Did you watch Panorama last night?

Do you have real sugar icanhandthemback or artificial?

I'm vegan, so usually eat a ton of vegetables, salads, beans, grains and tofu. When I eat anything unhealthy (usually sweet) I do often notice the nasty consequences - being tired, bloated, having headaches etc. the next day. That's just from unhealthy 'extras' - not a lack of nourishing food.

I still indulge, but can't understand why people choose to eat complete junk. It must be habit or sheer laziness. Why replace real food with rubbish? Good food is not expensive and doesn't need hours of preparation or cooking.

icanhandthemback I have no argument with how you respond to sugar - and that it is a common reaction, but I am sugar averse. I do not have a sweet tooth and it gets less sweet the older I get. My sister is the same, she cannot even eat some fruits because she finds them too sweet. If I eat a boiled sweet mid morning, my mouth will still feel cloyingly sweet at lunch time and I will not have any appetite to each lunch or will delay it.

And this is the point. None of these reactions to food are universal, different people react in different ways, so all these books offering universal panaceas, if 'you just do one thing'.

I would not argue against the idea that UPF's are best avoided - and I have avoided them for 40 years or more, but that they are the cause of obesity and no one can resist them is arrant nonsense.

PamelaJ1

Do you have real sugar icanhandthemback or artificial?

I actually try to avoid all but nowadays I do have artificial if anything. I believe some artificial sweeteners do impact blood sugars so best avoided. However, my addiction really takes off if I eat things like chocolate. I just can't control it so I don't have any. A bit like an alcoholic, one taste is a slippery slope for me.

Hetty58

I'm vegan, so usually eat a ton of vegetables, salads, beans, grains and tofu. When I eat anything unhealthy (usually sweet) I do often notice the nasty consequences - being tired, bloated, having headaches etc. the next day. That's just from unhealthy 'extras' - not a lack of nourishing food.

I still indulge, but can't understand why people choose to eat complete junk. It must be habit or sheer laziness. Why replace real food with rubbish? Good food is not expensive and doesn't need hours of preparation or cooking.

I totally agree.

I also have zero understanding of why people eat junk/rubbish when real food is easy to prepare and generally far cheaper.

I also don't follow along with poor and tired arguments. People live somewhere, eat something, we all have 24 hrs in a day.

We've been poor, we ate well then, still eat well now - I shop and cook well. No junk, chips, rubbish - no waste of money, no empty calories.

Cook and eat fresh fruit, veg, oats, rice, pasta, with whatever easy protein - eggs, cheese, fish, mince, pulses, lentils, quinoa, tofu.

Homemade condiments. I recently read a list of things people buy - mind boggling, expensive. All easily made whilst cooking meals.

Good food is not expensive and doesn't need hours of preparation or cooking.

It depends on your definition of good food.
Fresh fish, chicken, fresh meat, especially straight from the farm shop, is expensive, though it doesn’t always take hours of cooking.
Turning it into something, the children (or adults) will eat which looks like what they want to eat often takes a lot of time. Preparing home-made breadcrumbs to coat the chicken pieces or the fish is well worth doing, but it is time consuming.
That’s why there’s an increasing amount of vegan imitation products on the shelves in the supermarket, e.g. No chicken chicken fingers, or vegan king prawns.

For me as a child, the rule was,
If you don’t eat it, there’s nothing else. Now if a child comes into school and says they’ve had nothing to eat . . . There has to be an investigation.

Mollygo

^Good food is not expensive and doesn't need hours of preparation or cooking.^

It depends on your definition of good food.
Fresh fish, chicken, fresh meat, especially straight from the farm shop, is expensive, though it doesn’t always take hours of cooking.
Turning it into something, the children (or adults) will eat which looks like what they want to eat often takes a lot of time. Preparing home-made breadcrumbs to coat the chicken pieces or the fish is well worth doing, but it is time consuming.
That’s why there’s an increasing amount of vegan imitation products on the shelves in the supermarket, e.g. No chicken chicken fingers, or vegan king prawns.

