Are todays eating habits storing up health problems for the future?

FranP

Not so much how it is prepared, but we eat more often. Seems a child cannot leave home without a snack.

Our standard plates are bigger, and because we often eat in front of the TV, we eat mindlessly, and so eat more.

We eat more quickly, and so our "full trigger" kicks in after more food.

Food has either more fats or more sugars - perhaps our taste buds are less efficient

I have been saying this about plate sizes for years. A pre-2000 plate is definitely smaller.

Not so much how it is prepared, but we eat more often. Seems a child cannot leave home without a snack.

Our standard plates are bigger, and because we often eat in front of the TV, we eat mindlessly, and so eat more.

We eat more quickly, and so our "full trigger" kicks in after more food.

Food has either more fats or more sugars - perhaps our taste buds are less efficient

LucyAnna5

Contents of Greggs sausage rolls…….

My nan used to make them from scratch, but full butter pastry, and local butchers sausage meat. Not sure they are any healthier.
My friend's husband is a butcher, I have seen him making them. I worked for Quaker Oats - the office was between the dog food factory and the Walls factory. I can tell you which smelled better.
Our children eat a lot of processed meat - none of it healthy

ViceVersa

mabon2

Yes indeed all this oven/microwave/airfryer preprepared food is bad for people who eat it. It is full a various e's fat and sugar often hidden.

You do realise that many people use their microwave or airfryer to cook 'normal' food from scratch too? You can cook most things in an airfryer - it doesn't have to all be prepacked ready meals.

I didn't know you could cook ready meals in an airfryer, we haven't got one.
Yet.

mabon2

Yes indeed all this oven/microwave/airfryer preprepared food is bad for people who eat it. It is full a various e's fat and sugar often hidden.

Lots of fresh food is cooked in an oven, airfryer or microwave.

My mother worked during the war on the railway. Due to having children she didn't do all the shifts others did. Always had home cooked meals, a main one at teatime as it was known then and when at school had lunches there. Holiday time it was a sandwich, sometimes just jam, perhaps a tomato, and if lucky an apple or berries from the garden. Washing was in a boiler and tub with a wringler on the sink. Mother continued working up until her 60s dying at 78 in the early 80s. There is an impression that women just floated about doing nothing but a bit of housework and going to the co-op up until the 70s. Definitely not my experience.

Are todays eating habits storing up health problems for the future?

Nah! Wes Streeting is saving the world by giving MacDonald's customers fat jabs on the NHS while the government hemorrhages tax receipts from dwindling providers

mabon2

Yes indeed all this oven/microwave/airfryer preprepared food is bad for people who eat it. It is full a various e's fat and sugar often hidden.

You do realise that many people use their microwave or airfryer to cook 'normal' food from scratch too? You can cook most things in an airfryer - it doesn't have to all be prepacked ready meals.

I was born in the mid-sixties my parents were born in the war. Having talked with friends of a similar age with parents around my parents' age, we have come to conclusion that they wanted us to have what they could not because of rationing. We are always told that the rationing diet was the healthiest but it was limited and boring. For my generation, it was full fat milk, plenty of fresh fruit, especially oranges, and vegetables and, yes, sugar. For most of us as children, it was also a traditional British diet cooked from scratch. We played outside a lot so were generally healthy and very few children were overweight. We always added sugar to breakfast cereals unless it was already added - seventies adverts always showed children adding sugar to cornflakes and rice krispies. I was strict with my own children - sugar was NOT added to cereals or cups of tea and sweets and biscuits were a rare treat. They drank milk or water as small children. They were healthy, slim and had beautiful teeth.

The standard of food consumed today is poor in general and so easily accessed with very little effort required. The Tesco store I shop at has 2 aisles of frozen foods, 1 aisle dedicated entirely to pizzas and ice cream, I do buy the occasional ready meal as so many of us do but far too many of us rely on ready meals as a staple part of our diet. Surely this sort of eating must be storing up problems in later life.

In answer to the OP.
Yes, absolutely. We GN's know that where parenting is concerned we have to keep our opinions to ourselves, unless asked. My DD's and DIL's are busy people. All with full time jobs with homes, partners and children too. They all use ultra processed food and ready meals for convenience and speed. Rarely do I see any colourful vegetables on the plates. At the moment I am dropping hints about how good is Jamie Oliver's Healthy Eating cookery programme which is currently on TV. I daresay it will fall on deaf ears. I do worry about my GC's future health though.

