"Processed" food and toddler

[Hopeisintheair]

I keep seeing threads on Mumsnet about how dreadful UPFs are. I think a lot of it is the current trend in eating. There always seems to be some buzz phrase in around food.

I didn't think we ate too much processed foods but maybe we do by UPF definition. Shop bought bread and cereal is UPF. Does anyone struggle with this feeding toddler/children? Does it bother you? I'm trying to embrace the balance as I'm not about to start baking my own bread daily quite frankly and feeding kids is hard enough sometimes.

As an example this is what my toddler ate yesterday and today...

Yesterday
Breakfast: Cheerios and whole milk
Lunch: cheese toastie (warburtons seeded loaf) and Heinz tomato soup
Snack: rice cakes with humous. Raspberries and strawberries
Dinner: tuna sweetcorn pasta (we had ours with spinach leaves etc which he didn't want) Cup of milk. Yoghurt.

Today
Breakfast: porridge with mashed banana, ground almonds and chia seeds
Snack: fruit salad
Lunch: chicken soup, cheddar cheese cubes, mini pretzels, humous, yoghurt, raspberries and strawberries
Dinner: half chicken burger with humous on brioche bun, corn on the cob, green beans hot "chocolate" (warm milk with a sprinkle of cocoa powder on top)

Tomorrow I'm making a curry from scratch but he'll likely only eat the rice and poppadoms 🙄 I'll also make Bolognese from scratch this week which he'll eat with pasta.

I think this is pretty good going for a toddler. What's everyone's opinions on things like bread, pasta, cereal, tinned tomato soup etc?

One thing I discovered recently is home made fish cakes - boil some peeled potato till total mush and leave to cool. Pan fry white fish with minced onion, garlic. Flake and leave to cool. Then later (after you've done nursery pick up etc), mash it all up with one egg and some fresh herbs and optional grated cheese, grill on both sides. As you're grilling, it doesn't have to be any particular consistency, from wet cowpat to firm brick, any ratio of ingredients works.

My dd actually eats this! And it needs minimal contact time

We avoid a lot of UPF but also we are forced to eat them

My daughter has a lot of food allergies and some are things that just shouldn't be in food. For example pea protein, she is fine with peas - she can eat her body weight in them but the pea protein more concentrated and she reacts to that. There's no need for it to be in food. There's no need to make bread with soya flour but all the major brands do. We are restricted to making a separate trip to Tesco or Aldi for a loaf as our regular supermarket has soya flour in all of their breads or making our own. We can only buy grain or corn fed or organic/high welfare chicken as she is so sensitive to soya she reacts to soya fed poultry so no sliced chicken from the deli counter or a chicken pie for a mid week easy meal.

Oat milk and oat yoghurt is a necessity we could reduce to processing and go for an organic variety but the added calcium and iodine is very beneficial to my daughters diet.

Anything is a package is likely to contain one of her allergens. In both Tesco and Sainsbury's there is a single sausage we can buy due to allergies to onion, tapioca, paprika and other stuff. Paprika gets very bloody where! Anything red/orange with "natural flavours or colouring" is off limits. Even the orange calpyso ... You would have thought that oranges would be you know orange enough!
The vast majority of our food is homemade. We go through so much hummus but every mouthful is homemade due to garlic and paprika allergies. It's super quick to whizz up a tin of chick peas, tablespoon of tahini, glug of olive oil and a splash of cold water. Plus the garlic and paprika if you can have it. We usually whizz up enough for everyone and then separate out some for our daughter and add the contraband to ours. We made something similar to babaganush (sp?) but with roasted courgette (aubergine allergy) with tahini and olive oil. It went down a treat and we snuck in half a roast cabbage too. She eats lots of water biscuits and crackers too probably upf too but they are safe for her to eat and better than alternatives.

She's not a good eater and there can be days when she's eaten an inch of cucumber and 3 water biscuits and we just have to accept that. She's gaining weight beautifully and growing slowly but consistently. Over a month she eats ok and we have learnt to ride out the days and weeks where she barely eats anything.

I generally think if you have the time and energy to dwell about upf and associated food concerns... Your doing pretty well. If you can find the time and space every couple of months to glance over the food in the fridge and see if you are generally happy with where you are at the moment that's often enough. There will be times when you are winning and most things are from scratch and there's less upf. When your stuck in a funk and more slip in out of necessity because you need food give yourself some compassion. One of the ways we figured out my daughter had allergies was with soya. When we had a bad week we relied on frozen meat free sausages as a meal that was open packet put in oven. Then we noticed she got a whole lot worse and then we had even less space to cope with cooking. Removing the foods she was allergic too meant we had more work to do as we were working only with raw ingredients but without an infant screaming for 20h a day we had a whole lot of time to manage life so even though it wss more work it was so much easier!!

@Superscientist

I generally think if you have the time and energy to dwell about upf and associated food concerns... Your doing pretty well.

