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?

And i ate cereal for breakfast every day growing up and I've never had a weight problem.

Government nutritional guidance is aimed largely at people who don't already know. Mumsnet families are absolutely not the target for this piece of guidance.

At a population level, helping and supporting the most deprived and under-privileged families to do a better job of meeting all of a child's nutritional needs is really important. It isn't about whether Felix should have an avocado or eggs or homemade muesli for breakfast, it's about adequately feeding the vast numbers of children who are at risk of malnutrition through poor diet. You can tell the parents of under-privileged children to provide salmon and eggs for breakfast until the end of time but in most cases it simply isn't achievable, for many different reasons.

Don't let perfect get in the way of good, or 'good enough'. The difference that would be made to many many children if they were able to adopt a diet similar to the guidance would be immense. Once they've managed that, maybe that is the time to build and start swapping in better alternatives.

But a slice of toast has fewer nutrients than a bowl of Rice Crispies, and is just as processed - unless you're making your own bread, in which case we're making to the 'is it realistic advice' question.

I've typed it out twice now 😂

Kids who have sweetened drinks as a normal part of their daily routine are more likely to refuse healthier, unsweetened drinks.

And let's be honest there are plenty of parents who'll give in to pressure from their kids once those kids moan or refuse water.

You see plenty of it on here and in other forums/social media with parents moaning about the mean schools that won't let kids have juice or squash when their little darling just won't drink water because they hate the taste. Where did the kids develop the sole preference for sweetened drinks in the first place?

And then they'll be teens who don't drink water (and frankly they're not going to be sticking to the diluted juice are they?) and adults who don't drink water and gosh I wonder why we've ended up with a sugar tax on drinks.

All for fuck all nutritional benefit.

Getting people into good habits is a lot easier if you start from the start, as it were. And health authorities should be encouraging good habits and giving parents advice to support that.

An apple tastes very different to apple juice. If you've been drinking sweetened apple juice since you're a baby, an apple isn't going to be a substitute. People tend to eat and prefer that which they are used to. There are people who believe Sunny D and Nutella are very healthy drinks/foods, because the adverts give that impression.

The fact remains that UK food culture, for many of today’s parents, is ‘cereal and / or toast for breakfast’. It’s what they were fed as children, and it is what they will reach for to feed their own children.

The advice given - a range of plain cereals, with milk and with fruit or fruit juice - is a better version of what the ‘default’ might be (sugared cereal or a ‘cereal bar’ with no fruit / veg content at all).

A breakfast such as this, in a context of 3 varied meals a day and a couple of plain snacks, with water / milk to drink, and with main meals being home-prepared rather than takeaway / ready meals / pouches, is not a recipe for obesity.

My. Ind is boggled by the sanctimonious poster who is getting the vapours at the idea of orange juice but happily gives her kids jam.
I yjink people are thinkingbin terms of a 8 oz glass of oj!

when a child has a small digestion system, its far better to give nutritional food rather than food that doesn't have any nutritional value. Feed is best, but if you can give babies and toodles food with decent nutrients its better.

As for juice, there is a video on YouTube that I was linked to on mums net many years ago, that explains why juice isn't really something to be giving children or babies. The video is by an endocrinologist and is called sugar the bitter truth. It's about and hour and half long. he talks about drinking orange juice and the fibre being extracted and why that isn't a good thing to do. if you don't want to watch it all watch between 40 minutes and make sure you watch up to 111 minutes

It is accurate. What they’re suggesting is totally fine.

Cereal with banana is perfectly fine as a meal for a growing child 🙄

I was told to give my toddler 1/2 apple juice 1/2 water as it was a good way to hydrate , especially as my wee one suffers with constipation. I found giving it a couple of times a week with lunch has really helped.

I think this advice is probably for children like my neighbour.
She is 12 and probably around 4 stone overweight.
The mum is also very overweight and has told me, because she works Mon-Fri
she doesn’t have time to cook, her daughter has a takeaway 5 nights a week, kebabs, McDonald’s, KFC.
If she followed this advice and her daughter was being offered, fruit juice, cornflakes and Irish Stew instead she probably would be much healthier.
Most of us don’t need a list to know what to feed our children, you only need to look around to know that lots of people do.
Diluted Juice and Cornflakes aren’t the worst either, and is probably more likely to be a diet that can be stuck to.

