Do people really not know what to eat?

[WilderHawthorn]

Watching ‘what not to eat’, and the family they’ve found are just hopeless. Four small children all shovelled full of UPF junk, parents both obese, freely admit to eating crap constantly.

How adults choose to feed themselves is their choice, but to feed four small kids that much junk? It’s bordering on abuse. An apple/banana costs the same as a packet of crisps, jacket potato is one of the cheapest meals you can make, basic porridge oats and milk for breakfast, it’s not difficult to eat whole foods, so why rely on packaged things?

Freely admit I judge those who feed their children this way and truly despair over childhood obesity stats. I work full time, have 4 DC, DH works full time and I volunteer. I’m very time poor and partially disabled, I still feed my kids well and it doesn’t cost me a fortune. Taught myself to cook. There’s no excuse!

One of DDs friends would eat anythjng, literally anything. Her mum would still feed her McDonalds for tea (and make her own dinner) just for convenience.

DD has ARFID getting her to eat anything is impossible, I still try every day to eat some good things.

Did you have children when you were learning how to cook on a small budget? I think it's easier to take risks and build confidence knowing if it goes wrong the consequence is you going hungry but you are going to be more cautious if it also means your children going hungry because you made a mistake and wasted vital food.

It also depends on your personal circumstances too. I have a disabled child with a limited diet, I absolutely find it to be time consuming and an absolute faff so it's rare that I bother. Especially with my son's limited diet when simply eating at all is the priority.

(Dolmio or Grossman's)

I don't use ready-made pasta sauce, but felt it unlikely these are full of industrialised ingredients. So I looked one up - Loyd Grossman Pasta Sauce, Tomato & Chilli.

Tomatoes (59%), Tomato Purée, Garlic Purée, Parsley, Sugar, Sunflower Oil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Red Chilli, Sea Salt, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Dried Red Chilli

What the hell's wrong with that?

Now I've looked, I guess the sugar and lemon are what make it taste funny to me, though I can see why they're there. And I put sugar in mine if my tomatoes are bitter. This is nutritionally fine, even healthy!

@PattiPatty

"At school in the 1970s we were taught cooking and nutrition but my DC who are 27 and 29 were not taught any basic cooking at school. They were taught "food tech" which was very, very limited. How to make a sandwich was one lesson.
I had to teach them everything from baking to veg prep and nutrition myself."

Mmm. I was at school in the 70's, in a newbuild fancy private girls' school wot I won an 11+ scholarship to. One of the stories about our awesome headmistress was that, when the architects of our building asked her where ma'am wanted the domestic economy labs, she replied "I don't want no domestic economy labs. Build me more science labs", which they did. We were expected to learn to cook at home. Which I did.

As a Scot, porridge should be made with water and a pinch of salt. Milk can be added afterwards but should not be used as the cooking liquid.

A banana is like 20p. Satsumas about the same.

Every excuse under the sun is used as to why people feed their children garbage instead of real food.

It’s both. Processed meat and lack of fibre are both associated with increased bowel cancer.

I give you ... Westlers tinned or packet burgers, plastic hot dogs and turkey twizzlers.

I did! I had a young baby with multiple allergies. I'd learnt to cook relatively well by then but I still wasn't great, it was during that period that I really started trying. I also juggled cooking from scratch with two young children and a DH who nearly died from a very bad accident. It wasn't really any more difficult or time consuming than it needed to be. Lots of simple things like soups and casseroles during that period, things I could batch cook and freeze. Also very cheap as I was concerned about money because we didn't know if we'd become a one parent earning household (thankfully not).

It's a priority for me that the food we eat is healthy. DH is the same. It takes around 45 mins to fry off some cherry tomatoes, boil and mash some carrots, boil some broccoli, and fry some salmon. That's what we had last night and it was simple and healthy. While the veg was boiling I sat down and built LEGO with DS.

Years ago I used to eat mine with marmite, these days I have it with (real) kefir. Added afterwards of course!

I agree with this. I think it’s also about healthy attitude to food. I always used to have treat times with my DC (yes, I did class kfc or burgers - pizzas as treats as they were occasional foods and not everyday). I think it can be just as unhealthy to be sanctimonious over food and never have treats. I’ve had friends insist on water only for drinks and nothing but veg for snacks and then limited intake. It’s about being reasonable and having healthy boundaries with food.

Now I’m off to the shop to get crisps for my supper! I tend not to have them in as my willpower with crisps is admittedly weak. I used to love treat times when Dc were younger. It was usually pay day treat as it wasn’t affordable all the time.

i agree that one can get cheaper apples, and cheaper crisps (!), but certainly not 'far cheaper' by any means. And obviously the economics make it necessarily so, outwith regulatory intervention, in terms of shelf-life economies of scale, transportation etc..

