Ultra-processed foods and the burden on women

[Shedbuilder]

I've had two conversations this weekend with people who saw a BBC documentary on the dangers of ultra-processed foods. Both of them are mothers, both say that as far as they can see, the only way to avoid UPFs is to cook everything from scratch. Both of them are very food-aware anyway but both also work full-time. They talked about how they're going to have to be even more organised than normal, invest in an extra freezer to take even more batch-cooked meals etc. The stress in the air was palpable.

I know some men cook for the family but isn't this yet another burden that's going to be loaded mainly onto women?

We are blessed with some of the safest food ever in terms of food poisoning which is something to bear in mind.

@WrongWayApricot I guess you're attempting sarcasm there in your post, but the point you're trying to make doesn't really come across.

There's a lot of research into diet and you only have to ask your very own GP if you're unsure what a healthy diet looks like. It's not really debatable. Processed foods full of salt, sugar and other additives are not real food and definitely not good for you.

It's an important discussion because as parents (my dh cooks too! ) we are shaping the health, habits and tastebuds of our very own and precious dc. If you don't care about your child's diet, what do you care about then?

Yup. Feminism schmeminism. Competitive guilt-tripping, middle-class virtue signalling — and so much ruddy meat.

No wonder the women I spoke to at the weekend were sounding so stressed. They knew the broccoli and steak brigade would be finger-wagging at them.

I repeat a post from yesterday:

I think, respectfully, lets not get into 'chopping a spud takes the same amount of time' on a thread in feminism. The discussion is about where the labour goes, not whether the labour is too onerous.

This is about women, expectations, capitalism, feminism and society. It's really not about home-made chicken goujons with a side of smuggery.

[quote Toothpaste123]@WrongWayApricot I guess you're attempting sarcasm there in your post, but the point you're trying to make doesn't really come across.

There's a lot of research into diet and you only have to ask your very own GP if you're unsure what a healthy diet looks like. It's not really debatable. Processed foods full of salt, sugar and other additives are not real food and definitely not good for you.

It's an important discussion because as parents (my dh cooks too! ) we are shaping the health, habits and tastebuds of our very own and precious dc. If you don't care about your child's diet, what do you care about then?[/quote]
This was supposed to be a feminist discussion about who will carry the extra labour, physically, emotionally and mentally, if women are made to feel guilty about upfs in the home. It's now a guilt trippy recipe swap. We'll never get out from under the patriarchy if we act like crabs in a bucket at every opportunity. The pressure should be on the companies that feed millions, not on mothers that feed 3-7, that's what should be discussed.

I care about my child's diet, and feel that all families should be able to access affordable (in terms of money, labour and time) and nutritious food. Lovingly packing carrot sticks in my child's lunch and panicking about Lloyd grossman sauce doesn't solve that issue. We have the technology to mass produce healthy food that is easy and quick to prepare at home, we should make it the norm and not just for the wealthy. We should want all of society to get better not just ourselves.

@HoldontoOneMoreDay

I repeat a post from yesterday:

I think, respectfully, lets not get into 'chopping a spud takes the same amount of time' on a thread in feminism. The discussion is about where the labour goes, not whether the labour is too onerous.

This is about women, expectations, capitalism, feminism and society. It's really not about home-made chicken goujons with a side of smuggery.

Why aren't women making their men step the fuck up then

Why aren't women making their men step the fuck up then

Wow...

I am more and more concerned with the idea that we need to take the fact women do most of the domestic chores as an immutable fact and bend society around that, rather than change society so women don't do most of the domestic chores.

DH does slightly more housework overall than me, and most of the cooking. I used to do part-time work as a student in shops, he worked in restaurants: he's much quicker at prepping. I'd say I know a few households where that is the case, though I appreciate it isn't overall. However, we have both slipped into using more UPFs because we have a toddler, we both work full time, and the monotony of eating every single meal in the house over lockdown and having most things delivered took a lot of our joy out of food. So having watched the programme, we'll be having a think about to revamp our meal plans. It is 100% not going to add to my workload more than his.

