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?

I agree. If you want to know, have a look here:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/public-health-outcomes-framework

I haven't had to use the data for a few years, there used to be a clickable map where you could see the areas of deprivation really clearly. A bit like this older Scottish map:

https://jamestrimble.github.io/imdmaps/simd2016/

Stew, roast chicken, fish pie, veggie curry .... Sounds great to me.

Fruit, breadsticks, veg sticks, cheese for snacks. Seems quite good choices? Better than say crisps and a penguin?

You might find this book by Danny Dorling interesting.

it’s about seven (made up) children at each point in the inequality scale and gives a real sense of what their lives are like.

https://www.dannydorling.org/books/sevenchildren/

A 1kg bag of oats costs c. 85p to £1.40. These aren't quick cook oats either, and this is mainland UK. I think NI is more expensive for some things. I buy oats for Overnight Oats, so don't cook them, but I might try in the microwave because just now it's really cold!

There’s nothing wrong with Rice Krispies but I really take issue with statements like this:
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.
Firstly, if that’s how your family has always eaten then it’s what your children are used to!
Secondly, as someone who was brought up on lentil stews/ tagines etc ( with small amounts of meat mixed in) it’s about seasoning and knowing how to make good taste good.
As a poor lone parent with limited kitchen space it seriously never occurred to me to NOT feed my children what I was used to eating. The idea of kid food was something I found out about when kids started going to friends houses. My children ate chick pea stews, lentil soup, all
kinds of vegetables because it was the food they knew. Plus a fair amount of chips, cereal etc, because there’s nothing wrong with a bit of balance and I reckon real chips from the chippy are British soul food!
I fed my kids well on very little money (porridge with banana and a bit of honey for breakfast, 3 mins in microwave really. Not hard!)
I do agree that there is a thing in uk society where the poor are expected to live chaotic lives and not care about good food. We need to have higher expectations for ourselves.

They are great choices. But cheese isn’t cheap, and both fruit and veg can go off fairly quickly so need to be eaten fairly soon after purchase. Breadsticks are fine but pretty dull on their own.

With fruit and veg you also have the issue of quality and of course, whether they’ll actually be eaten. There’s no point buying a £1 bag of apples if they’re just going to sit in a cupboard and rot.

(Protestant tray bakes are another cultural difference)

I'm not saying it's perfect, but Weetabix doesn't have a "long list of ingredients". It contains: Wholegrain Wheat (95%), Malted Barley Extract, Sugar, Salt, Niacin, Iron, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid. That's only four ingredients (wheat, malt extract, sugar and salt) plus the vitamins and iron added for marketing purposes nutritional benefits. Omitting the last five would hardly make it healthier, would it?

But you’ve kind of proven the point people are trying to make - you grew up on lentil stews and tagines, and so you knew how to cook them and what to put in them, and how they need to be seasoned.

Government advice on how to feed your family isn’t aimed at people like you. It’s aimed at people who were raised on the absolute bare minimum and who have no idea what a lentil even looks like, let alone how to actually cook one.

I was just highlighting them because they are on the menu described as 'shocking'. I was just bemused. It looks balanced to me.

To be honest, it's probably cost and it may well vary from Trust to Trust. Hot food isn't prepared on site any more in many hospitals, so there's not a ward kitchen (beyond a tiny thing for tea & biscuits and the odd pre packed sandwich), or a big main kitchen churning out patient meals and sending them around the hospital. Big catering companies like Sodexo come and do it on hot trolleys, so there's a significant cost impact of adding another hot food service to the bill every day.

Yes, I immediately thought that the inclusion of cereals like Rice Krispies will be for the iron because they’re fortified. And of course vitamin C helps absorption of iron.

I only glanced at it admittedly, but surely this document was created for the average mother eg where there may not always be time to make eggs every morning for breakfast, or enough money for plenty of red meat.

Tim Spector is an absolute sellout knobhead. Profiteering off food fears. In no way is drinking fruit juice like eating a 'candy bar' fgs. Yes, juice negates the fibre aspect of the whole fruit but what about the vitamin c etc? The microbiome research is interesting, provided you know what you are reading. There is a LOT of junk science out there on the topic and the field is very much in its infancy.

You're right about the long list of ingredients. M&S have done that stupid range with limited ingredients, aimed at the UPF-avoiders. Trouble is, it's WORSE for your health than the alternative it replaces in quite a few cases - the oat milk (with no added calcium), the cereal (without fortification).

Yes but that’s what I’m saying. Instead of public services deciding “ oh these people wont have seen a lentil” teach people that actually you can make cheap food tasty, and kids will eat things if they eat them from babyhood.
If you can say to people- look, you like takeaway curry, here’s how you can make something that tastes like that at home for a tenth of the price.
Instead we find a million excuses why a whole section of the population Cant, Won’t etc

The point here is that someone thought a large mars bar and bottle of fizzy drink constituted "a good breakfast". We'll let the sausage roll slide. Not everyone knows (or cares) what basic good nutrition is, hence these government guidelines.

I think you're probably better off building people's confidence with more familiar foods needing less careful seasoning etc to start with. There's lots of cooking on this menu and once people can handle that, maybe they'll go further.

I do agree with you that home cooked foods with lentils, carrots etc can be very tasty and appealing, but it's probably not where I'd start when advising mothers of babies and young children in a culture where such food might usually be encountered as very rich takeaway food.

We don't 'find excuses as to why people can't / won't' - public health advice is evidence based. Policymakers accept that section of the population exists and are the most vulnerable as a result and then does the research to seek to understand why those people 'can't / won't' and designs strategies and policies to support them.

So they are really cheap then.
Looked up the oats i buy here, I think they would be called rolled oats so not quick oats but quicker than the longest cooking kind.

Juice only with meals is good advice, a bit of juice is good for reluctant veg and fruit eater. Cereal is fortified so fine in a mixed diet and especially where they are not eating a good diet. Baby rice with milk is a typical weaning food, and can be essential if you’re struggling with a baby with reflux. Honestly op, get outraged elsewhere - many parents are not whipping up fully balanced meal with organic vegetables, homemade bread and snacks, they feed shop food and this advice reflects best practice if you are

I think you’re looking at it all wrong, to be honest.

People who are both money and time poor are not going to have the confidence to cook a curry from scratch without first starting off with basic meals like scrambled eggs or whatever.

It’s not about making excuses, it’s about basic common sense - people who have never cooked in their lives need to start from the absolute basics, not be thrown in at the deep end.

Thanks, that does explain it. Think hospitals usually have their own kitchens here, or if its a central kitchen providing they'd still provide hot breakfast because that's expected and cultural.

Well… yes, kind of.. (I work adjacent to public services and know a lot of policy/research/ D&A people). There is definitely a starting point of low expectations for this research and about zero appetite for actual change. In my experience.

Exactly - this is the base point that some people are starting at. Telling them to go and make a lentil tagine is the equivalent of telling them to learn how to fly.

I should add I cook properly from scratch and have lentils for dinner so I’m not a “not cook” person but I did teach low income cookery classes and know what it’s really like - people who don’t know how to cook, refuse to engage etc - my clients had been referred as part of a parenting programme by social services and we had success but it was eye opening (programme cut in 2014 thanks to austerity)