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!

And the children don’t have tantrums!

😂😂

Omg carbs!!!!!!!!!!!

I dont add sugar to tomatoes either but I do use add vegetables likes carrots and onions cooked down which add sweetness. I've never used puree, it's not nice

😂

Well now you know why 60% of British are overweight and obese. The preoccupation with UPFs knows no bounds.

Weaning a baby at 4 months (before their digestive system is fully developed yet) can lead to life long damage that might not become fully apparent until adulthood which is why it’s not recommended in the U.K. anymore.

100% agree!! If you haven't already, read 'Ultra-Processed People' by Chris van Tulleken. Literally life-changing (and saving!) stuff.

Say no more then...Ahh ok...

Is obesity a problem in Malta?

The island holds the unenviable record of being the fattest country in the EU. According to Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency, a quarter of Maltese adults are obese. The weight problem threatens to drag down the health of Malta's residents and their generous free health care system.

I wonder if the chefs and health experts also took into account that the Maltese (because it’s fine to generalise about an entire country in this thread, right?) can’t read labels or understand nutritional advice on food?

That's an adults portion.....you can get low salt and sugar varieties too....it is 10% of the sugar and 20% of the salt recommended daily intake not that the can is 10%/20%....you could eat 5 portions or 2.5 cans to reach the salt limit.

OP, did you post just to make sure everyone knows you're superior to us uncultured swines?
You're right though - my toddler is eating fish fingers straight out of the freezer as we speak.

Miserable? Just because they have beans in them?? I'm sure there are other ingredients too!

Why are you giving in to pester power from your children, yet full of damnation for the choices at school? They're your children - and still very young - you decide!

Our european toddler is currently having a huge tantrum because her papa won’t let her go in the pool on her own.

The horror 😱

Did you eat least cook them?! 😁

I do apologise - I'm autistic so it wasn't very obvious to me, I'm afraid!

Your child is clearly not European. They do not tantrum. Please restore your child to factory settings. They may need a reset.

I think we are pretty much in denial in the UK. From the posts here you'd think that everyone understands what a healthy diet is but we eat more processed food in the UK than the rest of Europe, so I don't know who's eating it all.

I'm surprised some people think fish fingers are healthy. They have very little nutritional value. Oily fish is what we lack in our diet - breaded white fish is no replacement for it.

Baked beans are only good for us because we get so little other legumes in our diets. If you read about the blue zones (the areas in the world that have the best nutrition and tend to live the longest) they eat a lot of veg, legumes/pulses, oily fish, berries, nuts, a bit of meat and a small amount of dairy each week.

We have moved a long way away from this - due to poverty, lack of time but also a lack of skills and knowledge are also to blame.

@SummerDays2020 me too, took me a while to get truth be told. Then it was very obvious

I think she means obese with diabetes.

Malta has for years topped overweight and obesity lists, with predictions by the World Obesity Federation published in March suggesting the problem is set to worsen and over a third of the adult population will be obese by 2030.

https://timesofmalta.com/article/more-than-75-of-maltese-men-are-overweight.952336

This is the advice on fat intake for children....

You sound like a food snob.

Our school is hot on healthy food, the school cooks food from locally sourced farms, has a salad bar etc.

If you don't want your kids to eat the school meal then give them a packed lunch, it's really that simple.

But try not to be so judgey of others who do eat it, for some kids that's they're most nutritious meal of the day.