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!

I understand the despair OP as generally British children's diets aren't great, hence the obesity rates. However schools have food standards to adhere to. I think you'll find the desserts are part of a balanced diet. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-food-standards-resources-for-schools/school-food-standards-practical-guideSchool food standards School food standards School food standards School food standards

Or they have autistic children who simply won't eat / drink anything else.

Maybe consider there are other reasons before judging.

By making it both tasty and visually appealing. Our son couldn’t havw school dinners when we lived in the UK due to allergies, as the pack up we made were nice, things he liked and looked visually appealing we didn’t have issues.

Generally if food is visually appealing and tastes nice children will eat it.

I think you need to work on your parenting.

You're going to be subjected to at least a decade of "but x has beans/a phone/late bed time/fake id".

Are parents generally very weak in Malta?

If it was me lunch boxes should have some lean protein freshly cooked without sugars, bad oils etc. , some carbs on the side like rice/boiled potatoes without saturated fats and some fresh/steamed veggies and then fruit and/or yoghurt.

This looks like you are imposing adult calorie and fat needs on a growing child. It reads like someone who is rather obsessed and not in a good way.

Children need fats. They are growing, they also need carbs. What you list above could actually be too low calorie for some children - you'd have to eat too large a portion for a small child to get enough energy to grow.

I get it OP. Too many children are overweight. But there's nothing wrong with things like cheese, good quality breads, brown pasta.even good quality sausages are not a disaster.

*When we have lunch on Sunday he asks "and what is the pudding today?" or if we go out for dinner again "what dessert are we having?"

That's not right and it's all about habits!*

There’s nothing wrong with a dessert after Sunday lunch or when out for a meal. Pretty sure they serve dessert ‘on the continent’ too. If no one ate it they wouldn’t serve it.

Processed meat is classified as a Type 1 carcinogen according to world health organisation. This is the same group as tobacco & asbestos. I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect schools not to serve known cancer-causing foods.

Many don’t realise sausages etc are type 1 carcinogens as this classification happened in the last decade. So they weren’t known to be dangerous when most of us were younger. But the evidence is there now. The food industry are understandably not keen on publicising it! But surely one would expect it not to be served in schools or hospitals.

www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cancer-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat

So for those interested and stating UK people are more obese etc. This is the estimated stats from Malta... 69.75% (95% CI: 68.32–71.18) of the Maltese population to be either overweight or obese. Actually higher than the UK.

"Malta is our origin for whoever is so interested 😁"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192534/

Obesity is a global epidemic with the Mediterranean island of Malta being no exception. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified Malta as one of the European countries with the highest obesity prevalence.

😂😂😂

That contains a lot of sugar.

We also don't have a problem with children and tantrums. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yeah so how come my overriding memory of a day at EuroDisney was ill behaved French kids screaming the place down whilst their harassed parents walloped them whilst smoking a fag?

I have no idea but my 4 year old starts school soon and I’m going for a mixed approach - school dinners some days and packed lunch others. Luckily we can pick and choose. School dinners look pretty rubbish nutrition wise here and generally have a lot of crap in them. I just do the best I can - make my own bread, don’t buy biscuits, cakes etc weekly in the food shop but make occasional tray bakes for us. Try and expose my children to a variety of foods. I agree the children’s menus out are very samey. But they wouldn’t be eaten if they weren’t sadly. But hey… at least we don’t live in America…!

Not everywhere in Europe finishes early. France doesn't, but they have proper school meals. Germany is early. Italy has school lunch. Switzerland breaks for 2 hours (early grades finish early) but I remember a friend was able to pay for her child to stay and they got a proper hot lunch.

Look because you can't reason with your child is not anyone else's fault.

Raise your kid giving what you want to eat, but stop blaming other parents...... because that's bad parenting!

