AIBU to be annoyed at World Cancer Research Fund "outlawing" processed meat in lunchboxes?

[bookbird]

AIBU to feel that parents are constantly scare mongered? I'm constantly worrying about what's best to feed my children.

When they say processed, they mean anything preserved with salt. This means ham, bacon and salami are all off the menu! (well, no more than 70g a week).

Should WCRF keep such thoughts to themselves rather than announcing on BBC? Also why isn't this top news on the Food Standards Agency website.

FFS yet another thing we "arent allowed to do". my boys love sausages. not every day or even week but they do have them. They like bacon too. I cook my own ham purely because i hate the plastic processed stuff

If they don't die of bowel cancer, it will be something else.

I'm going to continue giving them a balanced diet. Sausages will continue to be a treat, ham will still be cooked, bacon will still be a weekend breakfast.

s'only some sausages, fled

All the ham I've eaten

As I have only one child and he's still in my womb, I am more concerned about my own bowel at present.

I agree that salt can not be the main issue here but all the other rubbish we eat these days.

I do wonder about food guidelines though. According to something I read, as a pregnant lady I should be eating five portions of vegetables, four of fruit, 500g dairy, the equivalent of 8 slices of bread in carbs and protein. I physically cannot eat nine portions of fruit and veg a day AND eat 8 portions of carbs! Seriously! Who comes up with this? I would do NOTHING but eat if I was going to follow this advice!

My DS1 aged 4 loves salami and would eat sausages every day (as would DH) if i let him. we all know meats like this are high in fat and shouldn't eat too much of them but for God's sake I sure we can all make a decision without the expert help of the daily mail. Next week it will be carrots give you cancer anyway. Personally I am quite proud that my kids will eat stuff like garlic sausage, smoked trout, salami and so on. If we all lved in france we would just ignore this report anyway and let most of these scare stories pass over our heads. oh, and fight the fat with anti oxidants I'm with you Morloth.

They just did it on the news.

Had a plate of processed meats including something that looked like spring rolls that neither DH nor I could identify.

Then proffered a plate of alternatives - a huge gop of hummus (isn't it really fattening? and what normal child is going to eat a hummus sandwich? the texture is all wrong for a sandwich) or reduced fat cheese. WTF is wrong with normal cheese. And then DH pointed out that the cheese on the plate was all that revolting processed pre sliced stuff.

FFS.

I think they're probably quite correct. Salty processed meat in huge quantities is not sensible for a child. 70g is an awful lot of processed meat for a child to eat in a week anyway!

AMIS's first link suggests haem as the culprit, plus nitrates. Thing is, haem indicates the presence of iron, doesn't it, i.e. red meat (maybe I'm being really simplistic but haem = blood, surely)? You get haem and non-haem iron in the human diet, i.e. red meat or vegetables/grains and the haem iron is more readily absorbed, IIRC.

So I do want ds to eat some red meat in order to get some iron... guess the answer is not to have ham or sausages more than a few times a week.

And I object to the 'low fat cheese' line. It's not ruddy cheese that is turning us into a nation of lard arses, FFS. (Although having said that I am a size and eat lots of cheese.)

Couldn't resist sharing this link with everyone:
kill-or-cure.heroku.com/a-z/a

The fact that processed reduced fat cheese slices were shown on the national news as a suggestion for a good option for a packed lunch shows up everything that is wrong with the attitude to food in this country.

It's just information... the individual can choose. We do have one of the highest rate of cancers in the world but if convenience food is your choice then go for it!

It's not useful information as it doesn't say why and therefore does not enable the individual to make an informed choice.

(Going on the BBC reports and woman interviewed on BBC website).

Why do you assume that people who are wound up by this reporting are people who like convenience foods, shockers?

