To despair at the crap some people feed their kids

[Apotofrealcoffee]

Currently watching a kid who can’t be more than age 3, tuck in to a packet of ‘squashie’ sweets on the bus. No sign of a tantrum, kid seems perfectly happy looking out the window, but out come the sweets. And to pre empt the ‘snobbery’ thing, the parent seems middle class to me and certainly eloquent.

I regularly see kids tucking into chocolate bars, packets of crisps, lollies, all on the school run. Many of them toddlers in their buggies dropping off older siblings. Parents meeting kids at the school gate with full packets of Oreos, bottles of pop, doughnuts.

I’ve been trying not to judge for years and have been repeatedly told it’s ’just one snapshot of their day’ but honestly, I feel like the time for judgement has entered. I have never fed my toddlers crap like that, let alone just after breakfast. My 3 year old has never had a fizzy drink.

Why, just why! AIBU to feel there needs to be some kind of very direct public health campaign at this point? Maybe even a ‘no sweets at the school gate’ rule?

Mine need it for 2 reasons, eldest can be very dysregulated and upset, a cold drink (usually water) and a crunchy snack like bread sticks or crackers helps him regulate and can be the difference between a happy child walking home or one I need to keep sitting on the pavement with to get him to move.

My youngest is a really restrictive eater. There's a good chance she'll eat nothing at school while stressed, she also doesn't drink a lot during the day but loves fruit so I usually have melon or satsumas or grapes and some bread sticks for the walk home.

OP, it's no use judging people. Everyone has different criteria, beliefs and circumstances. And no matter how hard you try, you'll never be perfect.

I've tried my best and have raised a ds to 18 on home cooked food, fish, meat, cheese, eggs, loads of fruit & veg, no fizzy drinks (he will only drink water) and very few sweets.

Now he's at uni and is no doubt eating all sorts of rubbish. I worry about someone spiking his water as a joke, because he still won't drink anything else and has no experience of alcohol.

I took the view I'd do my best with my dc, and always have enough to feed any of his friends the same if they were hungry.

and the same amount of sugar as a Freddo

Absolutely.

Sugar before age 3 has now also been linked to dementia.

But not a UPF, fructose rather than refined sugar; and with more nutrients and minerals.

I feed children and young people everyday, not in a school meal setting (although did work in that sector for years) and the fussyness in a lot of them is appalling and the rudeness too. Some just having a piece of garlic bread for dinner because they won't eat what's on offer (which is lovely proper meals using quality ingredients) or just wanting plain pasta. Often the people who have sen eat better than those kids without!

None of your business.

Sugar cubes are better than processed sweets. You can’t eat too many of them and less crap. There was a science experiment where mice given just sugar or just butter are fine - but you combine them two and they eat until they are sick/ become obese.

I wish the government would drop the 5 a day thing, its the absolute bare minimum and leads to this kind of thinking.

That does not sound like an overall healthy diet I'm afraid.

Even if he’s eating rubbish now, what you did will stand him in good stead. People who are not obese by age 18 are far less likely to be obese as adults - the fat cells are laid down by that age. And his dementia risk, and risk of other health complications, will be lower.

I’ve also noticed that while all young adults go through a stage of eating junk, the ones raised healthily go back to the healthy food. The junk eaters never do.

This post is excellent - nails it.

Agreed. And it’s scary how many people think a good diet is just one that involves fruit and veg. Nuts, dairy, oily fish, green and root veg, pulses… fruit and veg is only 1 part of that.

But the banana also has fibre that slows down absorption and avoids overloading the liver. A Fredo does not.

Your post is timely OP because this morning when I popped into the shop I saw an overweight mother buy doughnuts for her two overweight primary age children to eat on their walk to the school round the corner. She is setting them up for a lifetime of potential issues and there really isn’t any great excuse for it. On one level absolutely not my business but obesity causes so many health issues and the NHS is already creaking at the knees.

Hard agree OP. A biscuit or a mini muffin maybe as a treat but it should be a hard no to boiled sweets, lollies and fizzy drinks. So bad for their teeth and a really bad habit to get into. After Halloween I used to make my kids bin all the lollies but I would replace them with a couple of chocolates. Also sweet things should be a treat for after meals. I’ve raised my kids this way and they are both healthy eating adults now who enjoy a treat in moderation.

