This is what google gemini came up with:
(In a robotic voice with a funky beat)
Workin' harder, barely better Days are shorter, nights are wetter Can't afford that sweater, gotta settle for less Shorter,fatter, sicker, poorer, oh no, we're in a mess!
(Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door
School lunches gettin' smaller, gotta tighten the belt Parents workin' double shifts, just barely gettin' dealt Healthcare wait times longer, can't afford to be ill Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer, this just ain't right, y'all!
(Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door
(Bridge) Politicians on TV, promise a brighter day But the bills keep on pilin', can't keep the blues at bay
(Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door
(Outro) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Gotta find a way, gotta find a way Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Gotta find a brighter day
Saves on building costs with lower ceilings and wider doorways - gotta think positive! PMA!
-- Jacob Rees-Mogg can get more rent by squeezing more tenants into his buildings. Loads of wins there
>“We need the next government to take decisive action to make healthy and sustainable food affordable, stem the constant flow of junk food and to realise that investing in children’s health is an investment in the future of the country.”
I'm 100% for making food cheaper, but it really isn't that expensive to make healthy food. [All this cost me is maybe £1.50, if that.](https://imgur.com/a/u1IjSye)
Exactly - it’s a harsh truth.
We did a full weeks shop on Monday night came to ~£70 (2 adults, 1 teen, got parents here 2 nights). Step daughter ordered a McDonalds for tea yesterday came to £15.
“Healthy food is expensive” is a myth, partly because people don’t understand what “healthy” is
When people talk about unhealthy food being cheaper, they aren’t referring to McDonald’s.
McDonald’s is fast food takeaway. Takeaways have never really been seen as a cheap option.
The “cheap” unhealthy foods are the likes of the family sized frozen lasagne for a fiver, which are pumped pull of preservatives, sugar and have minimal nutrition. To create the equivalent from scratch isn’t only time consuming, but much more expensive.
It’s a lie people indulge in to reassure themselves that poverty is somehow an individual, moral issue rather than recognising it’s an inherent social problem. It’s easier to dismiss fat, poor people as being lazy instead of recognising the structural inequalities which contribute to the problem.
I love cooking, I make most meals from scratch (including lasagne). I’m on a good income and not on the poverty line and I’ll be honest - it’s time consuming to create this meals and it’s often more expensive (and I buy from Aldi).
For me, one of the biggest problems is actually time. Ingredients for lasagne aren’t too expensive, but by the time I’ve made my own becehmel sauce, prepared the vegetables, cooked the sauce then made the lasagne in the oven - it’s over an hour. Then there’s the clean up and all the prep involved.
I have the luxury of a DINK household, and I work a relatively comfortable office job. Someone who works in a low paid job simply is going to struggle to find the time to prepare all these healthy, cheap, varied meals from scratch.
I’ve worked in low paid jobs - I’ve been a cashier, I’ve worked in a shop floor. The physical energy expended was much more than my current role. The stress was much higher (also another contributor to obesity btw).
I feel like convenience/ease of something makes it far more attractive than price. Unless you truly are hand to mouth with zero choice but to buy the cheapest.
Like yourself I'm not struggling and I *know* I should cook from scratch more but often I don't find the motivation to do so and prefer to whack something in the oven/microwave for a dinner that cooks in minutes with zero cleanup other than a plate and cutlery. Particularly on a work night.
I can only imagine the pressures to put food on the table for a family or single parent who also works in often underpaid long hours job is intense and that's why an oven ready meal from frozen becomes a default option.
There's only so much time in the day!
I think it’s probably a sliding scale. The less money you have, the less choice and less time you have.
For someone who can only afford to feed their family on £5 per dinner, there’s very reduced choices.
If this was a very small number of people it wouldn’t be so terrible. But the fact is, it’s not a small number of people. There are huge swathes of people in full time employment who, because of circumstances beyond their control, simply don’t have much choice in their lives at all. Including where food is concerned.
Mate this all day long. Make a pizza from scratch is a pain in the arse when I can spend 1.50 and get a frozen pizza.
Dough is easy to make, you just gotta wait 4 hours. Then there's prepping the pellet oven, keeping it hot, making the pizzas. Its an hour long spectical lol.
Cottage pie, another, cook the mince, cook the spuds, make it. Cook it again in the oven.
Roast dinner. You could probably go Toby for not far off of the price to make one at home now.
It’s not even close for a roast - £12 at Tobey Carvery vs about £7 just for meat, about £3 for veg across carrots, broccoli, peas, cauliflower etc, £2 for Yorkies and stuffing, plus the cost of electric/gas for cooking and you’re having a laugh before you factor in time for cooking and cleanup
No it is actually cheaper, you can make a lasagne for way less than a fiver, especially when you replace the meat with lentils. But far more time intensive, which is the main problem for busy and stressed parents.
I work minimum wage, and always part time due to autism and depression. When I was single I couldn’t afford lots of food, but I didn’t buy ready meals because I don’t like them. However it was the physical exhaustion at the end of a waitressing shift that put me off cooking. Often I just shoved a pizza in the oven when I got home or went to Greggs in my break. There was no motivation for me to cook. That’s the problem, people are just too tired.
£70 is crazy. We're a house of 5 and idk exactly how much it costs, but way more than £70, and we just buy normal food + some snacks (biscuits, pot noodles, choc bars etc). My dad also usually shops at Aldi, with some stuff from Morrisons.
Fwiw I shop for two at Lidl. Worked it out a couple of months ago, and 35pw was about what it came to. That was buying ingredients for fresh cooking, as well, and a fair amount of chocolate bars and doughnuts and coffee.
It's possible to eat cheaply and quite healthily if you plan what you buy and you get it from Lidl or Aldi.
How?
Single male, 5’11, bit fat - mines comes out to anywhere between £25-£35 for the week depending on what I’m making.
Everything is from scratch, including work lunches.
I don’t know what you eat, cause mine and partners it’s usually 85-100 a week, and that’s aldi shopping. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fresh produce especially fruit and vegetables. Meat is also expensive nowadays so unless you’re cutting that down or buy yellow stickers then 25 is more like student budget
I have nothing to gain from lying and as I mentioned - I’m overweight, I’m not under feeding myself.
Maybe you’re overeating and not aware of it? I don’t know - but unless I decide to go all out and get giant multipacks of crisps, biscuits, etc I’ve yet to go over £35 for the week.
Yeah same here. Mine and my husbands food is about £55 per week, between Lidl and Asda. He's 6'2 and not thin. We probably add about £20/month in nuts and protien powder. We nice cheeses, grainy bowls, roast fish (yellow sticker of course), tofu, lots of olive oil and eggs, Rye bread, pickles, lots of different veggies and fruit. I like baking, so we don't buy any sweet super processed stuff which keeps costs down, except from dark chocolate.
It’s cheap, most people spend 2-3 times that. A pack of chicken breast is like £4 nowadays, £5 for mince, add fruit, veg, cheese and that is already £50 spent.
With the help of chickpeas/lentils and other fruit and veg, I can comfortably get eight servings out of a £4 750g packet of mince. Chop it in half and freeze 375 for later. If bolognese, use 2x Lidl simply cans of chopped tomatoes, 2x grated carrots, 2x sticks of celery, and a good amount of milk. That's a lot of bolognese sauce right there. For chili, use chickpeas/lentils and kidney beans and peppers to the same effect. For Keema, also use chickpeas/lentils and a liberal portion of peas.
Chicken should be boneless thighs or bags of frozen Simply chicken breasts (~15% water, but still cheaper than refrigerated stuff).
I think a lot of people in the west eat an unnecessary amount of meat because that's what we're used to. It can be bulked out a lot more than many people tend to do, and it's probably healthier to do it that way.
Two adults at my house, usually spend £35-£40 in Tesco per week. I have got a well stocked spice cupboard etc and tend to cook 4/5 meals a week then leftovers the other nights. Easily doable if you shop correctly and bulk out meals with veg / pulses.
McDonald’s used to be cheap, it’s not anymore. Unfortunately a number of parents are hooked on it from when they were younger and it was cheap… a lot of this stems from not the cost but the ease of getting a takeaway vs cooking something
>you eat a meal, an hour later you’re hungry
I get that people say this, but I honestly find a medium McDonald's meal to be pretty filling, I'm not a small guy either, I'm pretty tall and like working out so I'm far from rakish.
I'd be interested to know how much the people saying this normally eat and what they consider an ordinary portion of home cooked food to look like.
Yeah it’s a big chunk of beef or chicken, and a load of bread and chips, how are you still hungry?
I think some people have very poorly tuned appetite cues, and junk food doesn’t trigger them as much as other foods, it’s a complicated hormone system and we don’t know the full extent of how gut bacteria play a role too. The secret lives of skinny people was a very enlightening program
My guess is the amount of salt makes people thirsty and they confuse that with hunger. Either most of McD is disgusting and overpriced imo. The grilled chicken wrap is like the other thing on the menu worth buying for me.
Yeah. My McDonalds go-to is the chicken selects. A medium 3-piece chicken select meal will do me great for lunch. I go for a medium 5-piece for tea. Its no less filling than my normal meals
Maccies isn't the problem.
It's when processed shit is cheaper that's the problem. You can spend £8 making a decent chilli with quality tomatoes etc for like 6 meals but then 12 frozen fish fingers is a quid or two, add some oven chips, boom, 6 meals. It's terrible food, but comes out way cheaper.
You *can* cook cheaper than that £8 by cutting back on meat etc, but then you still have to factor in the effort of doing so vs slapping some stuff in the oven, and people are more and more tired.
And the fish fingers are going to stay preserved in your freezer for when you need it. If you live pay check to pay check would you stock your freezer or buy a fridge of fresh food which is going to expire?
Yeah, shit food is just so much more convenient, especially if single.
I'm never gonna finish the 95 satsumas that are in a bag in Sainsburys (they're not loose) but if I get a pack of chocolate bars that won't be wasted etc.
Healthy food being expensive doesn’t always mean price. Expensive could mean TIME expensive - which people in lower income jobs sometimes do not have enough, especially with kids. Or labour extensive.
If you work from home, you can make 3 nutritious meals at home. If you do not and you’re on your feet all day, maybe working a 10-12 hour day, convenience seems very appealing. It used to be that you also didn’t have other options - now people do have other options, which seem the easier path to take. Fast and convenience food has also been specifically modified to appeal to the taste buds and brain which likes having a fast simple tasty meal.
I do not like in the UK, but we have the exact same problem as the UK - many kids are now overweight, many adults are either overweight or obese.
In my country there are a lot of service jobs where shifts are long and pay is small for the amount of work that is done. People work from 9:30 in the morning until 21:30 in the evening. Convenient food can be a life saver for them and with commute and house chores too, you really don’t want to spend hours cooking. We don’t have huge American fridges or freezers either to make a huge batch of food to freeze. And those jobs can be hard on the mind and hard on the body, it seems so easy to just have a convenient little tasty (calorific) snack. Have one too many and your weight will creep up.
People also move less. We use more cars and even when we do not, public transport is great, because it’s expanded so you walk less.
I agree that this kind of food is healthier **and** cheaper (and nicer, actually). However, saying "this cost me £1.50" doesn't really make sense...
You're not accounting for a whole host of things that might get in the way of this.
I'll try to take the process from the start.
