Avoiding UPFs at breakfast

[Ayechinnyreckon]

After breakfast we eat virtually no UPFs but the kids breakfast is a huge issue.

They wake early and are hungry. They're 9&6 so can be trusted to go downstairs, get themselves some cereal and occupy themselves in the morning until we get up.

They eat cereal and pastries mainly until we get up and make a more substantial breakfast if they want it) 90mins - 2 hours later.

AIBU to want quick and easy breakfast that the DC can get themselves? So I don't have to get up at 5.30!

@Ayechinnyreckon why do you/your family buy breakfast cereals and other processed stuff if you don't want the children eating it?

Many supermarkets I've found sell non or minimal UPF bread ready sliced. You don't need to make your own. Tesco does a sourdough loaf with no emulsifier or preservative, Sainsburys does ciabatta, pitta and a few loaves along the same lines - they might contain some ascorbic acid or barley malt. Lots sell Jason's bread (but it needs toasting).

Obviously your own bread may taste better and be slightly less processed but you don't need to go to a hipster bakery and spend 6 quid on a loaf to get something half decent. Just read the labels.

My kids love bircher muesli. It's a bit like overnight oats but nicer.

Rude Health sell loads of non upfront cereals but they don't go down the same as rice krispies etc.

Muesli and milk. I've got some Dorset Cereals muesli at the moment and the ingredients are what you'd put in if you made it yourself.

Buy better bread, better cereals, yoghurt and fruit
Do you have an air fryer so they can warm up rolls
But seriously you might be overthinking, it depends what they eat the rest of the time
If they are troughing half a box of frosties and 2 pain au chocolat each day that's different
Also, monkeys (and hobbits) have second breakfasts. If they are up at the crack they might need two however nutritious.

Yoghurt, weetabix and get a toaster.

Please take a look at anything Dr Chris Van Tullekan has published or his TV clips. You don’t know what you don’t know. Once you DO know about the huge range of unecessary additives (chemicals) added in to our food (UPF), I think most would change their minds.

If it makes you better OP, one of mine eats virtually all beige food. So on a bad day, white toast and butter for breakfast, a ham and cheese toastie or egg and bacon sandwich for lunch and nuggets and chips for supper.
They'd starve if I banned UPFs.

Hard boiled eggs?

My mum is a dietitian and I used to have oats, dairy free milk & yoghurt & mum used to stew apples and cinnamon and keep in a Tupperware in the fridge. (Allergic to dairy)

all cold as mum still thinks microwaves encourage lazy eating (plus kitchen was small.)

it’s alright. Still eat it now but not every morning. Sometimes the stewed fruit would run out and we’d have jam. Homemade jam but still it had to be sweet to keep in jars.

Which bit of them exactly is non-UPF???

Or, to flip that around, be mindful of people sat behind a screen slagging others for being 'obsessed' for trying to minimise unhealthy food when in reality they are obese and unhealthy themselves.

Back when mine were children cereals were full of sugar, and yet in their 30s now and have never had any work on their teeth , they are ultra healthy and so are any other person from that time I know.

Most adults are overwheight so the people you know are actually in the minority. So a lot of people might not look unhealthy they still might be.
While most of the children 30 years ago were a normal weight most adults aren't so something most have gone wrong somewhere.
I reckon the healthy eating habits we install in children will lead them to healthy eating habits as an adult. Kids who grow up with UPF, oversized portions and snacking will likely become adults who do the same.

Yes, Chris van Tulleken is making quite a career out of the whole UPF thing. But maybe that's part of what PP was referring to as the grift.

I recommend this podcast, by a respected scientist and science writer, for some sober evaluation of UPFs: www.thestudiesshowpod.com/p/episode-6-ultra-processed-foods

After staying in a nice hotel in the alps that had a muesli bar, I decided to be decadent and make my own for home. I bought several glass jars and have filled them with homemade granola base (basically just toasted rye, wheat, oats, barley flakes), different nuts, seeds and some dried fruits. I add fresh fruit and either kefir or Greek yoghurt. I don’t eat breakfast, but I like the novelty of having a sort of pick n mix snack. I also take it as a packed lunch when I can’t be bothered making anything more time consuming. My current homemade granola has tons of honey baked into it, so quite a sugar fest, but it’s so tasty, full of fibre and no UPFs.