We've know that for a long time. I watch a lot of the old Top of the Pops, rarely do you see an overweight person.

Yes indeed all this oven/microwave/airfryer preprepared food is bad for people who eat it. It is full a various e's fat and sugar often hidden.

The trouble is JaxJacky i fear women now have a different pigeon hole! of work and all the domestic stuff.
Schools do seem to take a great interest in the lunch boxes, I wouldn’t get away with the odd Penguin biscuit now

If you read the work written by Dr Xand van Tulliken and other writers in the field. They put the blame, not on what we eat but its constituents. the processed ingredients, food elements we never ate before. all those 'modified', emulsifiers, 'hydrolised' etc etc.

Other researchers into the human biomes have reiterated what is being said. It is impossible to completely eliminate these products from our lives, but by home cooking from fresh ingredients can reduce it, as will, ideally, shopping organic, not always possible or affordable, but shop for meat in farm shops where they rear their meat to high welfare standards, many of their other meat products will be free or nearly free of the UPF incgredients.

When meat costs mroe reduce portion size. i was brought up on 4oz of meat per person - and most recipes work to this portion size. I have gradually reduced portion size to 2 oz. We eat a lot of casseroles and stews and I add extra vegetables and beans to every casserole.

I had a wonderful French cast iron cooking pot but it became too heavy to lift, especially when full of food.

Thank goodness for slow cookers, especially in the winter.

Sago

I worked but always cooked a proper meal.

I would get up early and put something in the slow cooker.

I would be cooking supper in the late afternoon and supervising homework at the same time.

Saturday was for cleaning.

Likewise. I had what was known in the family as 'the big green casserole'. A cast iron casserole. It would take me about 10 minutes of a morning to toss the basic ingredients of a casserole into it. The meat would go in as a frozen block straight from the freezer. I would set the delay start on the oven for about 3.30pm. by which time the meat and any frozen food would have defrosted. The cooking process would cook everything together, ready to serve when I got in from work.

I would also cook enough for 2 meals so that one went into the freezer ready to be heated through another day.

I did the cleaning on Sunday evening, as it was the weekend that disturbed the house most. That moved to Monday morning when I retired.

Although I think there are more overweight children and adults than we were young, I think that the majority of young people do eat well.
I can't be the only grandmother whose parents give their children fruit and vegetables ,puts firm limits on their sugar intake and gives them only milk and water to drink.

Always made a cooked breakfast for husband and kids, before they left for work/school.

Agree, Rosie. Close friends when I was growing up lived on fish fingers & baked beans on toast (I loved going for tea!) with cadburys mini-rolls or arctic roll for pud. The one home-cooked staple with them was bread pudding (bit like lardy cake) which is delish but not healthy.
Mum cooked from scratch but- the fried breakfasts with fatty bacon & fried bread;
Roasts on sunday with "gravy off the dish" (the fat out of the meat) poured over for extra oomph;
Sugary puds every day to fill you up;
Dripping & sugar sandwiches (not both together).
We didn't snack as much, & we had loads of excercise & I can only think that's why we weren't fat as hunts.

I think this question belongs about (at least) 50 years ago.
IMO the damage is largely done.

I have never knowingly eaten a Gregg's sausage roll. I'm veggie and I may have eaten a vegan SR.

My guilty eating habits are eating too much. I cook from scratch lots of veg but I eat butter, cheese and dairy..

It's true that there weren't many overweight kids when I was young.
Given the chance we'd have devoured a sweetshop. I feel sorry for today's children who have to learn self control!

And now a G&T - haven't had one of those for about three years.
It's been a bit of a day.

LucyAnna5

Contents of Greggs sausage rolls…….

Once every five years ....

I had a freshly squeezed apple, beetroot and carrot juice when I got home!

If I go more than a couple of days with no fresh fruit or vegetables I do feel quite lethargic to be honest! Never been a fan of “beige food” either. We always had a good diet growing up and the habit has stayed with me as well as being instilled into my children. They have families of their own now and cooking from scratch with quality, in season ingredients, is just a ways of life.
Yes, we have sometimes had quick, snack meals but never on a regular basis………you are what you eat! Eat crap food and you’ll feel and look crap I guess.