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?

But you can't actually feed a young child entirely or mainly vegetables. It would be its own kind of unhealthy, plus they'd be hungry. Vegetables are often great on 'vitamins per penny' but would come out terribly on 'calories per penny'. This is fine if you're an adult trying to lose weight and so eat the maximum volume of food for the minimal calories. Babies and toddlers have tiny little stomachs and are growing enormously quickly so that is not what they need, at all.

Again, you’re showing your ignorance - because the best dietary advice is simply unobtainable for many families, whereas pouring a box of cereal into a bowl and adding milk is not - it’s quick, it’s easy, it doesn’t involve loads of equipment or knowledge. It can be done in 30 seconds, it doesn’t require lots and pans, or a microwave, or a cupboard full of additional ingredients to make it taste nice.

How is it classist when you've just said yourself that the single mum with the handful of GCSEs and minimum wage job can't handle something more complicated.

And why doesn't she have time to cook from scratch in the evening? What is she doing with her time?

Lentils, just to point out, don't need soaking and cook in under 30 mins.

Porridge in the morning takes 5 mins and doesn't need milk, can be cooked in water and eaten with splash of milk.

And I don't see how you can point your finger at the food industry but not see how the NHS is doing their work for them with this guidance?

The main issue is education and culture not cost - poor people in poorer countries than the UK don't eat the same level of heavily processed food lacking in nutrition, it's just not the cultural norm. Unfortunately in the UK it is the cultural norm and there lies the issue. Which is where education comes in and exactly why the NHS should not be promoting these things. If it's about cost then tap water is cheaper than fruit juice, oats with milk are cheaper than baby rice, breast milk is free etc., etc. the cost argument just doesn't make sense and the NHS should be promoting healthy food choices. I agree OP it's an appalling recommendation and no amount of sugar coating and attempting to link the advice to cost pressures makes any sense.

Raisins are not good for you, btw - full of sugar. Porridge from scratch? Do you go out to paid work?
Just a query. If one is allergic to fish and the other is veggie how does the salmon fit in?

Porridge in the morning takes 5 mins and doesn't need milk, can be cooked in water and eaten with splash of milk.

Sure, but who wants to basically eat gruel every morning? And how is watery porridge even remotely tasty or filling for a young child?

I gave vegetables as an example, but there are obviously plenty of very cheap sources of carbs that can be included in a healthy diet for children (bread, potatoes, pasta, rice) at an appropriate portion size.

Where I live, eggs, chicken, pork, and various kinds of fish and cheese are all very affordable sources of protein if eaten in nutritionally sensible amounts.

Interesting how you think I'm the ignorant one @vanillalattes ... Read your post back and have some self awareness. So your suggestion is NHS dietary advice should be poor and that it is acceptable to provide poor advice because people are poor - let their children suffer the consequences hey?Now that truly is an ignorant argument, very little Britain.

I just don't believe that anyone is genuinely confused by any of this. Its totally wilful.

Well, you're talking to an audience that thinks McDonalds (fries and nuggets with juice) is an appropriate meal for a 10 months old (a thread from a few weeks ago)....
So in comparison those recommendations aren't that bad! 😂

I wouldn’t know.

I see we're back to basically giving budgeting advice to the very people who are the most experienced in budgeting. You'd think the pattern of people with less resources buying longer-lasting and nutritionally incomplete options were doing it on purpose to annoy people who have never been in their situation but think they have all the answers.

Seriously? Chia seeds. Overnight oats is easy, of course but I doubt many DC would eat it.
You are not accounting for shift patterns etc which many people have to deal with.

It is true that some of this is about cultural habits, about what people are used to eating, what they see as normal (for a lot of people in the UK breakfast is cereal or toast, things like eggs or beans on toast are lunch or tea foods). But the thing is, these things do matter and are powerful and there's no point giving people guidance that ignores them. There's a really interesting part in Bee Wilson's book First Bites (which I'd recommend in general) where she talks about a very calorie and nutrition dense paste that was developed to give to severely malnourished children, which was based on peanuts. It was first used, to great success, in some parts of Africa - where peanuts are really commonly eaten. But then they tried to use it in Bangladesh, where peanuts are less common, and the kids outright refused it. Their parents had to force them to eat it, and lot wouldn't - this stuff seemed very unfamiliar and 'unfoodlike' to them. Again, these are starving kids in poverty - this isn't about 'fussy eaters' or indulged brats. The point is it isn't actually that easy to get people to start eating food that isn't part of their cultural norm even under those circumstances. People are comforted by the familiar and if you want them to eat better you're better off nudging than saying 'but why aren't you making chia pudding?'.