For me as a child, the rule was,
If you don’t eat it, there’s nothing else. Now if a child comes into school and says they’ve had nothing to eat . . . There has to be an investigation.

Using your example of bread crumbs. I save all pieces of bread, toast, freeze in one container - then spin up all at once and save, dried, ready in freezer.

I've no idea to vegan imitation products - tried quorn, wasn't very good, in our opinion, we prefer tofu tray baked, or flash fried.

What about easy-peasy, cheap homemade hummous? Children love to dip and spread on raw veg or bread - nut butters as well.

Mollygo Preparing good food for a family is not necessarily time consuming. I did it for most of my children's childhood, while also holding down a responsible job and for a while commuting.

All it required was a large casserole and an oven with a delay function. In the morning I took 2lbs of meat from the freezer and put them in the casserole undefrosted added a quickly chopped onion, other frozen chopped veg from the freezer, possibly a tin of tomatoes, stock cubes and herbs and spices to taste. Shoved it in the oven set the timer to come on at 3.30. Preparation could easily be done in 10 minutes.

I arrived home at 6.30 and supper was cooked, sometimes the potatoes were on top of the casserole, so all was needed some fresh veg. I use 2lbs of meat so that I had one meal to eat and another to put in the freezer. We finished our meal with fresh or stewed fruit or yoghourt.

Like Norah I cooked one meal and we all ate it, with no alternatives.

All that is required is good organisation and planning and I totally refuse to apologise because I have always been well-organised and planned ahead. It isn't difficult, and doesn't cost money, bar a notebook and a pen.

Yes, of course if you are living on the street in a cardboard box, with 5 children, it will be impossible, but this is not how the majority of families live.

Of course, now, with microwaves, slow cookers and air fryers, it is even easier.

M0nica, Norah, you miss the point.
Your children might be happy to eat the food you describe and you make. That doesn’t mean other children are.
I’ll try telling a fraught parent that some GNs children all happily eat what they’re given.

They (parents) obviously need to learn that the reason their own children don’t is because they lack the organisation and planning of some GN’s.

Mollygo I never said my children were happy to eat the food I described and made.

Since my children were never offered any choice, it did not occur to them to demand it - and yes, I had one very fussy eater - or rather, I had one non-eater. I just did not offer alternatives. Obviously I did not serve meals that contained foods my children actively disliked and equally obviously I favoured food they did like.

It is a question of starting the way you intend to go on. if a child has been allowed to call the agenda on eating, then obviously, quite reasonably, they will kick up a fuss if someone then tries to constrain their choices.

What I can never understand, especially in this inflationary age, is how people can afford to produce different meals for different family members, with all its attendant environentally damaging food waste. Let alone find the time to make all these different meals. Money was tight when our children were young, we couldn't afford to offer choice.

As for your last paragraph, yes, I would agree. I appreciate that there will always be families for whom circumstances make such planning difficult, if not impossible, but that does not mean it is not possible for most others.

I’m sorry, but you sound so smug. Start the way you mean to go on.
Well I did, but when my children were young, there wasn’t the choice that there is now. We couldn’t afford to eat out, so they never saw what else was on offer.

Pressed post too quickly.
The cooking different meals for different family members irritates me too. But I think you mentioned not serving children food that they dislike or don’t want to eat, and parents would rather serve the children, something that they will eat, rather than have all the food waste serving them, something that they won’t eat.
All the new ‘milks’ available now are UPF.
Starting the way you mean to go on, from a different point of view from food, as I left home at 7:30 this morning, grandma, mum and eight-year-old child plus dog were all jogging.
Grandma, then mum obviously started the way they meant to go on.

Perhaps we were lucky to have lived when we did in regards to eating. We didn’t get a choice at home, we didn’t have free access to the contents of the fridge and we didn’t get snacks.
We probably passed that model down but somewhere after our generation the plans went awry.
More women worked, food became a lot more plentiful and the choice widened. In restaurants the child’s potion changed from being just being a smaller portion of the adults choice to pizza and chips or something similar.
We didn’t know then what we know now about the food we eat but it’s time we took a bit more notice.
We get our body and health from our genes, our lifestyle and our nutrition. We, generally, can’t choose our parents but we can choose to move about a bit and eat well…. If we want to.

