To be shocked by this government dietary advice for babies and children?

[fourfoxsakes]

from the government in Northern Ireland that is published online? Surely we don’t do these things any more such as mixing baby rice with milk and advising people to feed their very young children rice crispies and cornflakes for breakfast and advising people to give juice with meals! Surely this is bad advice, I am honestly surprised that the government have been allowed to publish this crap. I have no doubt people still do these things which is an individual parenting choice but surely the government shouldn’t be advocating for this?

What’s wrong with drinking juice with meals?

Again what is wrong with juice with meals ?

It's really high in sugar and therefore bad for teeth. Yes, drinking it with a meal is better than in isolation, but eating whole fruit and drinking water is much better for both gut and dental health.

Juice with meals is recommended due to the acidity such as fruit juice only with meals, very common advice

Juice with meals is recommended over drinking it alone. And what on earth is wrong with rice crispies?!

That's if you're going to have it at all, surely. Juice isn't compulsory and "well diluted juice" doesn't add much in terms of nutritional value, with a trade off that kids get accustomed to sweet-flavoured drinks rather than water or milk.

This list has the feel of "people are going to feed these things anyway so let's try to make it as positive as possible."

I agree OP, juice is crap, I didn’t give mine juice as in my view it gets them used to sweet drinks and is bad for their teeth, much better that water is the norm. A whole piece of fruit is way better so Weetabix with banana, berries etc. Government nutritional advice is one of the reasons we have an obesity problem.

Well the poster said diluted pure juice and it is recommended drinking juice with food because teeth can be brushed, how dull would life be without a bit of flavour in their drink.

I imagine they're trying to strike a balance of it being actually achievable as well as having some nutrition. If it was the peak of nutrition lots of people wouldn't be able to afford it and also lots of children wouldn't eat it

Why does juice need to be introduced to young children at all? If you tried to send juice into school in a water bottle for your child it would be removed.

How dare they give advice based on quick meals that are reasonably cheap, easy to source from the supermarket or local shop, easy to make but still provide nutrition for children to grow.

Obviously my kids have handmade cereal, homemade 18 seed bread and kombucha before school.

Sure it is the goverments fault !

Why can’t toddlers have cereal for breakfast? It’s saying if it has to be juice, with a meal is best because it doesn’t damage the teeth as much and I think it’s just suggesting that if you make up baby rice, you use the baby’s notmal milk as the liquid component so for a 6 month old formula fed baby use formula not cows milk or use breast milk if breastfed etc

18 seed bread 😂

I think the point is, the NHS shouldn't be recommending that young children drink juice at all. It's really bad for their teeth and predisposes them towards preferring sweet drinks. There's no need for young children to ever be drinking fruit juice, it should be water or milk only.

OP YANBU, I find the NHS generally dreadful for dietary advice. I had dietician appointments when I was pregnant due to gestational diabetes and the advice was woefully inaccurate. For one thing it was the same advice given to people with T2 diabetes, despite the fact that you have much less freedom with GD. For another, it made all sorts of mad recommendations like having 150mls of orange juice with breakfast, or using reduced sugar jam (the correct advice for GD would be to have no fruit juice or jam at all).

They say the juice should be “well diluted”. I agree that water would be preferable but I think to call that advice “crap” is quite a stretch.

Rice crispies have very little nutritional value .

This is MN where everyone drinks tap water and milk by the gallon - nobody would ever give their kid apple juice or worse, Ribena 😂

Does everything you eat have perfect nutritional value?

It looks fine to me.

They’re a low fat, filling breakfast and with milk have sources of calcium, iron etc so they’re not the perfect breakfast of balance but it’s not bad advice to suggest your child might occasionally have them for breakfast!

What is wrong with rice crispies and cornflakes. Jesus

Possibly I’m old now, but when I was weaning my kids the advice was to explore flavours with them and get them to try a lot of different foods and drinks.

I presume the theory was it would expand the tastes they were used to,

obviously this doesn’t apply to things that are straight up bad for them - giving a weaning baby or child gin is probably not a good idea - but I got mine to try quite a few different drinks including lots of different fruit juices and smoothies and yoghurt style drinks etc.

Government guidance has to account for the majority. Can the majority afford it, understand it and access the information. I wouldn’t choose to feed my children this way, but I can see it’s a good balance of food groups and it’s accessible to the majority in terms of cost. I think this actually reads pretty sensibly & if someone was struggling, this would be useful guidance

Because not everything in life has to be perfectly balanced, nutritious and healthy, and there’s nothing actually wrong with some diluted apple juice and rice crispies.