To wonder who is buying chocolate cereal

[Blueyseviltwin]

Who om each is buying Lion bar and Oreo cereal? See also lucky charms, nesquick and coco pops
These aren't breakfast foods (or any sort of food). I literally cannot imagine anyone thinking it is a reasonable way of feeding children?

But you did say “If you’re poor, buy a loaf of bread, and if you want your children ‘to be full’ then have them eat six slices of toast instead.”. Now if you are poor chances are you are buying cheap bread and eating the same amount if not more sugar than the ‘junk’ cereal. My point is you advocating for the replacing of one ‘junk’ food for another.

Everyone has different appetites , and everyone is different shape and sizes. What would fill you up until supper is different to others. My husband would eat that in a day, quite easily. I don't think I could eat all of that.at breakfast personally, but it would be easy for me to eat similar meals and be overweight..

Anyway, it was just an example of high calorie meals made of foods that are not processed or with sugar added.
I'm just saying that it can be easy to become overweight even though you have no sugar or UPF in your diet.

"Mine eat a brilliant range of foods", that's great for you OP but, as a GP, not surprising?
The school curricula doesn't cover life skills including seeking a balanced diet. For example, Biology shows the digestive system, while Food Technology considers method, aesthetics and food groups. There is nothing about navigating a physical or online food shop and making healthy choices. Nothing about the advertising pressure we all face.
Parents who don't know or don't care about healthy choices won't pass helpful advice to their DCs. Chocolate cereal is only part of the problem.

I do understand that the majority of your patients wouldn't be eating like that and that the UPF and sugar is the HUGE factor. I get it.

Chocolate cereal? Not on your nelly! Pain au chocolat is a far better way to enjoy chocolate for breakfast 😋

You don't burn meat on a BBQ you know..you cook it.

If you have black sausages after the cooking... you're doing it wrong!

Really, you're a GP @Blueyseviltwin? And you're just now thinking about childhood obesity and the causes? You've just noticed sweetened cereal and you're chalking it all up to that? You don't have any deeper thoughts about families that are stressed, time-poor and struggling? You don't have any thoughts about generational poverty? None about genetics? My ass you're a doctor.

And your spelling, grammar and punctuation is atrocious. For a doctor, that is.

Supermarket brand wholewheat cereal like Weetabix is cheap, cheaper than sugary crap, healthier and more filling than sugary crap. @Blueyseviltwin is not being judgmental.

Now that’s very interesting.

Do you genuinely believe that the pleasure gained from regularly eating junk food generally is worth trading some life for? This is not a joke, the statistics reveal it to be so.

If the answer is yes, you are perfectly free as a consenting adult to make that choice.

The scandal lies with the parents of the proto-obese small children that one sees with increasing frequency, who do not do their own shopping and are too young to give informed consent.

It’s child abuse, dressed up as a ‘treats’.

OP I think some of them are absolute trash, I think I saw a KitKat one recently and was like wtf. However, as a child I regularly had Coco pops a and nesquik and that was over 20 years ago (I'm 33) so I don't see a problem with them but my DH will 100% not buy them and thinks it's disgusting to give a child that for breakfast I don't buy them and our children have normal cereal or toast!

@IridiumSky "The scandal lies with the parents of the proto-obese small children that one sees with increasing frequency, who do not do their own shopping and are too young to give informed consent.
It’s child abuse, dressed up as a ‘treats’."

I grew up in the 70s with a young mother ignorant of healthy eating, back in the old days. My favourite cereal was Ricicles (extra sugary Rice Krispies). I was often overweight as a child. I'd sometimes be put on a 'diet' (I remember bananas-and-milk). It's only now that I look back and see that I was overweight from the crap UPF I was being fed, and it was nothing about the cost of food, just sheer ignorance.

Good for her. Genuinely! 😀

She’s no doubt healthy, and now too old to die young so can get away with it.

Ask her about her childhood diet. It would be revealing.

I let my DC pick a special cereal for self catering holidays. It then comes home and is the weekend treat until it runs out....
It's not super nutritious but they get added milk and brush their teeth afterwards. As part of a balanced diet with plenty of veg and home cooking it's a great way of giving them joy

Weetabix has added sugar too.

Yes, that’s true. But there is a reason that nations in which a traditional diet (which the foods you describe would fall into) remains the norm have much lower obesity rates than those in which UPF consumption rates are higher and it is that it is harder to eat enough whole foods to become obese than it is to eat enough UPFs to become obese. If there were no UPFs available at all there would still be some obese people, clearly. But I think the evidence now shows that many of the people who are currently obese would not have become so in the absence of UPFs.

You're absolutely right OP but you'll get it thrown at you because people are ignorant and they feel like you are criticising them. Ironic really considering most of them will also bemoan the behaviour of kids and the state of the NHS.

This was my diet when I was 5stone lighter than I am now....

A tiny amount compared to most other cereals. There's also Shredded Wheat which is 100% wheat, zero added sugar.

Not all cereals are fortified. Kellogg's Honey Nut Clusters, Raisin wheats, shredded wheat etc aren't for example..

And for me, its not the sugar that's the problem it's the added ingredients and machined shaping if it all. Id rather my kiddos have the organic butter, peanut butter and a teaspoon of jam having 5g of sugar from jam and bread, knowing it's more nutritioius and filling than the sugar that's been added to a bowl of cereal and Coco pops have 5.1 per 30g. Because they're going to need more than 30g to not be hungry after 45 minutes!

Just my preference though.

I admit I've wondered this too. I think they're for teens/uni students.

Does your husband eat like this and is he overweight?

That is a high volume of food and the point is that because it is low in UPF your body will regulate to what you need. The person who eats all of that may need it. It doesn't show that it's easy to become overweight on non UPF.

100% agree

Don’t be so deliberately disingenuous.

A bad DIET is made up of all these things, as you very well know.

And yes it’s appalling what parents feed their kids. Trying to excuse themselves by saying other people are the ‘fun police’ or that ‘oh a box of Coco pops never made anyone obese..’ is fooling nobody.

My kids love coco pops. I do too actually, they make the milk chocolatey ffs! They’re not treat food, or rare. They are a shopping staple. Alongside the coco pops and haribo they also get lots of fresh fruit and veg and eat a lovely varied diet.

The occasional McDonald’s or chocolate cereal doesn’t constitute a ‘bad diet’.

Never called anyone the ‘fun police’.

One box of coco pops has never made anyone obese.

Not sure who you think I’m trying to fool.