This is a really good way of putting it in perspective. I'm sorry you have such struggles with your daughter's allergies.

I'm definitely going to buy a food processor and start making my own humous. We go through enough of it to make it worthwhile!

I think this is one of those areas where the perfect is the enemy of the good- avoiding all upf seems impractical so it’s tempting to say fuck it. But actually small changes are worth making and you’ll know which ones will be easy for you.

Then your kids become teens and start buying their own snacks and it all goes out of the window again 😂

This just demonstrates the preservatives (and other additives) in shop bread as compared to the bakery.

I buy a sourdough loaf once a week from our local bakery and it stays fresh for about 3 days. I also freeze it (sliced) and then toast it straight from the freezer - delicious.

In answer to @Hopeisintheair - UPF isn’t a “trend” - it’s scientifically proven that this stuff increases your risk of obesity, cancers, cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) metabolic disease (diabetes) gut problems (IBS, crohns) and early death (to name a few). It is really really worth limiting it where you can. I’ve got a 3 and 6 year old and typical meals would be:

Breakfast: porridge or overnight oats with grated apple or frozen raspberries. We make pancakes at the weekend.

Lunch: sandwich - tuna (mayo is UPF - I’d like to find a swap!) / cheese / peanut butter with sourdough or soup (tinned or homemade) or an omelette (cheese or mushroom).

Dinner: something from the slow cooker - pasta sauce/tagine/stew/curry - all fresh vegetables and pulses/sometimes chicken thighs or stir fry with salmon and egg fried rice. I never buy packet sauces but use herbs and spices for flavouring.

Snacks: fruit (they love apple with peanut butter), houmous and crudités (I do buy houmous sometimes which is UPF - but also make my own), and the occasional packet of pom bears (UPF I know…).

The slow cooker is a game changer for us because we can just throw the ingredients in in the morning and then only have to make some rice/pasta/bulgur wheat to go with it when we get in in the evening. DH and I both work full time.

Also forgot to mention that we get through gallons of Fage full fat Greek yoghurt which is delicious. The kids eat it plain but I also add honey/frozen fruit/peanut butter/homemade compote.

Our most utilised mixer is the Kenwood hand blender with a pot attached and soup blender etc so you can make milkshakes and bake with it too. we have had probably a little over 10 years. We broke the blade in the pot blender but bought a new pot, blade and lid on eBay for £7! We have a proper kenwood blender too which has a grater function which is brilliant for home made coleslaw and a great way to sneak in other veggies as you don't have to restrict yourself to onion, white cabbage and carrots when you make your own. We have had this blender nearly 15 years and it's had a lot of use!

Ktc chick peas are our preferred ones and they often are 45p a tin! If it's just for our little one we have been known to just mix them with oil and water so super cheap and then less guilt if she decides she doesn't want it any more! Her nursery does the same. Frozen peas makes a dip too!

@JumpinJellyfish

UPF isn’t a “trend” - it’s scientifically proven that this stuff increases your risk of obesity, cancers, cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) metabolic disease (diabetes) gut problems (IBS, crohns) and early death (to name a few). It is really really worth limiting it where you can

I think the extent it's being taken to by some is a trend. Worrying about mayonnaise for example.

Packets of microwave rice, tins of spaghetti hoops and sausages, frozen pizzas, cheese strings, microwave dinners, chicken nuggets and chips. I get it.

But I just can't get worked up over shop bought bread, mayonnaise and the occasional packet of Pom bears. A PP said never to eat food from a packet. That's just too far for me.

We cook similarly to yourself. We use the slow cooker most nights for curries, chilli served with homemade chunky guacamole, Bolognese etc. I cook salmon dishes, risottos, lamb chops etc from scratch. But I can't force my son to eat all of these meals. Tomorrow I know he'll only eat the rice and not the curry I'm making. But I'll keep serving it and know that at least his belly will be full of rice and probably a yoghurt after and hopefully one of these days he'll try it. That's what happened with tuna pasta and Bolognese. Months of not touching it and now they are staple meals.

@Superscientist

We do have a stick blender! I use it to make smoothies and to blend some soups.

Why on Earth have I not thought to make humous with it 🤦🏼‍♀️

@Canadan

Then your kids become teens and start buying their own snacks and it all goes out of the window again 😂

True!! And the same with toddlers. You wean them on omelettes and avocado and then they want to eat Pom bears off the floor.

Mine weaned beautifully and ate everything in sight. Then, as many of them do, got fussier and fussier from about 1 and a half. We're back on the up now so long may that continue!

This is the attachment we get most use out of. If one didn't come with your you might be able to get a compatible one

https://www.espares.co.uk/product/es1785033?utm_source=google+shopping&utm_medium=shopping&utm_campaign=google+shopping&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3tCyBhDBARIsAEY0XNmAiLLjaHjYUxUIOaScMWGZN8QUhbIoIKfp44ENSdRirLIxEKk7X6YaAjHUEALw_wcB

Im a bit sick of people recommending Crosta and Mollica all the time on here, its a posh expensive brand.

