obese when all the Angel Delight suddenly catches up with you?

We absolutely should! Your body also needs carbs, protein, iron (to name but a few) which you won’t get from filling up exclusively on fruit and veg. I wouldn’t advise excessive fibre intake either but feel free to try it if you’re feeling brave 😊

There were vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Berlin and Munich so I’m sure they’ll have them elsewhere. I really struggled because I’m coeliac and literally everything had gluten in, but i recall vegetarian schnitzel, pizza and pasta, noodles with cheese and onions, potatoes, potato salad, dumplings in mushroom sauce. Just not much actual veg aside from sauerkraut and asparagus. Loads of bread and pretzels too. You’ll definitely be fine for a few days but your options might be a bit limited.

Fruit and vegetables are generally high in carbohydrates.

But OP all countries struggle with this.

lovinmalta.com/news/maltese-with-the-second-highest-consumption-sugary-drinks-across-the-eu/

timesofmalta.com/article/more-than-75-of-maltese-men-are-overweight.952336
Not to single out Malta particularly (only as you mentioned it in comparison to UK habits), but unhealthy habits exist everywhere

Some, like root veg, are higher than others but I’m not sure I’d refer to them as “high”. I suppose it’s subjective. My original point was that a balanced diet is a good way to build a healthy lifestyle. Excess amounts of any food (ie not in moderation) is not particularly good for us.

Good quality sausages aren’t fatty. You can prick them while cooking and virtually no fat comes out.

The quality of hospital food is equally grim and you would expect it to be nutritious bearing in mind the health impact.

I remember many years ago my ex-DH went to Germany for work. He was very much a fan of Germany and spoke German. He is also a vegetarian. He found it very difficult to eat in Germany, everything had meat in it - or had had - and vegetables were few.

@Smittenkitchen
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Fruit and vegetables are generally high in carbohydrates.

They are. I thought I was reasonably clued up about nutrition but was very surprised just how many veg were banned on a strict keto diet. You could basically eat salad leaves and a few berries.

Oh God yes, I found eating in Germany a right struggle - not vegetarian but I do like a vegetable with my meal.

We ate a lot of Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese food in Germany! I can't get on with traditional German food - even if it is home cooked etc.

Southern Med food, amazing, Scaninavian food..amazing....

Polish, German etc I find more of a struggle...

I recall going to France as a teen and as a vegetarian it was a bloody nightmare, everything had meat in, fairly often it seemed to be ham. I recall trying to order a plain omelette - when it arrived it had bloody ham in it.

Head for Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. But out of cities you might be eating a lot of pizza....

Nonsense. We live in Germany and most of the kids' options at restaurants include chicken nuggets or schnitzel and chips, pasta with tomato sauce, Spätzle etc.

DS' school lunches are quite varied and include a range of foods but they also have burgers or pizza sometimes. The kids love a doughnut for dessert (and there's always some kind of dessert, mostly fruit or yoghurt).

We don't potty train as soon as they can sit. It's not unusual to still have kids at kindergarten (age 3+) in nappies.

If you want to feed your kids only home cooked meals then do that. They are your kids. I do think it's OK to have other foods in moderation, though. Restricting them can lead to kids getting obsessed in equal measure. My cousin was never allowed sweets at home, for example. He'd then grab as many as possible and hide them in his pockets as soon as he was old enough and was able to get access to them somewhere else.

Hah, this. My ex was fanatical about one of his granny's recipes and was shocked to find, when asking another relative for the recipe, how she made it... It was from a packet!

Germany has a lot of vegetarian food in the big cities but less so in the smaller/more traditional places

When my DS was 3 he was potty-trained. Had new DS (not that dear - he suggested the dustbin would make a good cot) and realised she wore nappies. He decided he wasn't going to and went from trainer pants to fully trained in a couple of weeks. Good thing, as his playschool would not take children in nappies and I desperately wanted him to go to playschool.
I introduced solids to my DCs at four months (recommended then - late 70s/80s) but I think the 6 month thing has something to do with allergies. I breastfed both mine. DD has inherited my tendency to hay fever, DS not, and no other allergies I know about.
Fast food and chicken nuggets etc seem universal these days. I don't object to them occasionally. I do wish school meals were better, however. Outsourcing for profit has not worked well.

My hardest country was Spain because of all the pork and shellfish which I don't eat! I speak Spanish fairly well and it was still a struggle. I'm told it's better for vegetarians now than it used to be but because I eat some meats and not others it was apparently very confusing. Once I asked if something had pork in it and they said no. It had ham. 🤣