And honestly, I've struggled recently, having been on a few calls where people have referenced the 'burden taken on by women' in the pandemic. That didn't happen in our house, it didn't happen in quite a few other houses I know about. And the way its spoken about, including by men on the call, seems to normalise that - like 'oh, lets talk about how great women are for taking on the burden' thus making the men on the call who stepped up feel like they're either heroes or abnormal and giving the women an entirely tokenistic pat on the head. And I don't know how we acknowledge those uneven burdens, but fight against it being the norm.

I don't think the answer is to say 'this [UPFs] will fall on the women so lets ignore it.' I do think the answer is somewhere around deconstructing what we can do to address the domestic imbalance. But equally, looking at the other 'women-friendly policy' of part-time working, all the women I know who have gone part-time after children have got the worst of all worlds. The women I know who stayed full time have equal involved co-parent husbands who genuinely do their fair share of the load. I assume there's a chicken and egg correlation here, you're probably more able to work full time and have children if you have someone else fully supporting, but I get irritated at the idea that offering part-time work is friendly to women, when in a lot of cases all it does is enable them to have less useful career progression, and a built-in 'excuse' for their partner as to why they don't have to take their fair share of the load. This argument feels potentially an extension of the same.

@FakeFruitShoot

Why aren't women making their men step the fuck up then

Wow...

From my small social circle, I listen to my friends moan on about their husbands being lazy blah blah but then carry on picking up the load around them.

I say they should down tools and make their husbands do more.

What's wrong with me saying that?

(In a perfect world the men would automatically do this but we are unpicking centuries of men generally being used to having domestic chores done for them)

I do get what you're saying, @spacedandtimed, but I object to the way that even making men "adult" effectively is also the job of women.

There are extensive threads discussing why women don't just let men pick up the load around them... namely, that it's the children who pay the price of being left with shitty, unenthusiastic, bare-minimum fathers.

@Toothpaste123 there's no point in pretending that children like things like pizza, fish fingers, hot dogs, crisps etc.. I am not a totalitarian parent who bans everything unhealthy forever and ever. But to me that stuff is not food. Its stuff that can be eaten as a treat (family pizza nights,

Maybe I have odd kids then.
No food is banned in my house- my kids have always had unlimited access to a cupboard full of biscuits crisps, sweets.
If I tried to serve frozen pizza or fish fingers as a "treat" my kids would think I was ill.

This is about women, expectations, capitalism, feminism and society. It's really not about home-made chicken goujons with a side of smuggery.

It really is interesting. Maybe child rearing is the piece of the patriarchy we've assimilated the best. Maybe children trump feminism. It's very strange.

I really didn't think I'd see the 'oh it takes two minutes to...' bullshit on here. So wash the towels daily and don't use a toilet brush, scrub it by hand. And cook from scratch and don't forget to look pretty and smile nicely while you're doing it. And don't complain, just ask the men nicely to do half. They'll absolutely do it without any fuss.

@GravityFalls i agree a lot of quick easy meals suggested are expensive and when i suggested lamb chops i was thinking of time/effort rather than cost.

But sadly i can buy a 1.2k whole chicken for £2.50 and some packs of nuggets are more than this for a similar weight. Eg 450g of nuggets are £1.50
Then its down to oven time.

Not all people short of time are poor though and nor are all poor people short of time. Altbough lots of people are both poor and short of time of course.

@WrongWayApricot upf is supposed to be a feminist issue? I don't think anyone is trying to make anyone 'feel bad' about their food choices. It's trying to educate people that the food they eat is the thing that makes them feel bad and their kids unhealthy..
And if you're mainly feeding your dc upf, and feel bad about it, maybe that's what you should be feeling? The same goes to dads. This imo is not a feminist issue 🙄

@speakout crisps, bisquits and sweets are upf. To me they fall in the treats category 😉

[quote Toothpaste123]@WrongWayApricot upf is supposed to be a feminist issue? I don't think anyone is trying to make anyone 'feel bad' about their food choices. It's trying to educate people that the food they eat is the thing that makes them feel bad and their kids unhealthy..
And if you're mainly feeding your dc upf, and feel bad about it, maybe that's what you should be feeling? The same goes to dads. This imo is not a feminist issue 🙄[/quote]
Did you miss the OP or something?