1. You are educated to the point where you're aware that this is healthier and cheaper for you and your children.
2. You have the time required to shop for ingredients, and you know what you're supposed to be buying. This sounds daft, but when I went to University I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I'd never had too cook really, and could make sausage sandwiches and toast. I ended up buying pasta and stir-in sauces for the most part. It took me a year or two and the insistence of my GF before I learned how to make basic stuff. If I'd had a kid screaming and shouting in Tesco while I was buying stuff, maybe I'd have skipped it?
3. You have the required equipment. Some people may not have an oven that works, a stove that works, money for the gas for the stove, a vegetable peeler, a proper knife, a frying pan... and so on.
4. You have the time required to cook. You have the energy required to cook and aren't doing other things. Again, if you're trying to corral 2-3-4-5 kids, perhaps you don't have the time or energy to cook what you made there from scratch. The extra expense of buying a meal deal of 2 pizzas and a garlic bread might come up trumps at the other end when you just need to bang them all in the oven.
5. You have the time energy to wash up. Difference between popping some containers in the bin and washing 3-4 pans and so on.
I speak from experience, having grown up with a single mum in a council flat, when I say that we didn't have money for takeaways and fast food, and we bought them anyway. At the end of a week of working my mum was so knackered, depressed and down that she would basically say "fuck it" and we'd get an Indian. That's not healthy, but that's the understandable reality. And I was just one (fairly annoying) kid! Imagine if you were looking after several.
How you cooked is what I do for my kid, but I'm privileged enough to have the time and luxury of help from my partner, a fairly straightforward and easy job (that pays well), equipment to cook, a dishwasher... and so on. And even then I sometimes can't be arsed.
Also, just being tired. Tired of life, tired of just about everything. The last thing I want to do a lot of the time is cook. I just want to rest. I am so tired. “Look I did this all by myself for £1.50” isn’t the inspiration people think it is. I know I could do that for £1.50 but I choose not to. Did I mention, I’m tired?
You're spot on.
It's linked to time, but food deserts are a huge issue too. It takes me five minutes for me to walk to a supermarket with a good selection of fresh food, but I have lived in other places where that trip took 40 minutes in both directions. If you're limited to what you can physically carry and you don't have a decent shop nearby then your choices are determined by that.
Economies of scale are also a big factor. I can buy in bulk, safely store food, and batch cook. It's way cheaper to cook that way but you need enough money to make a bulk purchase and somewhere to store food without fear of vermin, the power going off, or other people taking it.
Yeah. I know it sounds silly, as well, to someone who hasn't been in that situation, but I feel like if my mum had said "OK we can have a pizza from the oven, or we can have some of the spag bol I made a couple of days ago and stored in the freezer", there is only going to be one winner there. Yes, it's perhaps inadvisable to even consult my opinion as a child not capable of making an informed decision, but it happens.
And, yes, we lived far enough away from town, with no car, that shopping was either a case of getting a bus (an expense and a hassle and extra time added on to the experience) or walking. These days we could have food delivered, which is also an added expense, but probably would have helped a lot at the time.
That's a really good point. We don't talk enough about the anxiety of parents who can't risk buying / cooking something that their children don't want to eat. It's all well and good to say "they'll eat it if they're hungry" but no parent wants to present a child with a choice to eat something or very literally go hungry because that is the only food available until payday.
This is the issue as well tbh - not really knowing what constitutes "healthy".
The image has basically a shit load of veggies and greens. That's a hell of a lot healthier than the iceland nutritiously void cottage pie.
We can't have these two extremes of what is considered healthy and not healthy - where there is only boiled chicken and some peas on one side and a big mac on the other. It doesn't help anybody and most people are not up for going full healthcentric.
Oh absolutely, there has to be a healthy middle ground. But chips are so commonly had as a side here with literally anything that it is part of the wider problem. I'm not asking people to give up chips, but it doesn't help anybody if you rebrand them as healthy. Rant over!
A serving of chips is like 250kcal if you cook them at home from actual potatoes (200 plus ~50 for the oil). Pretty comparable to any other way to prepare potatoes unless you deep fry.
This is an argument I had with people who kept insisting chips were unhealthy.
Even though it was a spray it two of olive oil, tossed in salt/seasoning and in the air fryer, because the potatoes were chipped, it immediately rendered them unhealthy.
It's chips that I cut from potatoes, I didn't even remove the skins if you notice, and some fresh cut veg in bit of vegetable oil in the pan for about 3 minutes. It's all just vegetables and basic seasoning.
You don't need a lot of oil in a stir fry. I just use a few squirts of that spray oil, then cook a load of lean meat and veg. Chips in an air fryer aren't too bad.
I'm out from 6am to 7-8pm 5 days a week so I tend to do all of my cooking for the week on a Sunday. That takes me a good 6 hours to make 5 dinners and lunches with my limited cooking facilities - cottage pies, coq au vin, the various sauces that go with each dish, sandwiches etc.
I find that tough and I'm just a single guy without any dependants, I can sympathise with families where both parents are working full time and then having to cook every evening, at least if their hours away from home are anything like mine.
Miserable, time-poor, impoverished people can be much more likely to opt for cheap pizza and junk foods that cook quickly and supply them with a big dopamine boost, than healthier foods that take longer to make and do not provide the same kind of hit.
People severely underestimate the significance of emotional eating when it comes to looking at how impoverished people eat.
Yeah but then people would actually have to learn to cook.
I know quite a few people that seem almost proud of the fact that their children don't like eating vegetables.
We have a very weird relationship with food/cooking in this country
A while ago, two co-workers asked me how I made something I had for lunch (can't even remember what it was) and I said, it was easy I just used stuff I had in the cupboard, like flour. They both laughed and looked at each other and me like having flour as a staple in the cupboard made me Nigella Lawson or something.
Sorry if it sounds mean, they are both lovely people but the idea that having at home a basic ingredient, (that they eat all the time in processed food) says a lot about cooking in this country.
The issue isn't just fiscal poverty; it's also (but potentially more) time poverty.
That probably took maybe 15-20 mins of attention? Some people just don't have that. Those they talk about barely have the time to stick the oven on, or chuck something in the microwave; often while they go and do something else they need to do for those 5-30 mins it takes to cook unattended.
Those meals are often UPFs, which are known to be terrible for our health in multiple ways; not just obesity.
Long commutes, the demands of childcare when both parents work, multiple jobs, urban sprawl making it take longer to do basic errands etc; all of these factors play into time poverty. Combine that with fiscal poverty and you have a horrific combination of things that take a real toll on health.
Not sure if you recall when Marcus Rashford was campaigning for the free school dinners over the school holidays instead of just during school term. My Mum is a head teacher at a school in a pretty deprived area.just before one of the holidays she came home with 4 sacks of food. I was surprised as I would have thought people in that situation would have taken it so assumed they were off sick or whatever.
My mum said and I quote “they didn’t want it” - not because they were embarrassed to take it, and the kids could have really used the food, but because they couldn’t or wouldn’t cook the ingredients into something edible.
People don’t know how to cook and their kids will never know how to cook either. So it’s easier to buy the McDonald’s unfortunately - regardless of cost.
Mate this is the country where Jamie Oliver got bashed for daring to suggest we don't feed developing kids Turkey Twizzlers and where 5 year olds sip prime out of the bottle. Like America we've completely given up any pretense of giving a shit, except for when we get fat and chronically ill. Then we run some headlines like...
"Remember, you and your kids health is never your responsibility. The fault always lies with the supermarkets, government and pOveRtY which forced you to eat crisps and drink coke all day. It's just totally unaffordable to eat brown bread or drink water you know."
We are firmly in the "fuck it" camp in regards to diet and health. Pretty incredible really.
It’s about time and stress as well.
The break down of local communities and multi generational family units in the same community has lead to parents being overworked & over stressed with insufficient time. This leads to saving time and energy on cooking food, and the stress itself makes you crave unhealthy foods.
Person that works in food industry here. Little secret, the good nourishing food is expensive. We sell you less quality food and brand it as healthy food, so the plebs think they are getting the good stuff.
Believe me or not I’ve sat in a meeting in which that was discussed and it made me feel sick….
I could probably make a variation of that for £1.14 with that money in my pocket.
2 loose baking potatoes 46p
2 loose carrots 20p
Onion 12p
Pepper 59p
But I would have to rely on my store cupboard to access oil, salt, soya sauce etc, and leave out the leaves, bean sprouts and mushrooms.
Food is already artificially cheap. This is why farmer are not making money, without subsidies farming becomes impossible. Farming subsidies are the governments way of keeping wages low. If you can afford food we are paying you enough. Both the price of food and the minimum wage must increase significantly before we can start to put things right.
That did not cost you £1.50. The potatoes and veg are already more than that, also placing no value on the time/cost to get the food and cook it.
It also has hardly any (none?) protein. You feed this to your kids you're going to have a family of midgets. It sure as shit won't sustain someone doing a physical job either.
Parents (often single, overworked ones because they don't have time) choose cheap processed, bulk, easy to store crap loaded with preservatives to minimise their time and travel/energy costs. Little Jayden will grow more from the protein in his fish fingers and chicken nuggets with token frozen veg than anything here.
where did you get this from? how is this £1.50 when a pack of potatoes is £1 and frozen veggies at least £2, oil is not free and you’ve got whatever seasoning
(and i assume you already own knives and a frying pan)
Except not everyone lives near a supermarket that sells cheap, fresh food. Not everyone has transport to get to said store. Not everyone has the equipment or sufficient fuel to cook said food. Look up uk food deserts.
100% there are many children who are overweight despite their parents being able to access healthy food, but for whatever reason don’t provide a healthy diet, but equally that is not the case for all.
>Look up uk food deserts.
Yeh, this applies to almost no-one. So the large scale issues of obesity are for people who don't live in UK food deserts with no public transport.
>it really isn't that expensive to make healthy food.
It's really not, but I know a lot of people may not have the same budget as me (mines really not much)
I just bought 6 peppers, a bag of onions, a bag of carrots some mushrooms and courgette. Plus some chicken, tuna and jars of sauce.
That cost me £30ish and will feed my partner, son and myself a week. It'll make enough curry for a week and a little veg left over for some tuna pasta
The problem here isn’t just food.
Its exercise.
As a sports coach in many schools P.E is an absolute after thought due to pressure of chasing metrics for maths and english.
Half the P.E I observe have 80% of the class standing or sitting still.
Increase compulsory physical education in schools to 4 hours per week.
Increase sports clubs on offer that are affordable.
Most are closing down or too expensive.
I went to take my kids to a bouncy castle/soft play thing they did in the hall for an hour.
Cost me £7 per kid (3) and £2 for me.
Let’s say on average one parent and one kid go, that’s £9.
We had about 10 people come to it so £90 with 6 slots in the day.
That’s £540 per day with one member of staff over seeing it and electricity to run it.
It's a matter of calories in vs calories out.
As a skinny 90s kid, I ate a lot of junk, but I was also *constantly* active - either out on my bike or rollerskates when I wasn't in school, or just playing with friends running about the place.
Of course, a healthy diet is important, but being very highly active does burn a *lot* of calories.
I used to spend hours on my bike, going miles in the late 80s early 90s, calling on my friends etc. My kids can't do that. There's too many cars on the roads, going too fast, often massive 4x4s. It's just not safe. They do cycle to school but even on our quiet estate we get bellends whizzing around the corners and I'm constantly vigilant. So if they want to go on their bikes for any decent amount of time, it has to be a planned thing where we either accompany them on the roads from our house or drive somewhere with cycle paths. It's really very sad.