@Superscientist

Fab! Thanks 😊

Oh no is it pricey?
To be honest the bread is not a worry for me. It's wholemeal bread with loads of seeds and he likes it so that's a win for me

You have put this point across so perfect. I completely agree, my little one is going through a bad teething phase so won't eat alot of what he normally would. The way I look at it, if he's eating something, be that unhealthy or not I'm just glad for that. Tying yourself in knots about upfs is just going to drive you mad😉

Whenever I feel guilty about too much processed food I think about how much people relied on it in WW2- They lived off tinned stuff, corned beef, dried egg etc

Eat as fresh as you can and try to limit processed stuff but don't lose sleep over it.

Some processed stuff not as bad as others- ie pasta better than pop tarts!

Take it all with a pinch of salt if you'll pardon the pun!

This is us too :(

@Mumoftwo1316 yes! I often find the physical vs psychological health very challenging and then you need to add in ASD for mine and even professionals have told me different things about that.

Hilarious that buying bread from a baker is touted as an "easy swap" That is the very opposite of an easy swap. (And I do actually buy bakery bread fairly often because the supermarket bread where I live is grim).

I'm sure UPF is a real thing but I just don't have the bandwidth to care. I tend to think if it's that harmful it will be banned, and until that point I will not worry about it.

If I was worried about some aspect of my health or my child's health, and cutting out UPFs seemed like a reasonable thing to try then I might look into it more and try to understand what constitutes UPF but at the moment, I am deliberately ignoring all of it because I just cannot take another thing to think about on board. We all seem to be doing fine.

Bakery bread can be utter shite as well, I guess you mean 'expensive' bakery bread and Greggs isn't going to cut it!

I'm interested if anyone can find a simple meal plan out there (single FT working mum) as I'd love my toddler and I to eat better

😂 yeh we have a lovely "artisan" baker near us but we don't use it for our every day bread.

Simple is our number one priority too. I rotate the same meals in the slow cooker: Bolognese, chilli, and curry (the taming twins simple curry recipe- sometimes I branch out with other recipes). I love the slow cooker.

We have a roast dinner but probably only once a fortnight (chicken is ready cooked from the supermarket deli counter so only have to cook some veg and mash). Gravy is the classic bisto UPF 😂 The leftover chicken goes into a risotto or soup the next day.

One night a week we usually have salmon. A little salmon is put on toddler's plate with fish fingers and he ignores it. I know people will say don't give him the fish fingers at all, but I'll only end up with him eating nothing and then making porridge for supper anyway as he'd be hungry 🤷🏻‍♀️

We always have either tuna pasta or baked potatoes with tuna one night a week too.

My "can't be bothered" dinners are tuna or pesto pasta with lots of spinach/salad leaves, omelettes, or chicken burgers.

Will my son eat all of this? Nope. But it goes on the table anyway and he gets porridge for supper if he's hungry.

The in store bakery style breads made by the supermarkets are often better than the big brands. They have generally fewer ingredients.

I don’t “get worked up” about mayo and pom bears - I said I give these to my kids! But it would be better if I didn’t. They do also have ice cream and other treats and we eat out and can’t avoid it.

But to me the worst offenders are not the obvious junk foods - most people are fully aware that they aren’t good for you - but it’s the loads of stuff that is marketed as healthy including breads and cereals and yoghurts etc but in fact are stuffed full of additives. That is what is so awful about it - the food companies are essentially deceiving people and profiting from it.

I know that eg crisps shouldn’t be a daily occurrence, but I’m sure there are loads of parents who think that a cereal bar is a healthy alternative - it’s not.

Also microwave rice is not UPF. But cheerios are.

Also microwave rice is not UPF. But cheerios are.

I suppose we all have our "things". I don't mind my toddler having a bowl of Cheerios say, twice a week. And I've no interest in finding an alternative to mayonnaise, or the bread we buy every week.

But we don't own a microwave. I wouldn't like to microwave rice in a plastic bag, or any food in plastic and then eat it. I think it's better to just cook rice on the stove.

There are definitely foods that are "better" than others, of course. We only buy sugar and sweetener free yoghurts, peanut butter made with only nuts and nothing else etc etc. I just don't think Cheerios, tinned tomato soup, or Pom bears being UPF is a problem.

I mean it’s obviously all up to you, but if your toddler likes and eats porridge for example, I don’t know why you have to give him processed cereal at all? He could have porridge every day and it would be healthier for him and also cheaper for you.

It is much harder to control snack foods and foods when out and about, whereas breakfast should be a proper meal imo, and it’s very easy to achieve that.

I get it that you just want reassurance and it doesn’t sound like your child’s diet is that bad, but it could be better.