Obesity and fast food - is there no hope?

At your slimming group

This has been doing the rounds on facebook etc (How McDonald fries are made):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfLtSFxDjtk

Having known of nursery toddlers fed liquidised pizza and chips nothing surprises me .
Is cookery still taught in schools (Home Economics in my day)? I wonder how many young mums and dads were taught to cook by their mothers, or has the best part of a generation missed out?
My son's a better (more imaginative) cook than me!

Do you have to be taught to cook? Isn't that what cookery books are for?

So.... what's to complain about? The fries are made of potatoes, little dextrose is sometimes added to ensure consistency (depends on when the spuds are harvested, I think) and the fries are fired in non-hydrogentaed vegetable fat.

I prefer my own oven-baked potato wedges cooked in a small amount of beef fat because I think they taste better and I don't peel the spuds but, other than that personal preference, I don't see what the problem is with McDonald's fries, nor why anyone need be amazed when a child is given them to eat. The problem is not in the what but in the how much.

I know it's not fashionable to say that if you don't eat too much you won't put on extra weight but that is the bottom line.

It is fashionable to speak negatively about fries and burger. It's all a load of nonsense imo.

I think you need someone to begin the process at a young age in my opinion. I'm not sure I'd have picked up a cookery book from choice, more to find out about something specific like baking a cake or how to cook venison, for example.

Sadly I came from a family that didn't cook and I never had a cookery lesson at school either loopyloo. I thought carrots and peas always came in a tin, and Vesta Chow Mein was the height of exotic cooking. Seriously.

But my Grandmother-in-law gave me a copy of Mrs Beaton for a wedding present and I took it from there. Now I love cooking, but rarely bake.

Yes, I think you do need to be taught. DD would never let me teach her when she was at home. She just wasn't interested.
She made what was supposed to be a chocolate sponge at the weekend despite using a recipe it looked nothing like any sponge I've ever seen "well I couldn't tell when the mix was ready, cos you never showed me". #runsfromroomscreaming

I did do A level Chemistry. There was quite a bit about mixing chemicals together in the right proportions and heating them up.

Does that count?

I can think of lots of reasons why not. It's not so much the content of the meal but the context of stuffing a child with food to keep it quiet.

If you are weight watching a child eating some high calorie burger and chips is not going to help other slimmers to keep their resolve.
What is wrong with feeding the child a ham butty and some banana.

"Calories in Mcdonald's Happy Meal Cheeseburger, Fries, Diet Coke
Nutrition Facts Mcdonald's - Happy Meal - Cheeseburger, Fries, Diet Coke

Servings:
Calories 528 Sodium 790 mg
Total Fat 23 g Potassium 0 mg
Saturated 7 g Total Carbs 61 g
Polyunsaturated 0 g Dietary Fiber 5 g
Monounsaturated 0 g Sugars 7 g
Trans 1 g Protein 18 g
Cholesterol 40 mg
Vitamin A 6% Calcium 20%
Vitamin C 3% Iron 15%

*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
and .......
Another source says.
"Depending on their age, size, and activity level, toddlers need about 1,000-1,400 calories a day. So in one meal as described above a child would have half it's daily calories in one meal."

Now once in a while that's not going to do any harm, but it appears a lot more people nowadays are eating more calories than they need and many of those appear to be from fast food in a generation who have had greater access to such food than we ever did.
Which sits with the thoughts above about less people having a clue or the enthusiasm about how to prepare a meal.

Nothing wrong with feeding a child a ham butty and a banana but fries are not unhealthy is all I'm saying. We've been indoctrinated to regard such "fast food" (which is only fast because we haven't had to cook it ourselves) as bad food. It isn't bad food. People are just hung up about it.

Whether I personally happen to like McD fries and burgers is beside the point, by the way. I don't particularly, but it is perfectly edible and nourishing food.

You seem to be agreeing with me that it's quantity that matters where weight is a concern, nelliem — the how much rather than the what.

I think that wanting to keep a child quiet during a class one attends is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do. Maybe the woman in question couldn't get a babysitter.

Did the child eat all of the Happy Meal. That's of significance too. Is that known? My guess is no. So why don't we stop judging?

Not much in the way of nutritional value if the kid is eating 50% of its daily allowance and that only has 6% of it's Vit A, 3% Vit C, 15% iron and 20% calcium.

But I expect the remain 50% of its calories were packed full of the missing nutrients in home made, vitamin and mineral rich food

Carry on judging something about which you have a very small percentage of information, why don't you, anya? You are making assumptions. The Happy Meal in question might have been a special treat. We don't know.

What is wrong with any of this? choices in a Happy Meal

They probably get plenty of vits, calcium, iron etc in their bowl of breakfast cereal.

Nothing wrong with having half your calories on your main meal.

loopylou have you really never taken a cookery book to bed for your bedtime reading?!

Not even a nice new one?

It's because we can only judge on what OP says, and I suspect I jumped to a possibility incorrect conclusion and then generalised wildly , sorry!

OO I'm glad I mentioned this!! So here we are. Yes she did eat it all but it was chicken nuggets not a burger and chips and sauce and she ran round the room while she ate it. Yes its a regular occurrence according to her Mum 'she loves her MaccyD's'. No she didn't want a babysitter she prefers to bring her with her. I just thought it was all a bit incongruous to be sitting there all worrying about weight and swapping SW recipes at the same time as the room smelt of chips and chicken nuggets. Most of the others Mums bring something like a banana for their child and often have something themselves after weigh in like a SW cereal bar as they are hungry having starved all day. Several of them go to MacDs or the fish and chip shop together after weigh in for what is known as treat night its just that they don't do it in front of the SW organiser who tells them how much this may slow down their weight loss. I usually go home to a large glass of wine and whatever we would be having for dinner it just happened to be cold chicken salad last night. I thought I smelt of chips!!!

At least the little girl ran around while she was eating. Burnt up all the calories you see!

What on earth are you getting your knickers in a twist about thatbags? You are the one making assumptions....I was merely pointing out a fact ie the fact that there was insufficient vitamins and other nutrients in that Happy Meal pro rats.

Is that judgemental?

That post of yours was very aggressive Bags - did you mean it to sound like that?

tee time 're your post of 16:01 - that's what I thought you meant - the incongruity. But then - a private alcohol rehab is about to be opened near where I live - next to a pub!

I suppose you have to be able to withstand temptation.

I didn't mean to sound aggressive. What worries me is what I see as a kind of Puritanism than seeps into so many subjects nowadays. Why are we so critical of people's food choices? I presume the answer is "for the good of their health", but what about the freedom to choose one's own poison? I don't have statistics but it does appear from what I see and hear in news media that a lot of people, probably a majority, do like eating McD fries. Why sholdn't they? Why are we grans, among others, so vociferous in our disapproval of a mum giving her child a Happy Meal when actually that is all we know about the situation. We know nothing about why the mum brought her child to the slimming club. We know nothing about how much of the meal the child ate that day, and nothing about how often that child is given a Happy Meal to eat.

And yet we (some of us) appear to judge such people negatively. I think that is over the top and unjustified. So, if my posts seem aggressive it is only the 'aggression' of standing up for someone who is not in a position to stand up for herself, and whose story we don't even know enoigh about to making such judgments in the first place.

I guess I'm saying back off with the judgmentalism. There seems to be a fair bit of it on GN at the moment. Perhaps I'll write a book called The Disapproving Grannies.