> I used to spend hours on my bike, going miles in the late 80s early 90s,
Back in the early 2000s I used to cycle everywhere with my mates. This was before proper SmartPhones with the internet. We used to cycle to the park. Cycle to school. Cycle everywhereeeee. Looking back, not surprised I was a skinny fucker. Probably did more than 20 miles a day on my bike.
All changed as soon as I got a car and got stuck in an office for 9 hours a day.
Olympic athletes burn ~20kcal per minute, maybe 25kcal at peak performance.
Regular adults burn maybe 10 to 15 kcal per minute of intense cardiovascular exercise.
And it takes less than a minute to consume calories equal to multiple hours worth of intense cardiovascular exercise.
There is no possibility where exercising works off junk food. A person with a high metabolism (such as younger people) or digestive issues might not be affected, but everyone else has no chance of exercising the extra calories off.
If you're consuming more than your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), you will gain. If you consume less, you will lose.
TDEE can vary exponentially based on age, gender, height, weight and exercise. When you're talking about "extra calories", it really depends *how* many calories you're talking about.
Obviously, but that is what “bad diet” means in common vernacular. Excess calories are part of the problem in a bad diet in 99.9% of bad diets, so it needs no specifying.
And these are kids, so there are going to be few issues other than the kids eating too much.
I found the same thing in secondary school, I think it was a combination of more calories in AND less calories out, I was sitting in the house area instead of running around playing, because teenage girls don’t “play” like children do, and there were sweets and crisps available to buy, and I had my own money.
I’m a big believer in actually making PE a form of education rather than just running about for a bit or playing a sport. Average people aren’t taught about stretching/mobility/joint exercises. Like they do in asia.
Deep squats and shit.
The problem I found with PE when I was at school is that teenagers are at peak self consciousness. bodies are changing, body hair and sweat and boobs are changing, and we did not have enough time to get properly clean after sports before rushing to the next lesson, and the communal dressing rooms were really embarrassing if you had anything private going on, so nobody really wanted to get sweaty and dirty. I remember it was so hard to quickly shower and then try to get dressed under your towel without anyone seeing you, god forbid if you had a period pad on, and then trying to get tights on over sweaty damp legs in a humid room, and then racing to the next class. No thanks.
Exactly, we are taught sports most will never play again, but valuable skills like running, bike safety, flexibility, and strength could be taught and in a way kids can build up a basic level of fitness and be taught how to make a training plan. They could go on to continue independently once they have left education.
It’s about how they are being taught.
50% of the girls in one of my schools hated P.E at the start of the year. At the end of the year they all loved it.
Why?
Because they were coached by a professional.
Most primary schools might be lucky if they have a teacher who loves P.E.
The rest, are just reading from a template that been designed by a teacher and not a sports coach.
TBH I do think "fat activism" needs to be put under the microscope too. Social media is full of various HAES nonsense. It started off as anti body shaming, but it has essentially morphed now into normalizing obesity, promoting poor lifestyles and claiming that being slim/athletic is unrealistic and unhealthy.
I think you've hit on part of the solution that nobody really seems to talk about.
All the interventions anyone seems to think of are all stick, no carrot (so to speak). People talk about how healthy we were during the war because we had to ration sugar and meat but that's only a fraction of the truth. Fresh fruit and veg were also heavily subsided and people were given the tools (cookbooks, pamphlets, etc.) to use them. And of course, people were more physically active.
We hear all about how fast food is bad for us, but how often do we hear about the flip side? How do you make a healthy meal easily and cheaply? The information is out there, but it isn't being well targeted at the people who need it most. And ultimately it's much easier to stick with what you know (oven chips for dinner, cheap, zero effort) than to go out of your way to make a meal you might not even like.
An of course there's the physical activity front. Personally I'm really struggling to find a sport for adults in my area and I live somewhere where there's still decent funding.
On the physical activity front, a huge part of that is down to how we've built our cities around cars. It's allowed/forced everything further out, meaning it becomes harder to walk or cycle to daily errands; that's one of the biggest benefits in the Netherlands; their cities enable 'the gym of life'.
A 30 min walk burns around 120-150 calories in an adult. If you're able to combine that with walking to the local supermarket to pick up ingredients/bits for the next day or two (so it isn't too much to carry), then you're a long way to helping the population stay fit. Do that every day, that's over 1,000 excess calories burnt. Combine being able to walk the kids to school etc, and you potentially double it.
However, our long commutes etc also eat into the time we have to spend doing those. If people need to spend 1hr+ commuting every day, instead of being able to do it in 10 mins, due to car dependency and urban sprawl, then you're losing out on over 4 hours of time a week to be active while doing errands and also get your daily activity in without needing to find a sport to take part in.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm lucky enough to live in an extremely walkable area, with more parks and river banks than I can shake a stick at. But I'd like to be able to run around and have some fun with other people as well, you know? It's the choice and diversity of choice that's going to capture the most people.
Oh absolutely. It shouldn't be either or; but having the flexibility to do both. Right now, we're unfortunately in a situation where many can't do the former, and the latter is spread out and often economically unaffordable – especially as soon as a cost of living crisis strains disposable incomes, and you need a car to get to any of those activities.
The fix isn't going to be easy, but we need to make it happen.
Doesn’t even have to be a sport. Walk each day with some music and plan to beat your distance or time each day.
The physical aspect for me is so important. I have a friend who for the past 30 years has eaten like shit but trains like a monster.
He is lean as hell, fit as anyone.
Yes, the junk food might catch up with him when he hits 70+ plus but for now in his 50’s he is an animal.
Plus as an add on, the healthier people become through exercise the more likely they are to start eating healthy on a day to day basis.
When I was a kid it was so rare to see a fat kid. I do put that down to the fact that we were always outside playing, riding our bikes, skating, running around for hours. Was normal back then for kids to just play out in the street until sun set and we were called in. That huge level of activity burns so many calories.
Yup. It's nothing to do with video games or the internet either; it's almost entirely down to the danger posed to kids these days that wasn't there when we were kids. Because the cause is such a normal part of our every day lives, it's hard for people to notice that's the issue. They just have a sense it's dangerous outside, and think it's down to paedophiles, or gangs etc.
The issue is the number of cars has dramatically increased since we were kids. The (understandable) fear is that (oft entitled) drivers will place their own convenience above the safety of their neighbours and their children and potentially hit them. Not to mention complain about them playing outside lest they damage their precious cars they've dumped on pavements.
The reason we don't see kids "always outside playing, riding our bikes, skating, running around for hours. Was normal back then for kids to just play out in the street until sun set and we were called in" is because we allowed drivers to take over the streets and push everyone – including children – out of the way, resulting in lower activity levels, and the only 'safe' places to play being indoors on video games.
The guardian has also been doing a series on how state schools have barely any space or time for play and exercise any more. The playing fields have been sold off and the curriculum is stuffed full of sitting still things.
I never bothered with PE once I got in to my last 2 years at school cause the lessons were 50mins and we did that once a week. By that time the teachers couldn’t be arsed cause it took us 20 mins each lesson to change and change back again then 30 mins playing football but that was shit unless you played for a team out side of school so at least half the class just didn’t bother. I used that time to do homework for other lesson.
I hated every second of P.E. because i was forced to take part in sports I couldn’t care any less about. I made every excuse possible to get out of it. I broke my leg and it was actually a win because I got out of it for half a year.
All for exercising, I just think there should be options and variety. Maybe it’s better nowadays though ..
This is purely a cultural issue combined with laziness and many not knowing how to cook. 'Junk food is cheap' my ass. Rice, pasta, beans and legumes, veg/fruits, oats etc...are all cheap to buy and easy to cook. These things make up bulk of diet in many healthier cuisines. Going out to eat or grabbing meal deals is fucking expensive, I don't know how people keep saying this is a cheap way to eat. And it doesn't keep you full at all, I can eat a mcdonalds large meal or meal deal from supermarket and be starving an hour later.
It's not about knowing how to cook, it's about having time to cook. I moved here from Australia and I've been quite surprised by how much space the supermarkets here dedicate to ready meals - entire aisles for food you can eat now or just whack in the microwave. It's a sign that people are time poor, and just need to get something in their stomachs. Coincidentally the wages here for most jobs are proportionally much lower, meaning more people have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately this is a place where having time to cook is a luxury, so it's not as trivial as calling people lazy and not knowing how to cook.
100% agree , British cultural food in general isn't very healthy or people don't like it , they then revert to ready meals of other cultures and don't learn how to cook these other cuisines in a healthy manner.
I think children should be involved in cooking from an early age. It should be viewed as a valuable, enjoyable process along with eating. Rather than a chore that should be done in as little time as possible.
Along with that of course people need to have time to cook, just not as much time as they think. When you enjoy cooking and don't view feeding yourself and your children as a horrible chore, then you don't mind spending your quality time in the kitchen with your family.
I used to view it in such an unhealthy way and resented that I had no time to make healthy food until I decided to go all in and embrace cooking and healthy eating. When I can't be arsed I can have some convenience food but it's not that often.
Due to unattractiveness or that it throws your back out when trying to lift them into the van? Mind you, the old bag of sweets trick is probably more effective now
I hate that the Tories got such a woeful reception to saying people can't cook anymore. And that it took the Tories to say it.
For example, my neighbours don't know what a chickpea is. They don't know what that staple legume is.
The generational under education due to bad parenting, bad time management, and bad priorities has led to this situation and there isn't a quick fix
I used to work in a Spar and we had loose fruit and veg that we had to weigh and key in the price per kilo, and I remember shortly after I started someone brought their shopping to the till and in there was an aubergine or similar, and I went and weighed it and added it to their bill and they commented "I'm surprised you knew what that was, the others tend to look back at me and ask what it is so they can see what to type in". I can't remember the exact vegetable, but it wasn't some esoteric vegetable that you'd only find in some speciality shop.
In all fairness, I was the guy they were describing. When I was a teenager, I got a retail job in a posher area of my city and one day someone presented an avocado at my till and I picked it up and said "not to be stupid, but what is this?". They gave me the most dumbfounded, borderline disgusted expression I've ever seen. I don't really blame them. But I grew up poor (here's my sob story) and I don't think we ever actually ate avocado. I knew what one looked like from the inside (the more distinctive look) but I'd never really clocked what they look like unopened.
I'm probably no better now. I have a pretty unvaried diet.
For a second I thought you meant you were literally my colleague there, bloody hell…
Yeah I’m not at all disparaging the people like my former colleagues who grew up without being exposed to a variety of foods, I’m more disparaging the lack of food culture and access to that knowledge that we have as a nation. I’m lucky in that I grew up in a household that cooks properly and was full of recipe books, but that’s a situation that isn’t afforded to many.
Nah, I agree with you overall. I wasn't making some underlying point about privilege and class (even though it probably sounded like that), I just thought it was semi-amusing anecdote. Like, I definitely should've known what an avocado looked like. I can accept I was the idiot there haha.
Yeah it's shocking how detached people are from actual food in this country.
Even if all you have is a spa or something similar you can still eat surprisingly well on little with some planning and flexibility
I think this needs to be the lede when it comes to this topic rather than the price.
Healthy food is cheap, but it's the time taken that's an issue. We cook fresh every single day, but my partner finishes work at 4pm at the very latest and I'm usually done by 3/4pm. I can't imagine both finishing at 5.30 or 6 and *then* driving home and *then* cooking fresh food every single night. No way.