Toothpaste123
crisps, bisquits and sweets are upf. To me they fall in the treats category 😉

Maybe some people's taste in treats.
I have to throw out stuff like that because it goes over its use by date.
As I say weird kids- my DD usually still has her unopened easter eggs in her room in October.

@FakeFruitShoot

Why aren't women making their men step the fuck up then

Wow...

Not all women have a man for a start

www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food
The most commonly eaten ultra-processed foods in the UK are:

Industrialised bread (11 per cent)
Pre-packaged meals (7.7 per cent)
Breakfast cereals (4.4 per cent)
Sausages and other reconstituted meat products (3.8 per cent)
These are closely followed by the expected confectionery (3.5 per cent), biscuits (3.5 per cent), pasties, buns and cakes (3.3 per cent) and industrial chips (2.8 per cent). Soft drinks, fruit drinks and fruit juices make up 2.5 per cent of the average calorie intake. Salty snacks, including Britain’s favourite crisps, make up 2 per cent of our calories, as do sauces, dressings and the Sunday favourite gravy (2.1 per cent).

More surprising to some will be what is included in the 3 per cent of calories that the average person eats from “other ultra-processed foods”. This includes baked beans, tinned soups, meat alternatives, soy and drinks used as dairy milk substitutes.

Formula milk ia apparently a UPF.

I'm surpised so many manage to avoid all the UPF.

I think we do well diet wise but there is a big enough range of items on that list that we do consume UPF regularly but in moderation.

I really didn't think I'd see the 'oh it takes two minutes to...' bullshit on here. So wash the towels daily and don't use a toilet brush, scrub it by hand. And cook from scratch and don't forget to look pretty and smile nicely while you're doing it. And don't complain, just ask the men nicely to do half. They'll absolutely do it without any fuss

That’s the sort of bullshit that gets my goat about the constant patriarchy patriarchy patriarchy feminism.

Most women want to feed their children well. They just do. It bothers them. More than men.
It’s not social constructivism or because of socialisation, it just is. It’s fairly bloody obvious there is a biological grounding to this.

I’d rather the FWR stance on this would be around the support of women to fulfil the desires they have (in this case feeding their children well) and so that does mean sharing knowledge about how long it takes you to cut up potatoes. Given the marketing culture we live in, many people think it’s impossible to cook properly and beyond their capabilities....the marketing has worked, right!

[quote MildredPuppy]@GravityFalls i agree a lot of quick easy meals suggested are expensive and when i suggested lamb chops i was thinking of time/effort rather than cost.

But sadly i can buy a 1.2k whole chicken for £2.50 and some packs of nuggets are more than this for a similar weight. Eg 450g of nuggets are £1.50
Then its down to oven time.

Not all people short of time are poor though and nor are all poor people short of time. Altbough lots of people are both poor and short of time of course.[/quote]
You can buy the most nutrient dense meat there is for £ 1 which will feed at least 2 people

Liver.

But no one wants to buy that these days, because of our sanitised and factory-lead food environment.

Most women want to feed their children well. They just do. It bothers them. More than men.
It’s not social constructivism or because of socialisation, it just is. It’s fairly bloody obvious there is a biological grounding to this.

Is that true though?
A lot of men seem able to look after themselves well enough.

Rather than having a "biological grounding" maybe many men are simply happy not to bother because they know the mother will pick up the slack. Happy to feed kids blue juice and candy floss because they know that mother is feeding them the broccoli.

I would suggest it is a social rather than biological grounding.

@speakout

I don't imagine there are men discussing this programme all over the internet. I might be wrong but I very very much doubt it.

You think that is social? I don't. And I think denying this part of women does us no favours at all.

I'll have to go and see if Piston Heads are discussing this. I think they have a family forum.

Not all women have a man for a start

You've completely missed my point