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!

What a nasty thing to say. My autistic son will literally only eat fish fingers etc, glad to know that makes me a Bad Parent. Must be my sole brain cell making me prefer feeding him upf foods to the alternative of him starving.

I feel the same about school dinners. They're atrocious. Not to mention the endless bags of haribo or maom sweets they get for every childs birthday. I send packed lunches when able but I am privileged to be able to afford good quality food and have the time to make homemade treats. I have ultra processed people and it has really changed what food I feed my family. My kids will eat junk food when at parties and friends houses etc but I dont buy it at home.

i dont think its fair to class parents who feed their kids, sausage, chips and beans to be bad parents or even assume they live on a 'sink estate' whatever that might be but i assume derogatory.

fresh food is expensive and if you have a household of 5, 2 adults and 3 say teenage boys to feed, that food bill is going to be massive.

not all parents are at home all day and have the time to cook a fresh, well balanced meal for every mealtime.

I always let mine eat what they liked at parties as yes, otherwise they will feel different. To be honest, my eldest never went mad as he didn't really like traditional kids party food, DD quite likes it, though!

I think if you keep healthy food at home and make healthy meals you don't need to worry about food at a party or an ice cream on a day out. You have to keep a balance as others the unhealthy food becomes forbidden fruit and they may gorge on it when they can.

God all this talk if food is making me hungry.

@CatMadam

I don't think that post was aimed directly at you.

I do also agree that it's so stupid. There's nothing wrong with fish fingers and sausages, provided they're of high quality.

Especially when served with new potatoes and broccoli for example.

Orthorexics are a strange, strange breed

And you are choosing to send your son to this place so you are choosing this diet for him. Just hire a nanny and ensure the food given is suitable and get some help for your orthoexia.

The food in the Netherlands is absolute shite. The kids at DS school live on frikandelbroodjes, which are a sausage of dubious origin wrapped in heavy, fatty puff pastry, with chemical curry sauce.
It's normal to eat white bread with Nutella or chocolate sprinkles for lunch. Peanut butter is considered to be healthy.
I make salads for our lunches, often with chickpeas or pulses and DH's colleagues comment on a regular basis.

They're not short at all. My DS is over 6 foot! But the food we eat with family in the Netherlands is certainly less healthy than what we eat at home in the UK.

It’s called balance OP. Nobody ever died from eating sausages and mash for tea.
Also good for you for cooking every meal from
scratch that you mentioned about 45 times 🤦‍♀️

Where are you from OP?

I don't know anyone that thinks the foods you describe are healthy. But I do agree with a PP that you may be over the twith your DCs diet, and we know that can cause eating disorders later down the line.

It did used to annoy me that nursery offered pudding with each meal though as DC expected it at home.

Those salads sound miserable

So put that in their lunch boxes, don't let them stop lunches and explain that people born in the UK are stupid, you are better than them therefore they will eat the food you make. Make it clear that you chose to raise them in a country despite having such utter contempt for the local population and that it's important they never end up like any of their British peers. Ban all play dates and parties with these people as they're clearly not good enough company for you. And tell school they're not to have any treats on their school friends birthday or from any fundraiser at school.

@SummerDays2020 you missed the very obvious sarcasm

Unfortunately some uneducated people don’t understand about the complexities of ARFID and autism (as well as other conditions that result in selective eating) and the impact it has.

I’m still chuckling over OP thinking beans being only 70% beans. 😂

My son eats a jacket potato with beans every day at school. It's an absolute whippet! Nothing wrong with it at all.

Yes, all perfectly fine OP. Here in the UK we have a very highly developed understanding of nutrition and now know that high fat, high salt, highly processed foods are exactly what our children need for optimum health. Unfortunately we are very far ahead with this, so its yet to trickle down to the rest of the world. (Indeed some people here havent caught on and are still allowing their children to gorge on fruit and veg, organic no less! Which many of us feel is tabtamount to neglect.) You are most fortunate to be getting ahead of the curve.

Currently the oldest living man lives in Liverpool the UK. He is 111 years old and he’s had fish and chips every Friday trough his life. I bet he’s had lots of baked beans and chocolate too

I don't think anyone thinks that fish fingers and nuggets are healthy! That this food is served to kids at school doesn't mean people consider this to be healthy. As you say, they also give them pudding and everyone knows that pudding has nothing good on it. This is something that annoys me so much...at DD's school, if you provide a packed lunch, you cannot include anything sweet on it because it has to be healthy, no juices...but then they serve pudding. Makes absolutely no sense. If they think it is bad, they should stop serving it themselves! Why don't they stop serving pudding, which only gives the kids the idea that after lunch you need something sweet?

It seems like some people think that baked beans are healthy...but I am with you. Beans cooked at home or tinned but natural are healthy, beans in a sauce full of sugar or even worse, sweeteners in not healthy!

Don't get me started on snacking...kids are grazing all day long.There have been some threads recently and some people seem to think that making a kid/teenager wait for 40 minutes for dinner/lunch and not allowing a snack when it is nearly time for lunch/dinner is nearly abuse left me baffled...

I got the numbers wrong on baked beans but still... out of 125 ml there are 7 grams sugar, which is about 6%.

And if you read the ingredients one by one you read "sugar". Why would you give beans with sugar to your kids and not just boil some beans? It doesn't take long and is not so artificially sweet too...

We come from South Europe by the way

Orthorexia and stupidity is a terrible combination! The poor child.

We're so healthy here in Sweden that our kids have the longest life expectancy in the world. Standard kids' menu would be meatballs with lingonberry jam, pancakes with cream and jam, or hotdogs with mustard and ketchup.

The fact that you seem to think a tin of beans is made up of 20% salt tells me I’m safe to disregard the rest of your post

So which country do you come from OP?

Why does almost every thread that starts with "I am not British but...", have an OP who never wants to mention their home country?

I've never understood this.

And before anyone jumps in with "What does it matter?"

It doesn't particularly, so the OP should have no trouble answering.