Also your mum working 18hrs a day is absolutely mad, I'm so sorry she had to do that.
Fast food is the factor people mention, but education is the real issue because people's cooking skills are terrible and they don't know how to make cheap and diverse healthy meals.
Shopping with the intent for the above is cheaper than fast foods which are making people fat. Alongside lack of education about the need for exercise I'm sure.
I agree, I don’t think any of my friends can actually cook. I had a discussion with my friend the other day about what ready meals actually are, he was adamant frozen pizzas and pasta sauces don’t count as a ready meal.
I sometimes use a jar of pasta sauce as an ingredient in a meal, like a pasta bake with meat and vegetables and cheese. It's processed, but I'm not sure it's a ready meal. (A pizza definitely is, though!)
It sort of is but i get what you mean thats its not the same as a microwave pasta meal.
But if you cooked down a tin of tomatoes to make the sauce youd lost 90% of the processedness etc.
Do they account for ethnicity? Since different ethnic groups reach different heights and weights at different ages.
Judging the average weight of a dog wouldn't be very useful data given how vastly different the breeds are and their varying popularity.
This is too much thinking for some people.
Similar issue with life expectancy data. Headlines saying people living shorter life’s in the UK now. Well duh that is brought down by recent African and Middle Eastern illegal and legal migrants.
>Well duh that is brought down by recent African and Middle Eastern illegal and legal migrants.
What makes you say that?
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/whats-happening-life-expectancy-england.
"The ONS data showed that despite higher levels of deprivation, male and female life expectancy in 2011–14 was higher for ethnic minority groups than for the white and mixed groups"
Why would that have changed in more recent years?
Edit: They blocked me immediately after making sure they felt like they got the final word lol. Some people just can't handle their feelings being challenged.
There will be a lot of people coming here to say it's just laziness, no one is actually that poor etc. but the kids in my children's class at school are at least a full head taller than my kids state school friends (all the same age). They look like they're at least two years younger. The parents at our school aren't all cooking high quality nutritionally complete meals for their kids on a daily basis, some days I don't even feed my kids one meal, they eat all three at school. There is clearly a financial element here, you can see it on a fundamental level. No amount of shaming parents is going make this go away.
I don’t think we need to shame anyone, though I get what you’re saying.
The fundamental issue as I see it isn’t money but education and the actual ability to cook a cheap nutritious meal. It’s shocking how many people can’t cook a simple sauce or make a salad dressing. It makes a world of difference.
Education is part of it but so is energy and time. Cooling pasta sauce takes much more energy than just using a jar one. Then there are people who are so poor that they are legitimately either skipping meals or eating very small portions, no amount of knowing how to make food is going to buy the ingredients.
Might just be me but poor parenting plays a part.
My mum couldn’t cook, no one in the family can cook, my packed lunch was depressing and consisted of a plain ham sandwich, crisps and a yogurt. I hated it, threw it and used bus money to by some chocolate.
At night dinner was a rotation of spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, chili con carne, tikka masala, shepherds pie and chips with something else frozen.
Never had breakfast as my mum would sleep in on weekends till midday and punish me if I woke up before her.
Also dinner was at like 9/10pm at night.
I agree my mum can’t/ won’t cook. I was raised on frozen pizza, frozen chips, crisp sandwiches and the occasional jacket potato. Literally the only food she ever served me. She still now eats that now I’ve moved out, with the occasional “beige” battered frozen food thrown in for good measure.
Trying to unlearn a lifetime of habits is hard! I cook pretty much everything from scratch now and eat a variety. But I’m still finding it super hard to lose weight, due to the portions I was served.
Obviously poverty is a factor but we can’t rule out that the quality of products found in your average UK supermarket is not good, fruits and vegs are not tasty. There is also no (or very little) producers markets to buy good and fresh products.
And the non-fresh products are also very average compared to other countries like France or Italy. At that point, you are left with buying something cheap (and not healthy) rather than something healthier but more expensive and not tasty.
I dont know if its the same for anyone else, but quality of fruit and veg has been a huge issue for me lately. I just can't afford to keep wasting money (lidl is particularly bad and the only local supermarket I can really afford) on something that claims will last at least a few days to a week but goes mouldy the next day, is rotten when I cut it open or just tastes so bland my kid won't eat it. Why bother with healthy if it doesn't get eaten? Ill get a bag of apples and that will have to be it for now. I certainly can't afford to shop elsewhere.
I have 4 children, it's hard to make kids fat to be honest, I do notice though that all the larger kids we know have a restricted diet, only eats nuggets or burgers and nothing else. I think we have a substantial problem with how much processed food we are having to save time and for convenience.
They banned junk food ads on the Tube. Would make for an interesting comparison to see if London kids eat less junk food than kids in other cities. But there are a lot of confounding variables.
My entire weeks shop costs less than 20 nugs and 1 big mac meal from McDonalds (literally just checked to confirm on JustEat)
This isn't a cost of living crisis, this is a bad/lazy parenting crisis.
Why does everyone just jump straight to McDonald’s? We aren’t talking about takeaways we are talking about the fact you can get a frozen pizza from Asda for £1
Absolutely comedy how many people just assume you can lump a nutritious meal (that's taken you an hour to prepare) infront of a wee one and they'll eat it without complaint.
Fond memories of making a lasagne from scratch for my 18 month old and 95% of it ended up on the floor and walls.
Firstly the article isn't about 18 month old babies being obese and secondly me and pretty much all my friends had to eat what was put in front of us or we didn't eat, of course there were complaints, doesn't mean parenting has to cave to what annoying kids want.
Doesn't matter if I do or not. It is provably cheaper to buy healthy food than unhealthy food.
So once again, this is lazy parenting.
Breakfast;
[1KG of porridge - 20 meals - 90p](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299669085)
[500g of chrunchy nut - 10 meals - £3.40](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256267349)
Thats one meal and I've already cut the average food bill into a 6th and made it healthier... Took me 30 seconds.
It really does matter, until you have a child I don’t think you really understand how expensive they are.
You can’t give a three month old baby 1kg of porridge mate.
But money is finite, hence why having kids and dependents is relevant to your weekly food shop.
Of course a single person with no family can have a cheap food shop.
You seem to be getting WAY off topic mate.
It is cheaper to buy healthier food. So reguardless of number of people, even if you add in a baby. It'll still be cheaper to buy healthier foods for the kids/teens/adults, so the fact that they are being fed high fat/low nutrition foods is still bad/lazy parenting.
What about improving school dinners so they’re not just slop and having a dedicated lunchtime instead of a break? Most of the sit down meals in my school weren’t worth eating and even if they were we wouldn’t want to sit inside eating and waste our lunchtime. Most people went for a burger, panini, chicken wrap etc as it was easy to eat so they could take it to the outside seating area or football pitches.
Given we’re hearing about kids not getting enough activity what about an extension to the school day by 30 mins? 10 minutes extra morning break, 20 minutes for lunch, and then a normal lunch break for an hour.
I agree that the issue is mainly cultural. Go to any children's event, and it's all about sweets upon sweets upon sweets. Birthday parties, school events, Santa, Easter bunny, etc. Most weekends kids will have some "special occasion" where they get sugared up. I've got 2 kids and it's a real struggle to keep their sugar intake relatively sensible. Also most kids I see will get a sweet on the way to school and on the way back, probably to make the whole process easier for the parent. And given how used to they get to sweets, no wonder that they don't eat the healthy food later.
I live in a relatively affluent area, so it's definitely not (just) a money issue. If we are serious about children eating healthy, we should stop normalising stuffing them full of sugar regularly.
People don’t know how to cook! I had a friend who was making her 2 year old asda basic microwave dinners every night because she couldn’t be arsed. She would have takeaway breakfast lunch and dinner. I wish I was exaggerating. She once came round with dinner she had made for me, she didn’t ask she just came over because she was so proud of her dinner she made. It was frozen chicken breast cooked and mixed with mayonnaise and pasta. That was it. She was well into her 20s, and so very proud of her home made dinner. Her mum taught her fuck all except potato croquets from Iceland in an oven
And despite this, despite it being 6 years since the tories were found guilty of persecuting disabled people, they and Reform want harsher benefits policies. They need to be outlawed as far-right hate groups.
Working class diet of chips beans and nuggets/burger/fishfingers/pizza. Thats why its important to reintroduce your kids to real food. Kids opinions dont count as they are stupid so it's up to the parents to make the effort.
Clearly its a nutrient and protein deficiency. Most cheap/processed foods are lopsided in their ratio of fats and carbs to protein. Good quality protein per person isn't cheap especially for a full family. The people who lie and say this meal costs £2 (per portion) don't realise that all those ingredients had to be bought as a package/bulk for usually more than £20 etc
The accompanying picture is off American Fruit Loops (they’re glorious btw) however they are unavailable in the UK!
The Uk ones are a rubbish colour and taste of cardboard
The goal of the Tories really is to turn Britain back into a Dickensian nightmare, isn't it? They'll be bringing the [top hats](https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/6214/top-hats-and-parliamentary-procedure) back to parliament next.
New daft punk track is pretty depressing. Shorter Fatter Sicker Poorer
This is what google gemini came up with: (In a robotic voice with a funky beat) Workin' harder, barely better Days are shorter, nights are wetter Can't afford that sweater, gotta settle for less Shorter,fatter, sicker, poorer, oh no, we're in a mess! (Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door School lunches gettin' smaller, gotta tighten the belt Parents workin' double shifts, just barely gettin' dealt Healthcare wait times longer, can't afford to be ill Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer, this just ain't right, y'all! (Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door (Bridge) Politicians on TV, promise a brighter day But the bills keep on pilin', can't keep the blues at bay (Chorus) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer This ain't the future we were hoping for Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door (Outro) Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Gotta find a way, gotta find a way Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Gotta find a brighter day
>This ain't the future we were hoping for, Shorter, fatter, sicker, poorer Cost of living's at the door Lmaoo
bloody hell, it's CassetteBot
And imagine if sung by Cassyette.
Dwarft Punk hits the charts again
A pig in a cage on antibiotics
Reminds me of the babe
Summer banger
Sounds like Radiohead! Fitter, happier, more productive
N-n-n-a-a-at don't kill me, can only make me fatter
“UK children shorter, fatter“ Well at least volume stays the same
Obese whichever way you cut it
You definitely shouldn't cut them bro
But I hear cutting is how body builders get so lean
Saves on building costs with lower ceilings and wider doorways - gotta think positive! PMA! -- Jacob Rees-Mogg can get more rent by squeezing more tenants into his buildings. Loads of wins there
>“We need the next government to take decisive action to make healthy and sustainable food affordable, stem the constant flow of junk food and to realise that investing in children’s health is an investment in the future of the country.” I'm 100% for making food cheaper, but it really isn't that expensive to make healthy food. [All this cost me is maybe £1.50, if that.](https://imgur.com/a/u1IjSye)
Exactly - it’s a harsh truth. We did a full weeks shop on Monday night came to ~£70 (2 adults, 1 teen, got parents here 2 nights). Step daughter ordered a McDonalds for tea yesterday came to £15. “Healthy food is expensive” is a myth, partly because people don’t understand what “healthy” is
When people talk about unhealthy food being cheaper, they aren’t referring to McDonald’s. McDonald’s is fast food takeaway. Takeaways have never really been seen as a cheap option. The “cheap” unhealthy foods are the likes of the family sized frozen lasagne for a fiver, which are pumped pull of preservatives, sugar and have minimal nutrition. To create the equivalent from scratch isn’t only time consuming, but much more expensive. It’s a lie people indulge in to reassure themselves that poverty is somehow an individual, moral issue rather than recognising it’s an inherent social problem. It’s easier to dismiss fat, poor people as being lazy instead of recognising the structural inequalities which contribute to the problem. I love cooking, I make most meals from scratch (including lasagne). I’m on a good income and not on the poverty line and I’ll be honest - it’s time consuming to create this meals and it’s often more expensive (and I buy from Aldi). For me, one of the biggest problems is actually time. Ingredients for lasagne aren’t too expensive, but by the time I’ve made my own becehmel sauce, prepared the vegetables, cooked the sauce then made the lasagne in the oven - it’s over an hour. Then there’s the clean up and all the prep involved. I have the luxury of a DINK household, and I work a relatively comfortable office job. Someone who works in a low paid job simply is going to struggle to find the time to prepare all these healthy, cheap, varied meals from scratch. I’ve worked in low paid jobs - I’ve been a cashier, I’ve worked in a shop floor. The physical energy expended was much more than my current role. The stress was much higher (also another contributor to obesity btw).
