Public health experts have called for an urgent cap on ultra-processed food at schools after research found the products made up nearly two-thirds of the average UK school lunch.
Across primary and secondary schools, ultra-processed food accounted for 64% of calories provided by lunchtime meals, the study found, with packed lunches typically containing more of the foods than meals provided by schools themselves.
Ultra-processed products, including fast food and fizzy drinks, are often cheap
Cheap and nutritious? Low cost and calorific? Ain’t it great that we’re now able to solve humanity’s – actually, all animal life’s – problem. Low cost food is such a glory.
After all, contrast that with the idea of high cost and little calorie food…..
Are these the same ‘experts’ that banged on and on about our obesity crisis and are now having kittens because children with no weight issues are dieting?
When my age could be counted on one hand I used to love sugar mice. A huge (for a small kid), vaguely mouse shaped lump of pure sugar, coloured with some sort of very un-mouse coloured food dye, and a string tail. Today’s nutritionists would have wanted to have my parents locked up for allowing me to eat such things. All kids are fuelled by high energy food if they can get it. You grow out of such things.
Calories alone are not the be all and end all of nutrition. That’s where the problem lies.
“Ultra-processed foods” needs a bit of probing. It can’t simply mean the number and complexity of processes between the farm and the plate. If it did, tofu, oat milk and probiotics like kefir and sauerkraut would top the list.
I suspect it just means “that dreadful stuff that the poor kids eat”.
“Asked whether school meals have improved since 2018, Parnham said the problem had likely become worse. With rising food costs due to Brexit and the war in Ukraine, schools are under increasing pressure, but government support has not increased.”
The Tory bastids just stand there and allow motley xenophobes to make ShaWayne obese.
@Sam Vara: that’s exactly what it means…
Rising food costs absolutely nothing to do with a decade of near-zero interest rates followed by a mahoosive increase in the money supply. It’s Brexit — which explains why it’s even worse in the USA and just as bad in most of the EU.
Also, why does the proportion of calories from a particular class of food matter? Calories can — and do — come from some types of food; vitamins, trace minerals, etc. come from others.
ISTR some professor chappie banging on about nutrition, and explaining that in essence your digestive system is a chemical factory that breaks-down whatever you shove down your gob into its component pieces – which it then does as it will to recombine as required… Thus it matters not whether said incoming chemicals come from a factory or prime grass-fed Kobi beef, just as long as the balance and trace elements are there.
So what’s the problem? Apart from the pleasure of eating said “chemicals”.
Their definition of ‘ultra-processed’ includes bread not made at home:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food
So yes, perfectly normal sandwiches in packed lunches are now a bad thing.
They want something done about these ultra processed foodstuffs ‘cos it’s bad for you. They propose ‘natural’ food, made out of insects and ‘meat’ ‘grown’ in a lab.
it is interesting that ‘ultra-processed food’ includes most ‘vegan’ food
But that’s different……because, reasons
For these ‘Public Health Experts’, the definition of ultra-processed food is whatever lower-class people eat. They just apply a veneer of cod science to justify their internalised snobbery.
Their definition of ‘ultra-processed’ includes bread not made at home:
And I suppose if it’s sliced bread it’s ultra ultra processed food.
And I suppose if it’s sliced bread it’s ultra ultra processed food
So that buggers the “best thing since sliced bread” meme
Barely a subtext: “You shall eat what you’re told, and what you’re given without complaint. We will decide how much and how frequently.”
the way the digestive system works is a fascinating study in Adam Smith. A large bunch of bacteria doing what they do for their own benefit, whilst providing us with what we need as a side benefit to us.
Yes, their definition of ‘ultra-processed food’ includes bread – a staple of most human societies for at least 10,000 years. I suppose they must live on a diet of unwashed fruit and raw carrot.
sausages, bacon, ham, mash, hash browns, baked beans, any form of gravy, haggis, any kind of preserve, every cake and pie ever invented..
The Hate is strong in this lot….
Of course, they don’t actually need Calories, given that they’re doing fuck-all all day…
Ultra-processed products, including Most Vegan and Vegitarian foods
But the food nazis will never admit that
Nor will the Organic Only mandate in Sri-Lanka be admitted, even DT silent
Animals need calories and nutrients, doesn’t matter where they come from. Cheap is good. Bread, Cereal, Marg and more fortified
So what are the qualifications for being a ‘public health expert’?
And do these twattos have those qualifications?
Noel C
“the definition of ultra-processed food is whatever lower-class people eat. They just apply a veneer of cod science to justify their internalised snobbery.”
‘cod science’….. No chips, though
very apt 🙂
What Pcar said. Partly.
Healthy nutritious food is produced mostly on farms and not in factories. Butter is good, margerine is shit. Bread in moderation, ditto cereals. Less carbs more protein.
The best nutrition comes form eating animals.
And need not be particularly expensive.
It is not unreasonable to expect children to be given it.
For me it’s not so much a question of cost, as of culture. Our school dinners when I was a nipper had salads chips and pretty decent nosh, washed down with water.
No shitty kinder bars or bollocks like that.