I’ve been reading bits of this thread to my Spanish husband and he’s snorting 😄He says he grew up on choreetho and ham and that hot chocolate you can stand your spoon up in ( as well as fish stews) so you’re definitely not from Spain OP…
I agree food here at school and nursery can be dire but I grew up here and always had home cooked food- no nuggets etc as they were actually quite expensive back in the day. I longed for Findus Crispy Pancakes..

You will come across this problem again and again in different forms as a parent, as you have already no doubt. "Mum, why can't I have an ice-cream like Toby?", "Mum, Daran's mummy brings sweets when she picks him up from school, can you do that to?" or (taking inspiration from a recent thread) "Mum, why can't I have a toy from the gift shop like my friend?".

While I agree with you that UK school dinners aren't the best, have you see the budget these schools have? Most do ok given the funding constraints.

As for your kids whining, like all other parents you have 2 choices - (i) give in, or (ii) say "tough luck, kid, them's the rules in this family however much you moan" and stick to your guns.

Unfortunately the world, including UK school meals, isn't going to change to accommodate your parenting approach.

I think that the OP is winding us up....

Some classic Maltese dishes

pastizzi - a flaky pastry filled with ricotta - just think of the fat content!!!

Bragioli - slices of beef wrapped stuffed with bacon egg and breadcrumbs - think of the salt in the bacon!!!!

Macaroni in a white sauce layered over a bolognese stle sauce (and most Maltese ladies I know make it with half corned beef and half minced) - yet more fat and godd gracious me all the refined white carbs in the pasta .....

Timpana - a cheesy pasta bolognese in pastry - lots of fat again!!

Kinnie - an orange fizzy drink with nearly 9.8g sugar per 100mls

Zalzett Malti - the Maltese sausage -known to be very salty compared with the standard British banger.

I'll not even comment on the variety of sweets that make a traditional Lardy cake look healthy.....

Don't tell Americans. There's a persistent myth here that French children are all beautifully behaved all the time and ADHD doesn't exist 🤣🤣🤣

Well, it's fine to ensure that your children have a healthy diet. However - you are being very critical of the UK, and starting a thread which largely condemns UK parents and diet, when you're from Malta!

I'm 60 and I had school dinners that were carbohydrate heavy and was always served a stodgy dessert with custard. I was neither unhealthy nor overweight. The difference between then and now is that we walked everywhere and played outside from dawn until dusk when we weren't at school, so we burnt it off.
The majority of today's children are ferried everywhere in the car and only play outside if they are occasionally taken to a park by their parents. Even those with a garden rarely play outside.
It's school holidays here. I live on an estate full of families and children. When I was outside mid morning today, there was not a child to be heard (and no, their parents don't all work).

For what it's worth, I hate the standard kids menu offerings in most places. My DCs were far more adventurous with food than sausage and chips or pasta and tomato sauce (not that there's anything wrong with the latter).

Choice is not a good option, because 99% of kids will choose pudding and not fruit if they can choose. School is a place where kids have to be educated, so it should not be controversial to say that removing pudding altogether would be the best thing to do for the kids, as not having pudding is healthier. also, putting this idea in their minds that something sweet is needed after a meal is necessary is very bad.

I am not a healthy food freak and I like to give my DD a treat on the weekends too, so that means if she has school meal, she will be eating sweets absolutely every day.

I mean, they teach them the theory that this food items are healthy and these others aren't but then they give it to them. Makes no sense.

Yup. Sweetens it beautifully, whilst adding sharpness.

@lovemycoffee2 what age are you talking about? I don't think you've mentioned it? Or have I missed it?

🙄

Well I shop across a range of places from a Morrisons in a low income area to a Waitrose in a wealthy area. A fancy brand name ready meal is still a ready meal and a mass produced plastic wrapped loaf of bread is still Ultra processed and full of preservatives and so on even if it claims to be farmhouse multi-seed organic and wholemeal. I don't shop in aldi or lidl as in my experience the quality of the produce is crap.

Apparently the Maltese are even fatter than the brits

tbf, women are thinner but the average is pulled up by the blokes. Obviously both countries could do with slimming down a bit.