"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?

I think you maybe misread/misunderstood my post - these things are really bad from a nutritional perspective (except the tinned pears actually):

blue riband or wagon wheel whenever I visited my granny, an ice cream from the van on a summers day, tinned pears served with hot custard for pudding, a hot dog

They are absolutely normal things to eat in this country - and I went on to say that I give them to my own kids occasionally - but the fact that they are normal doesn’t make them good.

@harrietm87

I'm not saying they are good nutritionally. I'm well aware of their nutritional content and I don't give them to my child in general. He's had custard once in his life, and has recently had ice cream for the first time which I have no problem giving him now and again.

I'm saying I don't care. I don't see the problem with children eating these foods now and then. Children in France eat Nutella by the truck load on bread. Dutch children have hundreds and thousands on buttered white bread. Food is bonding, food is culture: the lovingly homemade mince and tatties my granny made for me and the biscuits from the biscuit tin in equal measure.

Life is about more than eating healthy food. I think anyone who freaks out about a toddler or young child having ice cream, biscuits, or cheese crackers in an otherwise healthy diet has lost all perspective. I think there are some posters on this thread who are lying through their teeth about the processed foods in their children's diet. I don't think processed=evil.

What I have realised is that there can be big differences between brands. Cream cheese for example; Philadelphia has emulsifiers and gums in where as the supermarket brand is just regular ingredients so is classed as processed, not ultra processed like the Philly. I've taken a bit of time to look at the various brands of products and now try to buy the ones with the fewest additives/emulsifiers/gums etc. You can get apps which help...Yuka is one of them but I don't know if it works in the UK (I'm in Aus).

@Hopeisintheair I was responding to your post where you said that UPF wasn’t crappy food. By crappy, I meant “not good nutritionally”, so it seems we do agree there.

I don’t think a single person on this thread has said they don’t give their kids processed foods at all though - who do you say is lying? Parents making a conscious choice to give their child something processed within an otherwise good diet is obviously fine.

What isn’t fine (imo) and actually is evil, are the food companies promoting things as healthy that in fact are anything but, and they know it. That includes supposedly healthy bread, cereals, yoghurts, cereal bars. Many parents think that the “whole grain” breakfast cereal or protein bars they give their kids are a healthy choice, but they’re not. It’s interesting that a good test for upf is to see whether there is a health claim on the packet.

@harrietm87

I don't think crappy is a term that I agree with in relation to my child's diet. Cheese crackers and Rice Krispies aren't going to provide the nutritional profile of an egg or avocado. But on other days he is eating eggs and avocado so I don't mind.

Posters saying things like "That is horrendous for your child's future prospects" or that they "avoid anything in a packet" are bullshitting I'd say.

I agree with your last point but in my opinion it's the pouches and snacks marketed for weaning babies and toddlers that are the worst. They cost a fortune, call themselves "vegetable puffs" and the like, but are just crap.

I think people can make sensible judgments about cheddars, cornflakes and rice cakes. A poster lumped rice cakes in with UPFs and this is where I just can't get on board with the stigma of this term. Like Rice Krispies, it's just puffed rice, toddlers love them, and you can spread healthy things on them like cream cheese, avocado, humous, tuna mayo.

But those toddler snacks and meals? They do market themselves as healthy and say things like "perfect first food" or "first finger food" on them.

I think the modern marketing for pre-prepared baby foods is a big part of the problem.

We did baby led weaning, they both just ate everything we did, I prepared without salt, but they got the chance to explore spices, herbs, flavours, textures, so now I have children who happily eat a wide range of unprocessed foods as standard.

They do however eat school dinners with whatever processed food comes in there, and we do eat some things at home, it's so hard to avoid, but I feel that if every meal I serve them is mostly good, then it's enough!

Babies who get used to the smooth, bland, identical foods will be harder to encouraged to eat a whole-foods diet later on.

It's sad it's pushed as normal, it is more convenient to some, but honestly I found just feeding my children what we ate a lot less effort!! And cheaper.