Porridge is absolutely rank and trying to force it on people is utterly bizarre. People aren't eating it because they don't want to and generally haven't found any way of mitigating the minging texture and awful taste. Stop banging on about fucking porridge.

It would be great if everyone could make the best choices for their babies, the reality is many people can’t. NHS advice needs to be accessible to all - there’s no point in recommending steamed sweet potato to support baby led weaning if mums can’t do that, don’t know how to steam and sweet potato and don’t have the fuel needed.

Your naive, middle class, sour dough making mumsnetters aren’t relying on the NHS to know how to feed their children. Breakfast cereal, fruit juice, aren’t bad choices per se regardless of whether a Rice Krispie has ever passed your child’s lips.

I hear what you believe, but does the conversation need to stop there?

I'm not at all convinced, so far, that eating healthy food is automatically more expensive.

It is much more likely that it is a cultural issue, as @MumofCandR says.

For example, @vanillalattes now says that the problem with porridge is not cost or availability, but taste and texture.

It's cheap and nutritious. (And absolutely delicious, I eat it most mornings myself. It's not gruel, it's soft and silky and just really lovely.)

I tried overnight oats once. They were vile. And cold.

never heard of chia pudding before but it looks interesting I might try it. Not as a breakfast though. My breakfast is fruit juice, yoghurt, then about a pint of decaf coffee and toast.

more generally, I used to be a teacher.
as a school we had in breakfast bars because quite frequently kids would turn up in school not having had breakfast and they’d be hungry.

some years depending on what classes I had I used to bring in a pack of carrots and give them out in the first lesson as so many kids would be hungry and not have had breakfast at all. (Carrots was about the cheapest fruit or veg I could find that didn’t go off completely in the week).

some parents are living in temporary accommodation that has no cooking facilities at all. None. So they aren’t going to be doing scrambled eggs or anything like that.

the food bank near me is very careful what they give out in terms of expecting people to cook stuff as access to ovens/microwaves etc is difficult. Most people do have access to hobs but ovens can be expensive to run (especially if you are doing something like jacket spuds which need a long time).

sure, onions carrots and lentils are cheap. And when I was a student I pretty much lived off vegetable stews and chillis. But they aren’t the sort of meals that appeal to kids very much. Or adults frankly.

Porridge might be rank to you usedtobeaylis and many others but lots like it, especially as overnight oats with nuts and berries. I think the reason people say these things are ‘rank’ is sometimes because their taste buds have been destroyed by seriously rank processed food!

You're being deliberately obtuse.

This lack of aspiration for the poorest and most vulnerable from the people who purport to know them and support them is utterly baffling!

There is an underclass in Britain that's literally eating itself to (a slow, bloated and toothless) death.

Whilst NHS choices do need to be accessible suggesting juice when water is free is madness. It teaches children to prefer sweet things.

As regards the cost of cooking - Weetabix with milk and a banana is good. What’s going to be the next excuse?

I don't think most DC will eat chia pudding and chia seeds are neither cheap nor easily available - I know this because my late DH wanted them and it took visits to several supermarkets and shops to find them. Doubtless you shop at Waitrose? Ours shut after an Aldi opened opposite, which happens to sell chia seeds!
Nothing is easier than opening a box of rice crispies and pouring milk on them, really!
You appear to live somewhere extremely affluent. And avocado is bad for the environment and very high in fat. Salmon's fine but I thought neither of your DC ate it?

I see very little (if anything) wrong with this advice.

I weaned and fed three children in a similar way to this, and cereal for breakfast, sometimes with juice if I had any was a staple.

I see some of the comments on threads such as this one and actually wonder how my children made it through their childhoods. They seem to have survived somehow and are healthy adults aged between 30 and 23. All well grown and with no fillings in their teeth.

Maybe I did something right after all. 🙄🤣

Or children with allergies, SEN or other various dietary needs which can be even harder to manage with a limited budget.