It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

sammy_kaye18

YorksLass said:

@sammy_kaye18 - I shall probably have to re-read the books to remind myself of who's who - it's a bit of a family saga!

I usually use Greek salad cheese cubed and sprinkled over a salad - it's quite mild and a bit on the salty side.  It's not especially good for cooking with (doesn't melt easily) but could be sprinkled over oven roasted veg to add a bit of variety.

I have next week's meal plan to do today and will be relying on freezer contents rather than buying more.  An opportunity to update my freezer inventory too - I've not been overly diligent lately at adding/deleting contents so could be in for a few surprises! 

Thanks @YorksLass I will have to figure something out but the roasted veg sounds like a good idea. I think I might go a Mediterranean route with it and serve with some chicken thighs I have as I have a few spice bags I like to keep in the cupboard so they can go in there too. 

Im like you - Im in the process of using up things in my freezer and fridge so its making for a few questionable meals and I have some veg in the fridge thats looking a bit worse for wear and needing using so I can see some soup and casserole making in my future.

Have only glazed over the article about the food shop - it doesnt look majorly unhealthy but there certainly is a fair bit of sugar/salt in there. But shocking to see the prices of some of the items. 

Bluegreen143

Interestingly it’s only recommended to give children full fat milk until age 2, then you’re meant to switch to semi skimmed and from 5 can give skimmed if wanted. 

I personally think all milk except whole milk (delicious, creamy wonderful stuff that it is!) is vile so I steadfastly ignore that particular recommendation and we all use the same milk in this house. 

With regards to the article, we’re blaming that poor woman for allegedly feeding her children unhealthy food and for all we know she has a budget-sabotaging husband who adds treats to the trolley for himself (no, is that just in my house then?!)

I do think on balance a healthy whole food diet can be cheaper than eating lots of treats and convenience food but you definitely have to know your way around a kitchen. 

EssexHebridean

Another thing on the rise is the incidence of eating disorders and disordered eating - and there is a known link between that, and demonising and labelling food as “good” and “bad” - when what we actually mean is more nutritionally dense/less nutritionally dense. Teaching a child to be scared of sugar is no more good for their health than teaching them it’s OK to eat it in unlimited quantities. Not fortunate enough for a grammar school education here, it was the local comp for me, I took packed lunches to school for pretty much the entire time I was there though. And yep, allowing that frequently my Dad wouldn’t be home from work until 6.30/7pm, I did often have a snack after school as midday lunch through to tea when he got in would indeed have been a very long time for a child to go without food! 

I too can imagine what “Eat Well for Less” might say about that shopping - but nutritious they certainly are not, a good example of that is their habit of comparing the sugar content of particular foods to cubes of sugar - an entirely irrelevant comparison as the body deals with sugar in foods completely differently to simple “neat” sugar. It’s things like that which have lead to a lot of young people now seeing fruit as “bad” - they’ve been taught that sugar is to be feared, then find out that fruit is full of sugar…

There is a difference between “making excuses for poor dietary choices” as inferred,  and calling out judgement and demonising of foods - both of which are known to have harmful effects on the people they are commonly aimed at. We have no idea what the reasons for the choices in that shopping trip were, how long the less nutritionally dense foods might be expected to last and many other factors. 

Often when I see judgement of this type particularly in the media I question wonder how “healthy” those throwing the judgement around really are in their own lives - or whether they consider blindly that that slim = healthy, while getting poor sleep, little moderate and no vigorous exercise, perhaps having smoked, drinking alcohol above the recommended levels and dealing poorly with stress. All of those factors can in a many cases be more harmful for health than being “overweight”. (If anyone is interested in knowing more about these issues, both Pixie Turner and Joshua Wolrich have written informatively on the subject - both have books published), and both have nutritional qualifications to back them up. 

@Floss - you and others make extremely good points on this subject - thank you. 