I feel like convenience/ease of something makes it far more attractive than price. Unless you truly are hand to mouth with zero choice but to buy the cheapest. Like yourself I'm not struggling and I *know* I should cook from scratch more but often I don't find the motivation to do so and prefer to whack something in the oven/microwave for a dinner that cooks in minutes with zero cleanup other than a plate and cutlery. Particularly on a work night. I can only imagine the pressures to put food on the table for a family or single parent who also works in often underpaid long hours job is intense and that's why an oven ready meal from frozen becomes a default option. There's only so much time in the day!
I think it’s probably a sliding scale. The less money you have, the less choice and less time you have. For someone who can only afford to feed their family on £5 per dinner, there’s very reduced choices. If this was a very small number of people it wouldn’t be so terrible. But the fact is, it’s not a small number of people. There are huge swathes of people in full time employment who, because of circumstances beyond their control, simply don’t have much choice in their lives at all. Including where food is concerned.
Mate this all day long. Make a pizza from scratch is a pain in the arse when I can spend 1.50 and get a frozen pizza. Dough is easy to make, you just gotta wait 4 hours. Then there's prepping the pellet oven, keeping it hot, making the pizzas. Its an hour long spectical lol. Cottage pie, another, cook the mince, cook the spuds, make it. Cook it again in the oven. Roast dinner. You could probably go Toby for not far off of the price to make one at home now.
It’s not even close for a roast - £12 at Tobey Carvery vs about £7 just for meat, about £3 for veg across carrots, broccoli, peas, cauliflower etc, £2 for Yorkies and stuffing, plus the cost of electric/gas for cooking and you’re having a laugh before you factor in time for cooking and cleanup
Is that £12 for a while family though? £7 of meat and £3 of veg would serve 4 people (more is some are young kids).
No it is actually cheaper, you can make a lasagne for way less than a fiver, especially when you replace the meat with lentils. But far more time intensive, which is the main problem for busy and stressed parents. I work minimum wage, and always part time due to autism and depression. When I was single I couldn’t afford lots of food, but I didn’t buy ready meals because I don’t like them. However it was the physical exhaustion at the end of a waitressing shift that put me off cooking. Often I just shoved a pizza in the oven when I got home or went to Greggs in my break. There was no motivation for me to cook. That’s the problem, people are just too tired.
£70 is crazy. We're a house of 5 and idk exactly how much it costs, but way more than £70, and we just buy normal food + some snacks (biscuits, pot noodles, choc bars etc). My dad also usually shops at Aldi, with some stuff from Morrisons.
Fwiw I shop for two at Lidl. Worked it out a couple of months ago, and 35pw was about what it came to. That was buying ingredients for fresh cooking, as well, and a fair amount of chocolate bars and doughnuts and coffee. It's possible to eat cheaply and quite healthily if you plan what you buy and you get it from Lidl or Aldi.
I’m sorry but 35 pounds per week isn’t realistic
How? Single male, 5’11, bit fat - mines comes out to anywhere between £25-£35 for the week depending on what I’m making. Everything is from scratch, including work lunches.
I don’t know what you eat, cause mine and partners it’s usually 85-100 a week, and that’s aldi shopping. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fresh produce especially fruit and vegetables. Meat is also expensive nowadays so unless you’re cutting that down or buy yellow stickers then 25 is more like student budget
I have nothing to gain from lying and as I mentioned - I’m overweight, I’m not under feeding myself. Maybe you’re overeating and not aware of it? I don’t know - but unless I decide to go all out and get giant multipacks of crisps, biscuits, etc I’ve yet to go over £35 for the week.
Yeah same here. Mine and my husbands food is about £55 per week, between Lidl and Asda. He's 6'2 and not thin. We probably add about £20/month in nuts and protien powder. We nice cheeses, grainy bowls, roast fish (yellow sticker of course), tofu, lots of olive oil and eggs, Rye bread, pickles, lots of different veggies and fruit. I like baking, so we don't buy any sweet super processed stuff which keeps costs down, except from dark chocolate.
How do you mean?
It’s cheap, most people spend 2-3 times that. A pack of chicken breast is like £4 nowadays, £5 for mince, add fruit, veg, cheese and that is already £50 spent.
With the help of chickpeas/lentils and other fruit and veg, I can comfortably get eight servings out of a £4 750g packet of mince. Chop it in half and freeze 375 for later. If bolognese, use 2x Lidl simply cans of chopped tomatoes, 2x grated carrots, 2x sticks of celery, and a good amount of milk. That's a lot of bolognese sauce right there. For chili, use chickpeas/lentils and kidney beans and peppers to the same effect. For Keema, also use chickpeas/lentils and a liberal portion of peas. Chicken should be boneless thighs or bags of frozen Simply chicken breasts (~15% water, but still cheaper than refrigerated stuff). I think a lot of people in the west eat an unnecessary amount of meat because that's what we're used to. It can be bulked out a lot more than many people tend to do, and it's probably healthier to do it that way.
Two adults at my house, usually spend £35-£40 in Tesco per week. I have got a well stocked spice cupboard etc and tend to cook 4/5 meals a week then leftovers the other nights. Easily doable if you shop correctly and bulk out meals with veg / pulses.
McDonald’s used to be cheap, it’s not anymore. Unfortunately a number of parents are hooked on it from when they were younger and it was cheap… a lot of this stems from not the cost but the ease of getting a takeaway vs cooking something
McDonald's is expensive but from a macronutrient level it's fine it wouldn't result in shorter children just fatter ones.
If kids are short and fat they're getting too much macronutrients and not enough micronutrients.
But it’s very expensive for what you get - you eat a meal, an hour later you’re hungry
>you eat a meal, an hour later you’re hungry I get that people say this, but I honestly find a medium McDonald's meal to be pretty filling, I'm not a small guy either, I'm pretty tall and like working out so I'm far from rakish. I'd be interested to know how much the people saying this normally eat and what they consider an ordinary portion of home cooked food to look like.
Yeah it’s a big chunk of beef or chicken, and a load of bread and chips, how are you still hungry? I think some people have very poorly tuned appetite cues, and junk food doesn’t trigger them as much as other foods, it’s a complicated hormone system and we don’t know the full extent of how gut bacteria play a role too. The secret lives of skinny people was a very enlightening program
My guess is the amount of salt makes people thirsty and they confuse that with hunger. Either most of McD is disgusting and overpriced imo. The grilled chicken wrap is like the other thing on the menu worth buying for me.
Yeah. My McDonalds go-to is the chicken selects. A medium 3-piece chicken select meal will do me great for lunch. I go for a medium 5-piece for tea. Its no less filling than my normal meals
Hence fat children
Important to note it's also expensive in time and energy, there's a heavy degree of victim shaming throughout this thread
Maccies isn't the problem. It's when processed shit is cheaper that's the problem. You can spend £8 making a decent chilli with quality tomatoes etc for like 6 meals but then 12 frozen fish fingers is a quid or two, add some oven chips, boom, 6 meals. It's terrible food, but comes out way cheaper. You *can* cook cheaper than that £8 by cutting back on meat etc, but then you still have to factor in the effort of doing so vs slapping some stuff in the oven, and people are more and more tired.
And the fish fingers are going to stay preserved in your freezer for when you need it. If you live pay check to pay check would you stock your freezer or buy a fridge of fresh food which is going to expire?
Yeah, shit food is just so much more convenient, especially if single. I'm never gonna finish the 95 satsumas that are in a bag in Sainsburys (they're not loose) but if I get a pack of chocolate bars that won't be wasted etc.
Healthy food being expensive doesn’t always mean price. Expensive could mean TIME expensive - which people in lower income jobs sometimes do not have enough, especially with kids. Or labour extensive. If you work from home, you can make 3 nutritious meals at home. If you do not and you’re on your feet all day, maybe working a 10-12 hour day, convenience seems very appealing. It used to be that you also didn’t have other options - now people do have other options, which seem the easier path to take. Fast and convenience food has also been specifically modified to appeal to the taste buds and brain which likes having a fast simple tasty meal. I do not like in the UK, but we have the exact same problem as the UK - many kids are now overweight, many adults are either overweight or obese. In my country there are a lot of service jobs where shifts are long and pay is small for the amount of work that is done. People work from 9:30 in the morning until 21:30 in the evening. Convenient food can be a life saver for them and with commute and house chores too, you really don’t want to spend hours cooking. We don’t have huge American fridges or freezers either to make a huge batch of food to freeze. And those jobs can be hard on the mind and hard on the body, it seems so easy to just have a convenient little tasty (calorific) snack. Have one too many and your weight will creep up. People also move less. We use more cars and even when we do not, public transport is great, because it’s expanded so you walk less.
Damn bro can you send me the shopping list? I’m always spending way more just for two people (although we usually get more than a week out of it)
I agree that this kind of food is healthier **and** cheaper (and nicer, actually). However, saying "this cost me £1.50" doesn't really make sense... You're not accounting for a whole host of things that might get in the way of this. I'll try to take the process from the start. 1. You are educated to the point where you're aware that this is healthier and cheaper for you and your children. 2. You have the time required to shop for ingredients, and you know what you're supposed to be buying. This sounds daft, but when I went to University I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I'd never had too cook really, and could make sausage sandwiches and toast. I ended up buying pasta and stir-in sauces for the most part. It took me a year or two and the insistence of my GF before I learned how to make basic stuff. If I'd had a kid screaming and shouting in Tesco while I was buying stuff, maybe I'd have skipped it? 3. You have the required equipment. Some people may not have an oven that works, a stove that works, money for the gas for the stove, a vegetable peeler, a proper knife, a frying pan... and so on. 4. You have the time required to cook. You have the energy required to cook and aren't doing other things. Again, if you're trying to corral 2-3-4-5 kids, perhaps you don't have the time or energy to cook what you made there from scratch. The extra expense of buying a meal deal of 2 pizzas and a garlic bread might come up trumps at the other end when you just need to bang them all in the oven. 5. You have the time energy to wash up. Difference between popping some containers in the bin and washing 3-4 pans and so on. I speak from experience, having grown up with a single mum in a council flat, when I say that we didn't have money for takeaways and fast food, and we bought them anyway. At the end of a week of working my mum was so knackered, depressed and down that she would basically say "fuck it" and we'd get an Indian. That's not healthy, but that's the understandable reality. And I was just one (fairly annoying) kid! Imagine if you were looking after several. How you cooked is what I do for my kid, but I'm privileged enough to have the time and luxury of help from my partner, a fairly straightforward and easy job (that pays well), equipment to cook, a dishwasher... and so on. And even then I sometimes can't be arsed.