A lot of these will be parents of little babies. I think I thought mine would eat a perfect diet forever at that age too, and remember really stressing about weaning etc., and being quite judgemental of anyone doing it 'wrong'. They're now primary aged and this morning one ate a bowl of cereal (boo me!) and the other ate a bowl of porridge (yay me!)... with a spoonful of nutella (boo me!). One had apple juice and the other had sweetened tea for their drink (shame on me all round!). They're both a healthy weight and eat a balanced diet overall. The dentist is very complementary about both their teeth.

well come on then, give us some ideas. What do your children eat for breakfast if not cereal or toast?

I didn’t say it was better, I said it was fine and perfectly realistic.

Kids need protein, healthy fats and slow release carbs, as do the rest of us. Obesity aside, sending them to school on high GI rice crispies and juice is a recipe for sugar crashes, poor attention spans and poor behaviour. It’s incredibly patronising to low income families to think they would not benefit from this education. To be honest, all families need better education. The guidance should at least show what an optimal diet would look like even if it gives accommodations for time/cash poor mornings and ways to offset the impact of sugar. Just because sugar isn’t added doesn’t mean it’s not sugar and we know much about the effects of this so that information ought to be passed on.

The juice is recommended to be ‘well diluted’, so I see nothing wrong with that. But it just seems an awful lot of food. And not a lot of protein.

Not in my experience, kids who have restricted diets tend to go mad on fizzy drinks, sugary and fatty food once they are teenagers and can buy it themselves.

My dd had a friend that At 8yo, would constantly be asking for food when on a play date at our house. The first time I told her to help herself as my dd was allowed to, and she totally gorged on anything sweet that we had in the cupboards. It later transpired that she wasn’t allowed to eat anything unhealthy at home. She apparently also would try to take things from other kids lunch boxes and hide them in her bag for later. She’s now a very overweight adult.

I’m one of those adults who doesn’t drink plain water and I’ve never paid the sugar tax. Mainly drink coffee and herbal teas these days; sugar-free squash when it’s too hot for those.

I apparently refused plain water and cows milk from the moment it was offered. Wasn’t a big fan of formula either (my mother couldn’t breastfeed) to the extent I was weaned early on medical advice. What were my parents meant to do other than find something I would drink - leave their small baby to dehydrate?

The suggested weekly menu includes one portion of rice krispies a week. The outrage at that suggestion is hilarious.

Do these people show the same concern over ham, bacon, sausages and other processed meats which are known carcinogens?

This has possibly been mentioned already - I’m afraid I haven’t RTFT - but for those saying a carton of juice is fine for children to have with breakfast, as teeth get brushed afterwards, they need to swill their mouths with water before brushing to neutralise the acid. I’ve always remembered the horrific imagery from dental advice, that brushing your teeth straight after consuming anything acidic has the same effect on tooth enamel as paint stripper has on paint! Maybe it’s overstating it, but that’s always stayed with me!

Yes if it was advice dished out by the government

Well I've read page 1 of this thread and now have a much better understanding of why the health of this nation is so fucking dismal.

Can't even be bothered to explain why the OP is completely right.

And for the tossers banging on about 'not everyone can afford', own brand weetabix or bran flakes have far more nutrition than rice Krispies or cornflakes and are the same price.

No not everything you eat has to be perfect nutritionally (it certainly isn't in this house) but breakfast for kids should be!!

We're fucked!

Juice is fine in small amounts 😊 my friend waters it down so there's less sugar but a little bit is good because it's natural sugar not the fake kind

Most babies and children love scrambled egg. Very quick and easy to do in the microwave. You can add a little yoghurt to the egg, and add some spinach, beans or other vegetables (pureed or mashed for baby) to make a tasty scrambled egg mix-up, with a good balance of protein, fat, and fibre.