. . . child’s potion changed from being just being a smaller portion of the adults choice to pizza and chips or something similar.
I think this is an important point. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s there was no 'children's food'. We just ate what our parents ate, whether we liked it or not. When my children were growing up in the 90s/2000s things like turkey dinosaurs and so on were available, and a lot of children ate that sort of thing all the time. Mine didn't have as much choice, as they were vegetarian (we all were, because of the BSE scare) but manufacturers caught onto that, and plugged the gap with vegetarian 'children's food'. My daughter loved Linda McCartney sausage rolls, for instance. I thought they were horrible, but there was no persuading her, and she still likes them at the age of 30.

The other difference between my childhood and theirs was that my mum didn't work and so had time to cook, and as she was at home and my father had a regular and early 'home time' (he was in by 5.30 most evenings) we had regular meals eaten as a family. I worked, and my husband worked late, so we didn't have that luxury. As often as not I would feed the children separately and we would eat together when he got in. It was that, or have me eating with the children and Mr D eating alone every night. That increased the temptation to use the 'children's food' that they asked for, particularly when they wanted to eat quickly and go out to play.

I didn't usually give in, and developed my own range of home made burgers, sausages etc made from nuts, rice and vegetables, but I can understand why busy people would think it was too much hassle, and give them fish fingers, chicken nuggets and frozen pizza. I enjoy cooking, and have always had a store cupboard of ingredients to make things tasty - not everyone does.

Also, it's easy to say, 'oh, I used an oven with a timer and batch froze things', or to assume that everyone can afford joints of meat or slow cookers. A lot of people can't afford fuel to put the oven on for more than a few minutes, or freezers, never mind ovens with timers.

Mollygo

M0nica, Norah, you miss the point.
Your children might be happy to eat the food you describe and you make. That doesn’t mean other children are.
I’ll try telling a fraught parent that some GNs children all happily eat what they’re given.

They (parents) obviously need to learn that the reason their own children don’t is because they lack the organisation and planning of some GN’s.

No, I don't think I missed the point - not when raising ours and not now feeding theirs. I cook well, they either ate/eat what I cook or they have peanut butter toast. I've not described their meals, now I will.

Our mains vary widely, rest of the meal is similar most every day. Main/protein, starch, bread, salad, veg, fruit.

Usually dessert encompasses starch ingredients and fruit. Rice pudding, bread pudding, galette, baked fruit with oats, etc.

"Sally" is unhappy with most protein, she has peanut butter toast. "Sally" is a difficult eater, I didn't pander to her apart from peanut butter - we were already having bread, she loved (or ate?) starches, salad, veg, fruit.

I don't think there is a huge element of organisation or planning, other than a full larder. Whilst raising our children in the 60s we didn't have excess money, plus no restaurant meals, or timed oven.

Doodledog Also, it's easy to say, 'oh, I used an oven with a timer and batch froze things', or to assume that everyone can afford joints of meat or slow cookers. A lot of people can't afford fuel to put the oven on for more than a few minutes, or freezers, never mind ovens with timers.

I wrongly assumed everyone had a fridge if they were not homeless. I looked a bit and found this:

"How many people in the UK don't have refrigerators?
2.8 million people living without a freezer (1 in 10) 900,000 people living without a fridge (1 in 30) 1.9 million people living without a washing machine (1 in 20) -- Jan 17, 2020"

"1.9 million people living without a cooker (1 in 20 earning under £35,000 a year) -- Jan 17, 2020"

Gracious. Indeed, not all have a fancy oven, microwave, slowcooker, airfryer, I don't use a microwave, airfryer or many common gadgets - I assume cooking is quite difficult without a fridge or cooker.