I do think some of the more well off posters on here are quick to say 'healthy homemade food is so much cheaper! Lentils, oats and value apples cost pennies!' when actually their own diet contains rather nicer and more expensive ingredients e.g. salmon, fresh berries, chicken breast. Oats and woolly cheap apples are not really that appetising to kids used to junk and pulses take a lot of practice to get tasting nice reliably, let own the fuel costs to cook them.

That's great. How would you have managed if you didn't have the freezer space to batch cook? It's why batch cooking isn't an option for me.

Did your child grow out of allergies or do they still have them? Honestly, with how restricted my son's diet is, healthy is a bonus but fed is the priority.

I think we probably eat UPF daily, but it’s hard to find alternatives. My kids will ask for a sandwich, cheese, cereals daily. They love some none UPF foods like milk / fruits but if we make pasta bolognese we make it using dry ready made pasta, I haven’t made my own pasta. We don’t by jar sauces we make sauces from scratch. But im aware that the pasta is still classed as UPF and adding cheese isn’t great either. I do wonder if I need to look at our diet more and batch cooking but it’s finding the time

Yes there is.

I think your expectation of porridge and cooking from scratch is a step to far for many, which can actually be counter productive and make healthier eating seem unattainable.

Sometimes better choices are getting a bag of frozen veg out of the freezer instead of a bag of chips to go with the fish fingers. Sometimes sandwich, crisps & apple is a step up from sandwich, crisps and chocolate biscuit. Changes like that are still improvements and should be encouraged.

There is no universally accepted definition of UPF and some take into account the number of processes a food has undergone in order to reach the state it's served in. I haven't plucked this out of the air.

It seems that the most popular definition was set by NOVA and, admittedly, wouldn't class either jam or oats as UPF. The last time I researched this I didn't happen across NOVA. However, I am going to make the case that if OP is harshly judging a family relying on UPF, but is then encouraging them to swap one bowl cereal for two "processed foods" is that really that great?

Even supermarket bread is a UPF by the most popular definitions and I'd argue that few families are making their own bread (I know there are plenty. I've met them. But the average household doesn't). And so if you're swapping a sandwich for a pizza, is it that awful?

I get that these weird additives and preservatives and molding processes etc aren't good for us in large quantities but when you really look at how far reaching the definitions are, exactly what they cover, how common these "UPFs" are, and then how pejoratively the term is used, it really does become more about snobbery than about health.

Apples and bananas don’t always taste exactly the same. One of mine had ARFID coupled with autism and things had to always taste the same. There were a v small range of safe foods that I worked very very hard at growing.

but if you’d seen me when that DC was about 10 you’d have fucking judged.

My son was an odd one - he refused to touch any type of fruit. He’d eat veg though quite happily. And when he said he wasn’t keen on veg, what I found he did like was cous cous in a type of cold salad. So I took the veg he said he hated, chopped it into tiny pieces so he couldn’t make out what it was and mixed it in. Added some chicken breast (rubbed in spice to flavour before cooking) and he would take a little pot to school and he genuinely liked it.

He always seemed to sniff out mushrooms though, no matter how small I chopped them so I gave up on those and 25 years later he still hates them.

I was never taught how to cook. We ate only UPFs. I am also ND.
It takes a massive mental effort for me to work out what to eat and what to buy etc.

I think for me there is information overload on the internet and it can be very overwhelming. ChatGPT is very good.

I try and make a lot of meals from scratch to teach my DC how to cook and be healthy but it’s more expensive and time consuming.
I can buy a pre made cottage pie in Asda for £5 - the mince alone would cost me that and then you add in all of the other ingredients and prep and cooking time and sometimes it doesn’t pay to do it from scratch.

What would be really helpful is if you gave a weekly example of your meals and snacks and your shopping list.

I did have freezer space, yes. However, if I hadn't then I'd have made smaller batches. I've lived with very small freezers before and just made fewer portions. It would have meant more cooking but again, it still wouldn't have been much of an issue. Most of the meals we cook take under an hour and I don't need to stand there watching it cook. The kids get involved lots of the time too, we give them tasks if it's a bigger meal - which I can appreciate might not be possible depending on the child.

My son grew out of his legume and milk allergies, but he's a coeliac (as am I) and has a peanut allergy still.

I’d challenge anyone to deal with a child with multiple allergies and intolerances and not fall back on safe foods.

My son had and has multiple allergies and intolerances and we've never fallen back on any sort of UPF as a safe food.

What all allergies and intolerances and in combination with ASD and ARFID?