Didn't say I did assume that or that it was useful information.
If I hear this sort of report then I will dig deeper for info if I feel I need to.
I have seen first hand the utter crap that parents put in their children's lunchboxes either because it's cheap or because they are simply lazy ( one example in many... a pepperami stick, a cheese string, a bag of pork scratchings and a chocolate mousse... I realise that this one is an extreme example but a lot of parents simply stick in a dairylea box of processed stuff and a tube of yoghurt with a fruit shoot)Unfortunately this type of lunch box is inthe majority in my school (which incidentally is in a less than affluent area)
And we do have one of the highest rates of cancers in the world...

It's common sense really isn't it... too much salt is not good for you.

can't open the newspaper without something being bad for you. one week they tell you that coffee will kill you the next week research shows that it has hidden healing thingy magingies in it that will add 5 years onto your life my dc get all their veggies from our allotment and we try to home cook most nights, but i'm not obsessive when it comes to processed food and do believe in variety, so that dc grows up with a good attitude towards their food. my ds and i talk a lot about what we eat and how things are made as well. Morloth is right, a little bit of everything is not going to harm anybody. wonder what they are going to tell us what will be of the menu next, any predictions?

But they haven't said "avoid salty foods". They have said "avoid all processed meats" without defining what they mean by processed or what it is about them that causes problems.

The OP is right, it is lazy scaremongering reporting.

Exactly... a little bit of everything and home cooking with veggies, it's not rocket science. If everyone ate that way then they wouldn't need to be scared about... food scares...

Not scared.

Pissed off at lazy scaremongering journalism.

There is a difference.

Not least that this sort of thing means that many people switch off entirely and then don't listen when they really need to.

Although admittedly if I was a veggie I probably wouldn't be so irritated...

Sorry OP said anything preserved with salt ( I realise that there chemical preservatives too)
I love chorizo and ham and sausages but I just think that it's common sense to have a balanced diet and that's what the recommendation is.
As I said earlier, some kids lunchboxes are crammed with processed foods and nothing else.
These are the parents that this sort of recommendation will be aimed at, not the sort who are really concerned about their children having balanced diets...such as many of the folk who would post on a thread like this...

shockers the woman from the organisation, when interviewed on the BBC (see OPs link) said that people should avoid processed meat entirely. When pressed as to exactly why, she completely failed to give a reason except for "they're linked to bowel cancer".

If they said it's the fat, or the salt, or the nitrites, or the sulphites, or whatever, then fine, I can use that information. But not just a blanket "don't eat it because I say so".

I agree that common sense everything in moderation plenty of fruit n veg is obviously the way to eat. But these different stories every week mean that people become scared of food, and lose confidence in their own judgement, and turn to pre-made supermarket meals on the basis that they have been put together by someone who knows all the rules. And then it all starts to go tits up.

We have lost our natural understanding of and relationship with our foods.

The WCRF website has the press release which, at the bottom, has this clarification -

"The term ?processed meat? refers to meats preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or by the addition of preservatives. Examples include ham, bacon, pastrami and salami, as well as hot dogs and some sausages. Hamburgers and minced meats only count as processed meat if they have been preserved with salt or chemical additives"

so they are talking about foods preserved only with salt as well as those preserved by other methods. I'm not particularly impressed with this, I have to say. They are saying "don't eat ham or other processed meats" but are all over the place with the reasoning. We eat ham and other processed meats in moderation (I think) and I plan on continuing to do so.

Sorry shockers I'm not trying to start a fight, this stuff just really gets on my nerves.

I love my food and care far too much

Hmmm OK.

What about smoked and salted and otherwise preserved fish then?

DD loves a bit of smoked trout.

Or does fish get a free pass for some reason?

Or will they be warning us off that next week?

What about smoked cheeses etc?

It's just not coherent.

Lovelytinofspam... I think we have too much in common to fight!

And what about the salt? What about olives and canned goods preserved in brine? Why just meat?

I could go on all night!

They would be better off saying what it is about the method of preservation that is causing the problem, and telling us.

Unless of course they don't know, in which case it's not very bleedin scientific is it.