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!

No excuse for making your kid fat. I became a mum at 16 so pretty uneducated compared to all these older mums also lived in a homeless shelter because I was poor and none of my kids have ever been fat. Everyone knows eating a family size chocolate bar isn’t healthy no one’s that ignorant but they still do it, a form of munchausen by proxy it seems to be with some people I know.

And yet people who were children in the 70s and 80s (those aged 50-65ish) are one of the most obese age groups in the UK with 73-80% being overweight or obese! So clearly those one off treats as a rule didn’t do anything to keep you all eating healthy…

Haha a very good point people in that age group love going on about “back in my day we were all perfect no one was overweight” while being obese 😂

No the point is being made that the whole food culture and food landscape has changed, we are not eating like in the 70s and 80s, that is the whole point people are making, have you not understood that?

That’s true, I am in that group myself and we did not generally eat between meals or have sugary drinks as a regular thing, and my parents attempted to limit the amount of sweets we ate. Most of our meals were cooked from scratch, and school dinners were as well. So what went wrong which resulted in me being an overweight child, obese teen and morbidly obese adult?

Two things, for me.

The first is that, from a young age, I was addicted to sugar. My parents tried to limit it, but I snuck extra behind their backs. Then when I left home and had my own income, I could do what I wanted. And I wanted to eat unlimited quantities of sugar, and other junk besides. It’s not that I thought it was healthy - although tbh my focus was on weight rather than health at that time. It was that I couldn’t stop myself. Few addicts can.

The other thing is the change in food culture - both the increase in UPF’s, and the normalising of snacking and consuming sugary drinks, caramel lattes and do you want fries with that. Availability definitely makes people more likely to consume something - especially when the “something” has addictive qualities. It has become normal to eat multiple times per day. Normal, but not healthy.

When I was at my heaviest (22 stone, 18 years ago) I was very unusual. I didn’t see many other people like me walking round. But now - and I am no longer like that - I see so many people who are morbidly obese. And younger people as well. I developed type 2 diabetes in my thirties, I was 21 stone. But I see youngsters in their twenties and even late teens who look like I did then.

My heart bleeds for them. But I don’t blame them - or their parents. I blame the ubiquity of UPF’s and the misguided low fat and “a calorie is a calorie” paradigms.

I think that to change this at a population level is going to take government action. Basically replicating the measures which have been used to reduce smoking, and applying them to UPF’s, especially sugar. Until that happens (I’m not holding my breath), there is individual learning and action.

And THAT is not helped by shaming people.

i am 43, I never had a school dinner at primary school as they closed the kitchens. All our lunch boxes had crisps or penguin bars or sugary yoghurts in them. We had flasks filled with orange squash and sandwiches filled with ham or sandwich spread. Arguably the hot lunches would have been healthier!

Solidarity 🫂 Edit - should have been posted in a reply but can't delete

Solidarity 🫂

Midwives and health visitors literally asked me if DD was eating and that was that. There was no education on nutrition or dietary requirements.

And your ante natal appointments?

That is quite poor.

But the whole point is that people weren’t obese then. All the things we’re talking about back then have changed, and now we are.

Nothing about food. They weighed her and she was always in the right place so maybe they didn't fee the need?

I'm a pretty good cook and we cook most things from scratch so it didn't even occur to me that this would be something they'd bring up tbh.

Thats very interesting, so much for the early years preventative support that some families need.

I think what it shows is that we can't assume everyone has had the same level of education around food.

Just because it's supposed to come from certain sources doesn't mean it does.

But the people who love going on about “back in my days no one was fat” are all fat now! Same as some older folks go on about frolicking outside in their childhood while buying their grandkids iPads and complaining about children playing outside.

Ok, to make it easy for you as you're struggling to understand, what do you think would happen if for the next 5 years, 80% of society went back to eating the portion sizes, structure/routine, types of foods that 80% of us ate in the 70s?

The point is, no one eats like that now. Or if we do, we are apparently orthorexic and 'competitively undereating'.

Baahaha so true. I remember reading a thread where a poster said she never gave her kids grapes as they were “sugar bombs” and bad for them. Bonkers.

I wasn’t alive then I’m just observing some older folks I know bang on about there being no fatties back in their day while looking like they walked off of 600lb life. Don’t talk the talk if you’re not walking the walk

@Xeracc no one is walking the walk, that’s the whole problem 🤣

There’s another way to look at this - the food culture of the 1970’s and 80’s was just what most people did, not specifically chosen to be healthy. As more UPF came in, people saw the convenience, and didn’t know then how unhealthy it would be if it became the bedrock of the diet. So they ate it.

And as more and more people found themselves becoming overweight, the processed foods and sweets were an obvious things to try to change. Unfortunately, many people by then were addicted. The food industry tried to help by providing lite versions….. but they were also UPF’s, they messed with our hormones and ultimately didn’t help. People saw the weight gain, and blamed the individual for being weak-willed, greedy whatever. We do love to fat shame. The problem goes far deeper than weight, however. People who are not overweight can still have major metabolic issues, and UPF’s are a major factor in causing them.

I’ve said this already. I think we need action at government level to reduce consumption of UPF’s, particularly sugar. Advertising bans, plain packaging, limits on the number of fast food outlets, taxation, subsidies on basic foodstuffs, cooking lessons, a return to school meals being cooked from fresh….. all of them. We need all of them to make a wholesale change. Until the , were left with individual and grassroots action.

This is all true.

If people want to recreate the 70s, we're going to need to smoke a loooot more. Nearly half the adult population on an appetite suppressant drug must've been a relevant factor.

I also learned on here that prescription amphetamines were quite common at the time!

You’re missing the point, which is that the food environment we live in has changed. Amazingly enough people from the seventies are also affected by that.

I don’t think there were huge numbers of women using amphetamines in the 1970s, it was very much known about abuses in the late 1960s and well past the peak of the forties and fifties.

70s was more about slimming biscuits, cabbage soup and smoking.

Yes smoking was probably a factor but we would have to do without that, remember we do far far less active and mobile work/activity so that makes a difference in calorie requirement

If this experiment ever happened, you could expect food manufacturers and some restaurant and takeway systems to go bust.

After massive massive kick back and higher level attempts to keep you consuming.

The food industry, restaurants, takeaways, deliveroo, ubereats, food manufacturers and supermarkets need us to overconsume. They need us to be overweight.

Real food producers who grow boring old veg, produce meat and fish are way way down the line in the food industry. No one is lobbying for their interests. They dont make billions.