Jordans do a really nice no added sugar granola and Lidl do a nut granola, not no added sugar, which is nice a chewy and really fills me up but is naturally lower in sugar than most cereals.

I once knew a family whose children weren’t allowed out of bed until the parents got up. They had to lie there quietly, sometimes for hours.
I knew another family whose children got up far earlier than their parents and at ages 6, 8 & 10 made a gigantic mess in the kitchen making pancakes or waffles or French toast. How they managed to not burn themselves is beyond me, but that kitchen looked like a tornado tore through, with batter dripping off cabinets and in puddles on the floor and syrup everywhere.

Well, we're somewhere in the middle! DS is allowed downstairs at 6am and DC2 whenever she wakes up. They can have what they want from a pre-determined selection of things (which is the selection I'm looking at adjusting off the back of this thread). They aren't allowed to use the oven or hob or knives and crafting is allowed but with the safety scissors only. They tend to make dens, build stuff out of Lego it draw. Usually with netflix on in the background. They've to be dressed for school by 8am. They're ace kids and we've had not had much trouble from this system and I'm definitely enjoying a bit more sleep!

This thread has encouraged me to order a glass container and make some homemade granola.

I used to like the supermarket stuff but increasingly don’t like most of them them whereas I’ve dry roasted oats and almonds and thrown in some honey for a very simple one portion granola and it tasted so good.

So I think I’ll sit and have a proper go of making granola and make a large enough proton to last a week.

I have liked one or two supermarkets granolas though, I just wish I could remember which ones they were 😂

In addition to getting a toaster, I’d cook up some sausage and bacon the night before and refrigerate it so that the 9 year-old can just pop it in the microwave for them.

Or breakfast casserole, as someone said. I had a fantastic one a few weeks ago. She cut potatoes into cubes and put them in a casserole dish, then whisked a bunch of eggs and poured it in. Then sliced sausage and shredded cheese on top. Once it was baked the bottom layer was the potatoes held together with scrambled eggs and the top was the sausage held together with cheese.

I came to say this. It's just another thing aimed mostly at women to add guilt and work onto an already full plate (no pun intended).

Do you think men are spending a significant amount of time reconciling whether it's ok to give their child a specific type of jam in the morning? They're absolutely not.

I'm sure if you heard a scientist or doctor saying exactly what you wanted to hear, you wouldn't be so quick to accuse them of 'making a career out of it'. Confirmation bias - the ones you agree with are respectable, the ones you don't agree with must have an agenda.

The heart of what Van Tulleken is saying is:
-Whole food, in or close to its natural state, is what you have evolved to eat.
-Packaged food made in factories is produced to maximise profits and not with your good health as a priority.
-The former is therefore almost always better for you than the latter, and is what you should aim for as much as possible.

Taking the celebrities and internet experts out of the equation for a minute, does anyone actually disagree with this? If you do, I'd love to hear your reasons.

We'll, it isn't. But there is a wide difference between processed cereal, fake plant milk, fruit squash as a breakfast and a cube of oat, egg and cheddar flapjack.
The world if artificial additives is so confusing. In my head (for my sanity), it works like this: any food that can't be made nice by the way it is cooked or the addition of other foods can't be ok. If it needs to have something artificial or unrecognisable added it isn't good.
Basically if it only tastes good because of artificial stuff then it isn't good for you.

Weetabix and shredded Wheat are ok.

Don't buy pastries. Bananas, dates and nuts instead.

Me and my brothers were the same. So are my nieces & godchildren. We were all perfectly capable to be up before my mum in primary school.

I assume the kids in that story with the chaotic kitchen had parents who didn’t mind them messing up the kitchen, if the pancake making was a regular thing I mean . I can’t see many parents allowing that.

I have suffered from sleep deprivation for long periods of time and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Sleep is so important so if you don’t need to wake up at 5.30am you’re quite right not to!