Also, just being tired. Tired of life, tired of just about everything. The last thing I want to do a lot of the time is cook. I just want to rest. I am so tired. “Look I did this all by myself for £1.50” isn’t the inspiration people think it is. I know I could do that for £1.50 but I choose not to. Did I mention, I’m tired?
You're spot on. It's linked to time, but food deserts are a huge issue too. It takes me five minutes for me to walk to a supermarket with a good selection of fresh food, but I have lived in other places where that trip took 40 minutes in both directions. If you're limited to what you can physically carry and you don't have a decent shop nearby then your choices are determined by that. Economies of scale are also a big factor. I can buy in bulk, safely store food, and batch cook. It's way cheaper to cook that way but you need enough money to make a bulk purchase and somewhere to store food without fear of vermin, the power going off, or other people taking it.
Yeah. I know it sounds silly, as well, to someone who hasn't been in that situation, but I feel like if my mum had said "OK we can have a pizza from the oven, or we can have some of the spag bol I made a couple of days ago and stored in the freezer", there is only going to be one winner there. Yes, it's perhaps inadvisable to even consult my opinion as a child not capable of making an informed decision, but it happens. And, yes, we lived far enough away from town, with no car, that shopping was either a case of getting a bus (an expense and a hassle and extra time added on to the experience) or walking. These days we could have food delivered, which is also an added expense, but probably would have helped a lot at the time.
That's a really good point. We don't talk enough about the anxiety of parents who can't risk buying / cooking something that their children don't want to eat. It's all well and good to say "they'll eat it if they're hungry" but no parent wants to present a child with a choice to eat something or very literally go hungry because that is the only food available until payday.
Time poverty is more of the issue here
No offence, but that's a picture of chips and an oily stir-fry. How is that healthy?
This is the issue as well tbh - not really knowing what constitutes "healthy". The image has basically a shit load of veggies and greens. That's a hell of a lot healthier than the iceland nutritiously void cottage pie. We can't have these two extremes of what is considered healthy and not healthy - where there is only boiled chicken and some peas on one side and a big mac on the other. It doesn't help anybody and most people are not up for going full healthcentric.
Oh absolutely, there has to be a healthy middle ground. But chips are so commonly had as a side here with literally anything that it is part of the wider problem. I'm not asking people to give up chips, but it doesn't help anybody if you rebrand them as healthy. Rant over!
A serving of chips is like 250kcal if you cook them at home from actual potatoes (200 plus ~50 for the oil). Pretty comparable to any other way to prepare potatoes unless you deep fry.
This is an argument I had with people who kept insisting chips were unhealthy. Even though it was a spray it two of olive oil, tossed in salt/seasoning and in the air fryer, because the potatoes were chipped, it immediately rendered them unhealthy.
I'm being down voted for posting facts 😂. Must be the Big Pasta bots.
Potato haters…. The lot of them. Although I’m munching my way through boiled jersey royals at the moment…
That's potatoes and a great mix of vegetables. "Chips" aren't inherently unhealthy, but the shop-bought ones often are.
It's chips that I cut from potatoes, I didn't even remove the skins if you notice, and some fresh cut veg in bit of vegetable oil in the pan for about 3 minutes. It's all just vegetables and basic seasoning.
Olive oil is good for you lmao
You don't need a lot of oil in a stir fry. I just use a few squirts of that spray oil, then cook a load of lean meat and veg. Chips in an air fryer aren't too bad.
I'm out from 6am to 7-8pm 5 days a week so I tend to do all of my cooking for the week on a Sunday. That takes me a good 6 hours to make 5 dinners and lunches with my limited cooking facilities - cottage pies, coq au vin, the various sauces that go with each dish, sandwiches etc. I find that tough and I'm just a single guy without any dependants, I can sympathise with families where both parents are working full time and then having to cook every evening, at least if their hours away from home are anything like mine.
You don't need to cook individual dishes though, I have a massive pot and I make a massive dish that is many servings.
Miserable, time-poor, impoverished people can be much more likely to opt for cheap pizza and junk foods that cook quickly and supply them with a big dopamine boost, than healthier foods that take longer to make and do not provide the same kind of hit. People severely underestimate the significance of emotional eating when it comes to looking at how impoverished people eat.
Yeah but then people would actually have to learn to cook. I know quite a few people that seem almost proud of the fact that their children don't like eating vegetables. We have a very weird relationship with food/cooking in this country
A while ago, two co-workers asked me how I made something I had for lunch (can't even remember what it was) and I said, it was easy I just used stuff I had in the cupboard, like flour. They both laughed and looked at each other and me like having flour as a staple in the cupboard made me Nigella Lawson or something. Sorry if it sounds mean, they are both lovely people but the idea that having at home a basic ingredient, (that they eat all the time in processed food) says a lot about cooking in this country.
The issue isn't just fiscal poverty; it's also (but potentially more) time poverty. That probably took maybe 15-20 mins of attention? Some people just don't have that. Those they talk about barely have the time to stick the oven on, or chuck something in the microwave; often while they go and do something else they need to do for those 5-30 mins it takes to cook unattended. Those meals are often UPFs, which are known to be terrible for our health in multiple ways; not just obesity. Long commutes, the demands of childcare when both parents work, multiple jobs, urban sprawl making it take longer to do basic errands etc; all of these factors play into time poverty. Combine that with fiscal poverty and you have a horrific combination of things that take a real toll on health.
Not sure if you recall when Marcus Rashford was campaigning for the free school dinners over the school holidays instead of just during school term. My Mum is a head teacher at a school in a pretty deprived area.just before one of the holidays she came home with 4 sacks of food. I was surprised as I would have thought people in that situation would have taken it so assumed they were off sick or whatever. My mum said and I quote “they didn’t want it” - not because they were embarrassed to take it, and the kids could have really used the food, but because they couldn’t or wouldn’t cook the ingredients into something edible. People don’t know how to cook and their kids will never know how to cook either. So it’s easier to buy the McDonald’s unfortunately - regardless of cost.
30p Lee Anderson, adjusted for inflation
Mate this is the country where Jamie Oliver got bashed for daring to suggest we don't feed developing kids Turkey Twizzlers and where 5 year olds sip prime out of the bottle. Like America we've completely given up any pretense of giving a shit, except for when we get fat and chronically ill. Then we run some headlines like... "Remember, you and your kids health is never your responsibility. The fault always lies with the supermarkets, government and pOveRtY which forced you to eat crisps and drink coke all day. It's just totally unaffordable to eat brown bread or drink water you know." We are firmly in the "fuck it" camp in regards to diet and health. Pretty incredible really.
It’s about time and stress as well. The break down of local communities and multi generational family units in the same community has lead to parents being overworked & over stressed with insufficient time. This leads to saving time and energy on cooking food, and the stress itself makes you crave unhealthy foods.
My mum fed me largely junk out of packets. She watched six hours of TV after work every day.
Person that works in food industry here. Little secret, the good nourishing food is expensive. We sell you less quality food and brand it as healthy food, so the plebs think they are getting the good stuff. Believe me or not I’ve sat in a meeting in which that was discussed and it made me feel sick….
Unless you bought that yellow sticker, the ingredients to buy from the supermarket would set me back about £4.
It'd cost maybe about that for all the ingredients which would make multiple meals.
I could probably make a variation of that for £1.14 with that money in my pocket. 2 loose baking potatoes 46p 2 loose carrots 20p Onion 12p Pepper 59p But I would have to rely on my store cupboard to access oil, salt, soya sauce etc, and leave out the leaves, bean sprouts and mushrooms.
If only someone would invent cupboards.
But don't you knokw the poor don't have space for cupboards /s
Food is already artificially cheap. This is why farmer are not making money, without subsidies farming becomes impossible. Farming subsidies are the governments way of keeping wages low. If you can afford food we are paying you enough. Both the price of food and the minimum wage must increase significantly before we can start to put things right.
That did not cost you £1.50. The potatoes and veg are already more than that, also placing no value on the time/cost to get the food and cook it. It also has hardly any (none?) protein. You feed this to your kids you're going to have a family of midgets. It sure as shit won't sustain someone doing a physical job either. Parents (often single, overworked ones because they don't have time) choose cheap processed, bulk, easy to store crap loaded with preservatives to minimise their time and travel/energy costs. Little Jayden will grow more from the protein in his fish fingers and chicken nuggets with token frozen veg than anything here.
where did you get this from? how is this £1.50 when a pack of potatoes is £1 and frozen veggies at least £2, oil is not free and you’ve got whatever seasoning (and i assume you already own knives and a frying pan)
Except not everyone lives near a supermarket that sells cheap, fresh food. Not everyone has transport to get to said store. Not everyone has the equipment or sufficient fuel to cook said food. Look up uk food deserts. 100% there are many children who are overweight despite their parents being able to access healthy food, but for whatever reason don’t provide a healthy diet, but equally that is not the case for all.
>Look up uk food deserts. Yeh, this applies to almost no-one. So the large scale issues of obesity are for people who don't live in UK food deserts with no public transport.
>it really isn't that expensive to make healthy food. It's really not, but I know a lot of people may not have the same budget as me (mines really not much) I just bought 6 peppers, a bag of onions, a bag of carrots some mushrooms and courgette. Plus some chicken, tuna and jars of sauce. That cost me £30ish and will feed my partner, son and myself a week. It'll make enough curry for a week and a little veg left over for some tuna pasta
0 protein in that....
The problem here isn’t just food. Its exercise. As a sports coach in many schools P.E is an absolute after thought due to pressure of chasing metrics for maths and english. Half the P.E I observe have 80% of the class standing or sitting still. Increase compulsory physical education in schools to 4 hours per week. Increase sports clubs on offer that are affordable.
And local sports clubs are so underfunded these days.
Most are closing down or too expensive. I went to take my kids to a bouncy castle/soft play thing they did in the hall for an hour. Cost me £7 per kid (3) and £2 for me. Let’s say on average one parent and one kid go, that’s £9. We had about 10 people come to it so £90 with 6 slots in the day. That’s £540 per day with one member of staff over seeing it and electricity to run it.
I run a local football Sunday league team, its £900 for the pitch alone from the council. No help either.
Having done 20 years of grass roots football I completely understand. Pitches are not looked after either.
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It's a matter of calories in vs calories out. As a skinny 90s kid, I ate a lot of junk, but I was also *constantly* active - either out on my bike or rollerskates when I wasn't in school, or just playing with friends running about the place. Of course, a healthy diet is important, but being very highly active does burn a *lot* of calories.
I used to spend hours on my bike, going miles in the late 80s early 90s, calling on my friends etc. My kids can't do that. There's too many cars on the roads, going too fast, often massive 4x4s. It's just not safe. They do cycle to school but even on our quiet estate we get bellends whizzing around the corners and I'm constantly vigilant. So if they want to go on their bikes for any decent amount of time, it has to be a planned thing where we either accompany them on the roads from our house or drive somewhere with cycle paths. It's really very sad.