To everyone saying that neurodivergence means their child can only eat Freddos or other ultra-processed foods, could it be a chicken-and-egg situation?

What if we're overlooking the possibility that environmental exposures, food additives, artificial colours, ultra-processed foods and excessive sugar negetivly influence behaviour, attention and concentration?

Rather than automatically accepting that a child’s restricted diet is simply a consequence of neurodivergence, shouldn't we also be questioning whether aspects of their diet and environment could be contributing to some of the difficulties we're seeing?

Lots of chippy (pun intended and achieved) parents here who clearly know they shouldn’t be feeding their kids crap and don’t like being called out on it!

“You know nothing about their lives”

“This is just a snapshot, they’re feeding their kids organic salmon and kale the rest of the day”

“Well done on being a perfect parent” (Sarcasm! What a mic drop!)

“Who are you to judge?/Keep your beak out!”

“I grew up on a diet of Wotsits and Vimto and it’s never done me any harm!”

My Mumsnet bingo card is indeed full.

YANBU @Apotofrealcoffee

@wishingonastar101excellent post.

We have a childhood obesity crisis. My sibling and I had sweets/chocolate once a week back in the 1980's. You simply didn't see children being fed junk on their way to school and back. I only remember one or two overweight children at school back then. Something has gone badly wrong somewhere. It is no-one's fault but the parents. A fat child is malnourished - in the same way as a very underweight child is.

School lunches sound like an area in which we have actually gone backwards. You definitely could not say that school meals were not plentiful when I was at school! Homecooked, hot food, large servings of lasagne, home baked cake etc.. Chips and gravy for £1.

It's such a shame that Jamie Oliver wasn't able to change things.

Banana nutrients

• Vitamin B6: 0.433 mg (about 25% of the Daily Value)
• Potassium: 422 mg
• Vitamin C: 10.3 mg
• Manganese: 0.3 mg
• Magnesium: 32 mg 1, 2]

Freddo nutrients None

I agree with you, particularly about very young pre-school dc op.

There is no way that a pre-school child needs to eat sweets regularly on a bus before 10 am in the morning, even if they were up at 5 am. And I often see children in push chairs drinking high sugar fizzy drinks or eating sweets.

The early years are when your food preferences and habits are formed, and then dc are growing like weeds, so I don’t understand why you are receiving such negative comments tbh. The odd treat is fine but it’s not ideal on a regular basis.

As for the school gate, when I was a child, we received detention if a teacher saw you eating in the street so times have definitely changed! 😃 But I don’t think a healthy or home made snack like a flap jack or an apple or something similar is too harmful as long as they don’t ruin their dinner.

For one period of time when my DDs were about six and seven and they were not eating well at lunch at school for various reasons, and they were tired and starving when the school day was over, I stopped after school snacks altogether and fed them their dinner straightaway when they came home eg meat, carb and veg. And they had the carb snack they would have had after school, when everyone else ate later, eg banana and peanut butter sandwich. And that worked well for a year or so, until they could wait and eat dinner later with everyone else without being too tired to benefit.

I had the privilege of being a sahm back then though for a while and if you are working ft as a mum, and when dc are dashing off to far more activities nowadays, you just have to do what works. And I agree that being too precious, strict, and over controlling about what they eat as dc, just means they tend to gorge on crap as teenagers when out of your sight! They need to learn self regulation earlier than that.

I adopted two neglected children from the UK care system. Food was always a nightmare. They would not eat healthy snacks - they had been starved in their birth family or given rancid stuff which made them sick and then the foster carer had them eating a very old fashioned diet - think roasts - which was brilliant but meant they had never gotten into eg raw carrots and hummus.

And as their nervous and sensory systems were all over the place, they used food as a soothing device. Both absolutely adored crisps and cheese strings, and they hated fruit with a passion.

I can't tell you how often we were judged by strangers! My neighbour told us off one day when she caught themveating crisps.

All I can say is that eople often have more going on than you know.

Poor diets and related lifestyle factors are strongly suspected to be a major contributing cause of the rising rates of bowel cancer in young people.

This made me laugh.

However, I disagree that having these discussions is not having an effect on overall attitudes.

The opposite - critics minding their own business, while you keep seeing more and more children with colourful plastic crap-full packets in their hands, is what normalises this and good parents minimise the dangers as they don't want to be seen too strict.