But Norah, that’s your children. I look forward to hearing how you would feed other children with the same success. Would making it clear that that’s all there is work? Would you let them go hungry if they didn’t eat it?
Susie is a fussy eater, she dislikes tofu so much she gags when she tries to eat it, (I’ve seen this happen). Susie is allergic to peanuts and hates hummus.
I agree with avoiding, or at least eating fewer UPF foods and junk foods, but the issue of children eating the way we did in the days when fewer parents worked long hours, fewer families ate out in restaurants, there was little choice of ready prepared meals is different from lives for most families today.

I was born during the war. No choice then - we had rationing. My children were born in the early 70s. There were parents then who fed the children sausages, fish fingers etc etc with chips for a children's supper and ate with their DH later.

My DH travelled a lot, often overseas, so his presence at the evening meal was always chancy, but I stuck to a family meal every night, if he was with us, great, if he wasn't, the evening meal continued as before.

The interesting thing is that DS and DDiL, who had their children at the end of the first decade of this century, also stick to to the family meal, with no choice or alternative pattern.. They are not the best organised people and DS's home hour is variable, but they find they simply do not have time, nor can they afford to keep catering for individual choices, so cook food they all enjoy, and, yes, they too have a fussy eater. But as he has no experience of being able to ask for alternatives, he doesn't do it.

As to the questions you set Norah, if a child really doesn't like something (Susie and her tofu), whether it was my child, or someone elses then I wouldn't serve it. Although I like broad beans I didn't serve them when my children were young because DS really really loathed them (and still does).

We have also dealt with allergeies and still do. DGD was allergic to nuts, tomatoes, sesame and salmon. When she was with us, I just didn't serve those foodstuffs. Thesame with her mother, who has developed allergies after developing an auto-immune disease. I know what she cannot eat it and do not serve it when she is with us.

Mollygro you do not seem able to understand that only cooking one meal with no choice of an evening, doesn't mean forcing children to eat food they do not like, or letting them go hungry. You simply do not serve the kind of food that the children do not like, or if you do, you give them a bigger portion of the items they do like and none of anything they really do not like.

There are 28 million households in the UK and 19 million are defined as 'families. OK so 2 million households do not fridges, or cookers, 26 million do and that means that around 18 million families do have adequate kitchen facilities. Air fryers, slow cookers and other similar appliances are flying out the doorss of Currys, Robert Dyas of similar shops and their are piles of 'Cooking with an airfryer' books to be found piled up in WH Smiths and similar and are also selling like hot cakes, so itnis quite reasonable to think in terms of normal families having one or more of these appliances. With a delayed start facilty on my cooker I was able to do everything a slow cooker does.

mollygo war babies DH and I may have been, we both had working mothers, they were teachers, and went back to work when my younger child started nursery, we didn't eat out, anymore than the majority of families do today, but both our parents and I organised our lives so that we could get a family meal, and the easiest way to do that was to cook on meal every eveing that we knew all the family would enjoy. The only times I have had children refuse to eat any part of the meal they were served was because they were ill, which is a very different situation. Normally, if they decided they did not like the main part of the meal they would eat the potatoes/rice/pasta and the vegetables and the dessert. Or they would leave the veg, but eat the meat.

As for ready meals. I have about 15 ready meals in my freezer, all home made. I cook a meal using, say, a 1lb of meat and that will provide one meal the day it is cooked and three to go into the freezer, so on three days, cooking supper just includes defrosting a ready meal and preparing vegetables.

I did things they way I did to make life simple for me. I did not want to be hassled with having to get a different meal for every family member, so I didn't. None of them ever went hungry or starved.

Mollygro you do not seem able to understand that only cooking one meal with no choice of an evening, doesn't mean forcing children to eat food they do not like, or letting them go hungry. You simply do not serve the kind of food that the children do not like, or if you do, you give them a bigger portion of the items they do like and none of anything they really do not like.

Moanica
You obviously have never had to deal with that problem, which is lucky for you.
Nowadays, children have different tastes, quite often informed by the stuff in the media, or simply by dislike of the taste of something.

If you live in a family where you do after school care including dinner and you and your husband like the same sort of meals you ate as a child, but one DGC child doesn't like red meat, and is lactose intolerant (so obviously I don’t give them that,) but will eat chicken, fish, and eggs. He prefers one specific brand of ‘oat milk’ but should I give him a UPF ingredient?