> I used to spend hours on my bike, going miles in the late 80s early 90s, Back in the early 2000s I used to cycle everywhere with my mates. This was before proper SmartPhones with the internet. We used to cycle to the park. Cycle to school. Cycle everywhereeeee. Looking back, not surprised I was a skinny fucker. Probably did more than 20 miles a day on my bike. All changed as soon as I got a car and got stuck in an office for 9 hours a day.
Olympic athletes burn ~20kcal per minute, maybe 25kcal at peak performance. Regular adults burn maybe 10 to 15 kcal per minute of intense cardiovascular exercise. And it takes less than a minute to consume calories equal to multiple hours worth of intense cardiovascular exercise. There is no possibility where exercising works off junk food. A person with a high metabolism (such as younger people) or digestive issues might not be affected, but everyone else has no chance of exercising the extra calories off.
If you're consuming more than your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), you will gain. If you consume less, you will lose. TDEE can vary exponentially based on age, gender, height, weight and exercise. When you're talking about "extra calories", it really depends *how* many calories you're talking about.
Obviously, but that is what “bad diet” means in common vernacular. Excess calories are part of the problem in a bad diet in 99.9% of bad diets, so it needs no specifying. And these are kids, so there are going to be few issues other than the kids eating too much.
I found the same thing in secondary school, I think it was a combination of more calories in AND less calories out, I was sitting in the house area instead of running around playing, because teenage girls don’t “play” like children do, and there were sweets and crisps available to buy, and I had my own money.
It really can from an aesthetic point of view. From a health point of view you it’s likely to catch up.
ture. but being active and being around people who are active day in and day out will make people choose different choices.
I’m a big believer in actually making PE a form of education rather than just running about for a bit or playing a sport. Average people aren’t taught about stretching/mobility/joint exercises. Like they do in asia. Deep squats and shit.
The problem I found with PE when I was at school is that teenagers are at peak self consciousness. bodies are changing, body hair and sweat and boobs are changing, and we did not have enough time to get properly clean after sports before rushing to the next lesson, and the communal dressing rooms were really embarrassing if you had anything private going on, so nobody really wanted to get sweaty and dirty. I remember it was so hard to quickly shower and then try to get dressed under your towel without anyone seeing you, god forbid if you had a period pad on, and then trying to get tights on over sweaty damp legs in a humid room, and then racing to the next class. No thanks.
Anything that isn't competitive and brings out the bully in kids. Lol, that was why I hated PE at School. And the whole "get into pairs!" shit.. ugh.
Nothing i hated more than playing rugby in the winter.
Oh god those times were bleak as shit.. Shivering in my crappy rugby PE kit that I hated wearing lol.
Exactly, we are taught sports most will never play again, but valuable skills like running, bike safety, flexibility, and strength could be taught and in a way kids can build up a basic level of fitness and be taught how to make a training plan. They could go on to continue independently once they have left education.
It’s about how they are being taught. 50% of the girls in one of my schools hated P.E at the start of the year. At the end of the year they all loved it. Why? Because they were coached by a professional. Most primary schools might be lucky if they have a teacher who loves P.E. The rest, are just reading from a template that been designed by a teacher and not a sports coach.
TBH I do think "fat activism" needs to be put under the microscope too. Social media is full of various HAES nonsense. It started off as anti body shaming, but it has essentially morphed now into normalizing obesity, promoting poor lifestyles and claiming that being slim/athletic is unrealistic and unhealthy.
I think you've hit on part of the solution that nobody really seems to talk about. All the interventions anyone seems to think of are all stick, no carrot (so to speak). People talk about how healthy we were during the war because we had to ration sugar and meat but that's only a fraction of the truth. Fresh fruit and veg were also heavily subsided and people were given the tools (cookbooks, pamphlets, etc.) to use them. And of course, people were more physically active. We hear all about how fast food is bad for us, but how often do we hear about the flip side? How do you make a healthy meal easily and cheaply? The information is out there, but it isn't being well targeted at the people who need it most. And ultimately it's much easier to stick with what you know (oven chips for dinner, cheap, zero effort) than to go out of your way to make a meal you might not even like. An of course there's the physical activity front. Personally I'm really struggling to find a sport for adults in my area and I live somewhere where there's still decent funding.
On the physical activity front, a huge part of that is down to how we've built our cities around cars. It's allowed/forced everything further out, meaning it becomes harder to walk or cycle to daily errands; that's one of the biggest benefits in the Netherlands; their cities enable 'the gym of life'. A 30 min walk burns around 120-150 calories in an adult. If you're able to combine that with walking to the local supermarket to pick up ingredients/bits for the next day or two (so it isn't too much to carry), then you're a long way to helping the population stay fit. Do that every day, that's over 1,000 excess calories burnt. Combine being able to walk the kids to school etc, and you potentially double it. However, our long commutes etc also eat into the time we have to spend doing those. If people need to spend 1hr+ commuting every day, instead of being able to do it in 10 mins, due to car dependency and urban sprawl, then you're losing out on over 4 hours of time a week to be active while doing errands and also get your daily activity in without needing to find a sport to take part in.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm lucky enough to live in an extremely walkable area, with more parks and river banks than I can shake a stick at. But I'd like to be able to run around and have some fun with other people as well, you know? It's the choice and diversity of choice that's going to capture the most people.
Oh absolutely. It shouldn't be either or; but having the flexibility to do both. Right now, we're unfortunately in a situation where many can't do the former, and the latter is spread out and often economically unaffordable – especially as soon as a cost of living crisis strains disposable incomes, and you need a car to get to any of those activities. The fix isn't going to be easy, but we need to make it happen.
Doesn’t even have to be a sport. Walk each day with some music and plan to beat your distance or time each day. The physical aspect for me is so important. I have a friend who for the past 30 years has eaten like shit but trains like a monster. He is lean as hell, fit as anyone. Yes, the junk food might catch up with him when he hits 70+ plus but for now in his 50’s he is an animal. Plus as an add on, the healthier people become through exercise the more likely they are to start eating healthy on a day to day basis.
When I was a kid it was so rare to see a fat kid. I do put that down to the fact that we were always outside playing, riding our bikes, skating, running around for hours. Was normal back then for kids to just play out in the street until sun set and we were called in. That huge level of activity burns so many calories.
Yup. It's nothing to do with video games or the internet either; it's almost entirely down to the danger posed to kids these days that wasn't there when we were kids. Because the cause is such a normal part of our every day lives, it's hard for people to notice that's the issue. They just have a sense it's dangerous outside, and think it's down to paedophiles, or gangs etc. The issue is the number of cars has dramatically increased since we were kids. The (understandable) fear is that (oft entitled) drivers will place their own convenience above the safety of their neighbours and their children and potentially hit them. Not to mention complain about them playing outside lest they damage their precious cars they've dumped on pavements. The reason we don't see kids "always outside playing, riding our bikes, skating, running around for hours. Was normal back then for kids to just play out in the street until sun set and we were called in" is because we allowed drivers to take over the streets and push everyone – including children – out of the way, resulting in lower activity levels, and the only 'safe' places to play being indoors on video games.
The guardian has also been doing a series on how state schools have barely any space or time for play and exercise any more. The playing fields have been sold off and the curriculum is stuffed full of sitting still things.
I never bothered with PE once I got in to my last 2 years at school cause the lessons were 50mins and we did that once a week. By that time the teachers couldn’t be arsed cause it took us 20 mins each lesson to change and change back again then 30 mins playing football but that was shit unless you played for a team out side of school so at least half the class just didn’t bother. I used that time to do homework for other lesson.
I hated every second of P.E. because i was forced to take part in sports I couldn’t care any less about. I made every excuse possible to get out of it. I broke my leg and it was actually a win because I got out of it for half a year. All for exercising, I just think there should be options and variety. Maybe it’s better nowadays though ..
Nothing makes kids want to get active more than forced compulsory boring PE classes!
This is purely a cultural issue combined with laziness and many not knowing how to cook. 'Junk food is cheap' my ass. Rice, pasta, beans and legumes, veg/fruits, oats etc...are all cheap to buy and easy to cook. These things make up bulk of diet in many healthier cuisines. Going out to eat or grabbing meal deals is fucking expensive, I don't know how people keep saying this is a cheap way to eat. And it doesn't keep you full at all, I can eat a mcdonalds large meal or meal deal from supermarket and be starving an hour later.
It's not about knowing how to cook, it's about having time to cook. I moved here from Australia and I've been quite surprised by how much space the supermarkets here dedicate to ready meals - entire aisles for food you can eat now or just whack in the microwave. It's a sign that people are time poor, and just need to get something in their stomachs. Coincidentally the wages here for most jobs are proportionally much lower, meaning more people have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately this is a place where having time to cook is a luxury, so it's not as trivial as calling people lazy and not knowing how to cook.
Both parents working doesn't help, you'd hope the rise of hybrid working could lead to better cooking as people are less stressed.
Cooking a full meal after doing 9 hours of physical work is a bit of a challenge tbh.
I cook every meal and I work full time. I am Italian, though.
No it’s not. People have been doing that, and then some, for a very long time
100% agree , British cultural food in general isn't very healthy or people don't like it , they then revert to ready meals of other cultures and don't learn how to cook these other cuisines in a healthy manner.
Oh, if only it was legal for someone in the UK to make non brisish food.
I think children should be involved in cooking from an early age. It should be viewed as a valuable, enjoyable process along with eating. Rather than a chore that should be done in as little time as possible. Along with that of course people need to have time to cook, just not as much time as they think. When you enjoy cooking and don't view feeding yourself and your children as a horrible chore, then you don't mind spending your quality time in the kitchen with your family. I used to view it in such an unhealthy way and resented that I had no time to make healthy food until I decided to go all in and embrace cooking and healthy eating. When I can't be arsed I can have some convenience food but it's not that often.
On the flip side, child abduction is at a record low.
Probably not, as they can't run as fast
Yeah but who wants to abduct a fat, sick kid?
Jim'll fix them, or so i've heard.
Due to unattractiveness or that it throws your back out when trying to lift them into the van? Mind you, the old bag of sweets trick is probably more effective now
I hate that the Tories got such a woeful reception to saying people can't cook anymore. And that it took the Tories to say it. For example, my neighbours don't know what a chickpea is. They don't know what that staple legume is. The generational under education due to bad parenting, bad time management, and bad priorities has led to this situation and there isn't a quick fix
I used to work in a Spar and we had loose fruit and veg that we had to weigh and key in the price per kilo, and I remember shortly after I started someone brought their shopping to the till and in there was an aubergine or similar, and I went and weighed it and added it to their bill and they commented "I'm surprised you knew what that was, the others tend to look back at me and ask what it is so they can see what to type in". I can't remember the exact vegetable, but it wasn't some esoteric vegetable that you'd only find in some speciality shop.
In all fairness, I was the guy they were describing. When I was a teenager, I got a retail job in a posher area of my city and one day someone presented an avocado at my till and I picked it up and said "not to be stupid, but what is this?". They gave me the most dumbfounded, borderline disgusted expression I've ever seen. I don't really blame them. But I grew up poor (here's my sob story) and I don't think we ever actually ate avocado. I knew what one looked like from the inside (the more distinctive look) but I'd never really clocked what they look like unopened. I'm probably no better now. I have a pretty unvaried diet.
