Childhood obesity strategy "lite"

How many times do children really eat fast food? I confess that I don't experience it, mainly because we don't have Greggs, McDonalds, etc on the high street. The only people I see eating out during the day time are the yummy mummies/ladies who lunch in cafes tucking into incredibly expensive salads or huge slices of cake. Unless you follow these people home, you don't know what they eat during a typical day.

I agree about take away coffees. When I was working, it seemed compulsory for people to clutch a large cup of coffee on the way to work. Some of them have 600 or 700 calories with the added syrups.

I would really never add oats to mince now, especially in something like shepherd's pie, which already contain enough carbs. I've said before that I think sauces are a source of hidden carbs. I know for an absolute fact that many poorer families feed their families on pasta, which can be bought very cheaply in supermarkets and then add a gloopy carb-rich sauce. There was a thread on Gransnet not so long ago, in which people virtuously claimed their own home-made sauces had fewer calories than Dolmio, but they were wrong. Tomatoes, however they're cooked, are carb-rich. Somebody even expressed surprise that pesto has sugar - of course it does, because fruit and veg are made up of sugar.

Carbs are without a shadow of a doubt the cheapest form of energy (calories). As the article earlier in the thread pointed out, poorer people have few pleasures apart from eating and the don't want to leave a table without feeling full. The cheapest (and most comforting way) to do that is to fill up on carbs. Meat and dairy products are much more expensive nowadays (even allowing for inflation) than they were when you or I were young. I seriously don't think the demonisation of fat has helped.

I also think food habits have changed. I really loathe stews and the supposedly wholesome food some people on GN recommend. As a child, I had so many of them and they were always thickened with flour. My mother was an appalling cook (still is) and I have nightmares thinking about over-salted, boiled to death vegetables. I really can't look back on the 'old days' with pleasure.

Boiled with bicarbonate of soda to keep them green!

I didn't know that. I don't think my mother did either, because I remember sprouts and cabbage being a sort of grey colour. It's no wonder so many children have grown up not liking 'greens'.

Bicarb removes the Vitamin C content. Acid-alkali thing I guess. The practice was common in the past - designed to soften woody old veg?

Yuk! I've steamed my veg for years ever since I lived in a bedsit. I bought an electric steamer, because I only had one ring for cooking. My sprouts and cabbage are always bright green :-)

My mum used to boil vegetables until they were mush and she served almost everything mashed.

Mashed carrot, potato,swede, cauliflower etc. all sitting in little mounds around the plate. Even her sprouts, cabbage etc. were boiled until they were just slop.

I love my veg just cooked, still with a good crunch to it.

Our veg was usually fresh from the garden and allotment, but I do remember when i was a child DM putting a pinch of bicarb in when cooking greens, a practice they discarded later on. They weren't mushy though. We used to eat a lot of oranges when they came off rationing so probably got vit c from those!
I use an electric steamer and it's so much easier to wash up too!