Then one young teen DGC, having decided that they are vegan, so no animal protein at all, and one who will eat anything, so long as there is no gravy and each food doesn’t touch.
Since there seems to be some vs on here, I’m delighted to say I’m good at dealing with that so that everyone gets something they like.
NB
I wasn’t born until well after the war, but that doesn’t make either of us a better parent.
Saying what life was like in the war or after the war has no real relevance here. Much of what is available now, e.g. bananas and oranges wasn’t available then.
People ate what was available, as they do now. Should they not eat it because you didn’t have it as a child?
Do you still have the time (or the fuel) to spend as long cooking as your parents did?

Mollygo

But Norah, that’s your children. I look forward to hearing how you would feed other children with the same success. Would making it clear that that’s all there is work? Would you let them go hungry if they didn’t eat it?
Susie is a fussy eater, she dislikes tofu so much she gags when she tries to eat it, (I’ve seen this happen). Susie is allergic to peanuts and hates hummus.
I agree with avoiding, or at least eating fewer UPF foods and junk foods, but the issue of children eating the way we did in the days when fewer parents worked long hours, fewer families ate out in restaurants, there was little choice of ready prepared meals is different from lives for most families today.

It seems you didn't actually read what I wrote or perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I never said any of our 4 children (born in late 50s to late 70s), or our GC and GGC were/are asked to go hungry - did I?

"Sally" did hate most meat and couldn't eat eggs - she ate peanut butter toast often, with all the other parts to the meal.

Some of out GC, GGC have severe allergies, eggs, soy, etc - they eat other parts to the meal and either peanut butter or hummous toast.

I'm lucky - those children love peanut butter. They also like various other parts to a meal - one does not have to love every course.

I defy anyone to work "longer hours" than my husband - that argument against proper eating won't work for me. Someone is with children at meal times, husband or wife - most everyone eats.

So you’re lucky your children like what you serve them. What if they didn’t?

Mollygo

So you’re lucky your children like what you serve them. What if they didn’t?

That's just silly.

There are so many parts to a meal. The protein, starches, breads, veggies, fruits, liquids, dessert. Everybody likes something!

If they didn't like something I guess they could rummage around the fridge for cold leftovers - always lurking.

Luckily none of them dislike every food to a meal. They've been raised to eat what is available - they're not aware of "readymeals."

That’s just what I’ve said Norah. They’re your children.
What if your children or their friends, if you invite them round as we did for our DC and do for our DGC don’t like what you serve? Do you consider their likes and dislikes?
I’m well aware of the parts of a meal, but I wouldn’t consider giving extra carbohydrate as a replacement for the protein they don’t like, or bulking up on dessert because they didn’t like the vegetables as a good way to demonstrate nutrition.
And then we’re back to the UPF ‘milks’. Or the peanut butter. The cheapest peanut butter that might be all someone can afford is UPF. You can, if you have the money get a less UP variety, or if you have the time and the tools, you can make your own.

Mollygo

That’s just what I’ve said Norah. They’re your children.
What if your children or their friends, if you invite them round as we did for our DC and do for our DGC don’t like what you serve? Do you consider their likes and dislikes?
I’m well aware of the parts of a meal, but I wouldn’t consider giving extra carbohydrate as a replacement for the protein they don’t like, or bulking up on dessert because they didn’t like the vegetables as a good way to demonstrate nutrition.
And then we’re back to the UPF ‘milks’. Or the peanut butter. The cheapest peanut butter that might be all someone can afford is UPF. You can, if you have the money get a less UP variety, or if you have the time and the tools, you can make your own.

Everyone is different in their approach to nutrition.

Our children, their children and grandchildren are round often. They do eat extras of some items in preference to others. All levels out in a day or two. No worry, all scratch made, healthy.

No idea what UPF milk consists of as we don't drink dairy milk, I make oat milk. Yes, wholesome peanut butter exists.

I disagree to some reasons people don't scratch cook, do eat UPFs - which could be cause to some of the chubby people out and about.