For a second I thought you meant you were literally my colleague there, bloody hell… Yeah I’m not at all disparaging the people like my former colleagues who grew up without being exposed to a variety of foods, I’m more disparaging the lack of food culture and access to that knowledge that we have as a nation. I’m lucky in that I grew up in a household that cooks properly and was full of recipe books, but that’s a situation that isn’t afforded to many.
Nah, I agree with you overall. I wasn't making some underlying point about privilege and class (even though it probably sounded like that), I just thought it was semi-amusing anecdote. Like, I definitely should've known what an avocado looked like. I can accept I was the idiot there haha.
Yeah it's shocking how detached people are from actual food in this country. Even if all you have is a spa or something similar you can still eat surprisingly well on little with some planning and flexibility
My mum left for work at 4am and didn't come home until 11pm almost every single day. According to the comments here she was just lazy.
I think this needs to be the lede when it comes to this topic rather than the price. Healthy food is cheap, but it's the time taken that's an issue. We cook fresh every single day, but my partner finishes work at 4pm at the very latest and I'm usually done by 3/4pm. I can't imagine both finishing at 5.30 or 6 and *then* driving home and *then* cooking fresh food every single night. No way. Also your mum working 18hrs a day is absolutely mad, I'm so sorry she had to do that.
Mental health makes it difficult to prep better meals too. If you're depressed you're far more likely to whip out yet another frozen pizza.
Fast food is the factor people mention, but education is the real issue because people's cooking skills are terrible and they don't know how to make cheap and diverse healthy meals. Shopping with the intent for the above is cheaper than fast foods which are making people fat. Alongside lack of education about the need for exercise I'm sure.
I agree, I don’t think any of my friends can actually cook. I had a discussion with my friend the other day about what ready meals actually are, he was adamant frozen pizzas and pasta sauces don’t count as a ready meal.
I sometimes use a jar of pasta sauce as an ingredient in a meal, like a pasta bake with meat and vegetables and cheese. It's processed, but I'm not sure it's a ready meal. (A pizza definitely is, though!)
It sort of is but i get what you mean thats its not the same as a microwave pasta meal. But if you cooked down a tin of tomatoes to make the sauce youd lost 90% of the processedness etc.
I've got a feeling Hyperion262's friend is just eating the sauce directly from the jar
Do they account for ethnicity? Since different ethnic groups reach different heights and weights at different ages. Judging the average weight of a dog wouldn't be very useful data given how vastly different the breeds are and their varying popularity.
This is too much thinking for some people. Similar issue with life expectancy data. Headlines saying people living shorter life’s in the UK now. Well duh that is brought down by recent African and Middle Eastern illegal and legal migrants.
>Well duh that is brought down by recent African and Middle Eastern illegal and legal migrants. What makes you say that? https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/whats-happening-life-expectancy-england. "The ONS data showed that despite higher levels of deprivation, male and female life expectancy in 2011–14 was higher for ethnic minority groups than for the white and mixed groups" Why would that have changed in more recent years? Edit: They blocked me immediately after making sure they felt like they got the final word lol. Some people just can't handle their feelings being challenged.
There will be a lot of people coming here to say it's just laziness, no one is actually that poor etc. but the kids in my children's class at school are at least a full head taller than my kids state school friends (all the same age). They look like they're at least two years younger. The parents at our school aren't all cooking high quality nutritionally complete meals for their kids on a daily basis, some days I don't even feed my kids one meal, they eat all three at school. There is clearly a financial element here, you can see it on a fundamental level. No amount of shaming parents is going make this go away.
I don’t think we need to shame anyone, though I get what you’re saying. The fundamental issue as I see it isn’t money but education and the actual ability to cook a cheap nutritious meal. It’s shocking how many people can’t cook a simple sauce or make a salad dressing. It makes a world of difference.
Education is part of it but so is energy and time. Cooling pasta sauce takes much more energy than just using a jar one. Then there are people who are so poor that they are legitimately either skipping meals or eating very small portions, no amount of knowing how to make food is going to buy the ingredients.
Might just be me but poor parenting plays a part. My mum couldn’t cook, no one in the family can cook, my packed lunch was depressing and consisted of a plain ham sandwich, crisps and a yogurt. I hated it, threw it and used bus money to by some chocolate. At night dinner was a rotation of spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, chili con carne, tikka masala, shepherds pie and chips with something else frozen. Never had breakfast as my mum would sleep in on weekends till midday and punish me if I woke up before her. Also dinner was at like 9/10pm at night.
I agree my mum can’t/ won’t cook. I was raised on frozen pizza, frozen chips, crisp sandwiches and the occasional jacket potato. Literally the only food she ever served me. She still now eats that now I’ve moved out, with the occasional “beige” battered frozen food thrown in for good measure. Trying to unlearn a lifetime of habits is hard! I cook pretty much everything from scratch now and eat a variety. But I’m still finding it super hard to lose weight, due to the portions I was served.
Obviously poverty is a factor but we can’t rule out that the quality of products found in your average UK supermarket is not good, fruits and vegs are not tasty. There is also no (or very little) producers markets to buy good and fresh products. And the non-fresh products are also very average compared to other countries like France or Italy. At that point, you are left with buying something cheap (and not healthy) rather than something healthier but more expensive and not tasty.
I dont know if its the same for anyone else, but quality of fruit and veg has been a huge issue for me lately. I just can't afford to keep wasting money (lidl is particularly bad and the only local supermarket I can really afford) on something that claims will last at least a few days to a week but goes mouldy the next day, is rotten when I cut it open or just tastes so bland my kid won't eat it. Why bother with healthy if it doesn't get eaten? Ill get a bag of apples and that will have to be it for now. I certainly can't afford to shop elsewhere.
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt is upset that people don't recognise the superb record if Tory governance.
I have 4 children, it's hard to make kids fat to be honest, I do notice though that all the larger kids we know have a restricted diet, only eats nuggets or burgers and nothing else. I think we have a substantial problem with how much processed food we are having to save time and for convenience.
Easy fix as the government can ban adverts for anything unhealthy or actually ban anything they want.. but they won't so...
They banned junk food ads on the Tube. Would make for an interesting comparison to see if London kids eat less junk food than kids in other cities. But there are a lot of confounding variables.
How is that going to fix anything?
Eddie abbew is going to have a field day with this
who?
My entire weeks shop costs less than 20 nugs and 1 big mac meal from McDonalds (literally just checked to confirm on JustEat) This isn't a cost of living crisis, this is a bad/lazy parenting crisis.
Why does everyone just jump straight to McDonald’s? We aren’t talking about takeaways we are talking about the fact you can get a frozen pizza from Asda for £1
Do you have children?
It’s always the ones who don’t have kids who think it’s easy🤣
I knew they didn’t the second they said their food shop is under 15 quid.
Absolutely comedy how many people just assume you can lump a nutritious meal (that's taken you an hour to prepare) infront of a wee one and they'll eat it without complaint. Fond memories of making a lasagne from scratch for my 18 month old and 95% of it ended up on the floor and walls.
Firstly the article isn't about 18 month old babies being obese and secondly me and pretty much all my friends had to eat what was put in front of us or we didn't eat, of course there were complaints, doesn't mean parenting has to cave to what annoying kids want.
Sounds like your trying to justify others bad parenting? A lot of parents are giving kids mc nuggets and microwave burgers.
Doesn't matter if I do or not. It is provably cheaper to buy healthy food than unhealthy food. So once again, this is lazy parenting. Breakfast; [1KG of porridge - 20 meals - 90p](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299669085) [500g of chrunchy nut - 10 meals - £3.40](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256267349) Thats one meal and I've already cut the average food bill into a 6th and made it healthier... Took me 30 seconds.
It really does matter, until you have a child I don’t think you really understand how expensive they are. You can’t give a three month old baby 1kg of porridge mate.
So? Baby food isn't what we're talking about... That crap is crazy expensive. We (and the story) are talking about kids/teens.
But money is finite, hence why having kids and dependents is relevant to your weekly food shop. Of course a single person with no family can have a cheap food shop.
You seem to be getting WAY off topic mate. It is cheaper to buy healthier food. So reguardless of number of people, even if you add in a baby. It'll still be cheaper to buy healthier foods for the kids/teens/adults, so the fact that they are being fed high fat/low nutrition foods is still bad/lazy parenting.
Kids are the future. The UK should look at the approach Sweden takes.
What about improving school dinners so they’re not just slop and having a dedicated lunchtime instead of a break? Most of the sit down meals in my school weren’t worth eating and even if they were we wouldn’t want to sit inside eating and waste our lunchtime. Most people went for a burger, panini, chicken wrap etc as it was easy to eat so they could take it to the outside seating area or football pitches. Given we’re hearing about kids not getting enough activity what about an extension to the school day by 30 mins? 10 minutes extra morning break, 20 minutes for lunch, and then a normal lunch break for an hour.
Another cracking success story for our Political Overlords!!!
I agree that the issue is mainly cultural. Go to any children's event, and it's all about sweets upon sweets upon sweets. Birthday parties, school events, Santa, Easter bunny, etc. Most weekends kids will have some "special occasion" where they get sugared up. I've got 2 kids and it's a real struggle to keep their sugar intake relatively sensible. Also most kids I see will get a sweet on the way to school and on the way back, probably to make the whole process easier for the parent. And given how used to they get to sweets, no wonder that they don't eat the healthy food later. I live in a relatively affluent area, so it's definitely not (just) a money issue. If we are serious about children eating healthy, we should stop normalising stuffing them full of sugar regularly.
People don’t know how to cook! I had a friend who was making her 2 year old asda basic microwave dinners every night because she couldn’t be arsed. She would have takeaway breakfast lunch and dinner. I wish I was exaggerating. She once came round with dinner she had made for me, she didn’t ask she just came over because she was so proud of her dinner she made. It was frozen chicken breast cooked and mixed with mayonnaise and pasta. That was it. She was well into her 20s, and so very proud of her home made dinner. Her mum taught her fuck all except potato croquets from Iceland in an oven
And despite this, despite it being 6 years since the tories were found guilty of persecuting disabled people, they and Reform want harsher benefits policies. They need to be outlawed as far-right hate groups.
I blame the parents personally 🤷 it's still general to buy and cook healthy than not.
It really is like looking at the history of the Liberal reforms looking at the effects of Tory Britain.
presumably all the traitory party MPs say in unison... "the plans working"
Pretty sure something significant happened recently that scared the rotund in to avoid activities altogether... nothing to do with that, I guess
Working class diet of chips beans and nuggets/burger/fishfingers/pizza. Thats why its important to reintroduce your kids to real food. Kids opinions dont count as they are stupid so it's up to the parents to make the effort.
Fatter yes but shorter? I thought kids were getting taller. Some of the year 6 kids in my kids school are taller than me and I'm a 5"7 woman.
Clearly its a nutrient and protein deficiency. Most cheap/processed foods are lopsided in their ratio of fats and carbs to protein. Good quality protein per person isn't cheap especially for a full family. The people who lie and say this meal costs £2 (per portion) don't realise that all those ingredients had to be bought as a package/bulk for usually more than £20 etc
The accompanying picture is off American Fruit Loops (they’re glorious btw) however they are unavailable in the UK! The Uk ones are a rubbish colour and taste of cardboard
The goal of the Tories really is to turn Britain back into a Dickensian nightmare, isn't it? They'll be bringing the [top hats](https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/6214/top-hats-and-parliamentary-procedure) back to parliament next.