Perhaps some of the astonishment around after school snacks comes from the fact that increasingly it seems that people cook separate meals for children now, and they eat before the parent(s), so at an earlier time? I always simply got given a smaller portion of whatever Mum and Dad were eating - Mum would have given short shrift to the idea of buying special foods for me, or cooking two meals! 

Criticism (and judgement, perhaps) may indeed be part of the world of journalism, but I think we can probably agree that it’s unlikely that the writer of the article is likely to check in here to see the comments made - however we may well have visitors to the boards whose shopping baskets bear a resemblance to that in the article. For my money, we’d do better gently encouraging those people, and encouraging them to make different choices if that’s possible within the constraints they have, rather than throwing around insulting and divisive language around the subject, and potentially making them feel that the boards are not for them. We often direct people to OS from DFW - but attitudes like this would genuinely make me hesitant about doing so, in the future. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We have a saying on DFW that it’s for help and support, not for judgement - it could be a game changer if that ethos transferred across the boards as a whole IMO.

Bluegreen143

We all eat as a family together at 6pm, we are fairly regimented that way!

Once every couple of weeks or so we do feed the children early so we can have a “date night dinner” once they’re in bed. We don’t get many opportunities to go out together due to lack of babysitting, so taking the time for an at-home date night is important for us. More budget-friendly by far than going out too 😉 

Floss

Sometimes doing a separate meal for the children is more practical. While at primary school we (parents, me, 2 older brothers & pre-school brother) ate as a family until my dad started a job 40 miles away in late 1974. As he would only get home at 6pm or later, us kids were fed while Blue Peter or Crackerjack were on, i.e. 5pm-ish. After we relocated to the other side of Manchester in 1975 we ate as a family again until we had all left home.
ETA we'd get things like chocolate cusrard & block icecream, red jelly & custard, Angel Delight or Instant Whip for pudding which Dad wouldn't eat, and he'd get steak & kidney pudding or liver & onions which made me heave.

JIL

You took me back a few years @Bluegreen143 not so much date nights for us, but we would take a day off work, drop the children off at school and head to the seaside. Fish and chip lunch, a stroll on the prom and home for picking up time. 

JIL

Pollycat said:

Bluegreen143 said:

My kids do get an afternoon snack too, or my DS (7) always does anyway as he is completely ravenous at 3.30pm when picked up and his mood will not be improved by making him wait to eat til 6/6.30pm. 

DD (4) isn’t usually very hungry, as her nursery provide a snack immediately before she leaves, but I allow her a little bit of her brother’s if she wants it.

We go to the park every day after school, and currently are doing the school run on foot so they’re certainly running it off and getting hungry. I am not “pro-grazing” for kids though so once the snack is done, it’s done, and our routine is they don’t eat again til dinner. But I think going from 11.30am school lunch to 6pm dinner is quite a long time for small tummies personally. 

(I always had an after school snack as a child too 🤷‍♀️)

However we don’t have junk food for snack, and I don’t usually buy prepacked snacks except value brand yoghurts.

Occasionally they get home baking (flapjacks, muffins or cake) as a treat but it’s usually fruit and/or veg sticks with yoghurt or milk and nuts. Or some toast and peanut butter or oatcakes with hummus if we’re home. I do think you can do children’s snacks very cheaply and healthily by sticking to the above, but I completely get the barriers that stop parents being able to do this (time, energy, cooking skills etc). 

Any yoghurt on that shopping list?
Any full fat milk for healthy kids' bones?

As the "parents editor of the Manchester Evening News", it's a pretty poor selection of food for a Mum - imho.

But is the point of the article to buy the exact same list of products to 2020 to show how much prices have risen?

We dont know if this is an actual shop or just one to demonstrate? 

I think we can all agree there are better and more cost effective alternatives but that's not the point of the story.

There could well be another story next week of feeding a family nutritional meals on a budget.

[Deleted User]

It is really tough for a lot of us at the moment. I am on a very very tight budget, and personally adore this thread for the encouragement and support it offers. But this train of thought is just exhausting and a bit too judgemental, albeit well intentioned perhaps.

In this house, everybody fed nobody dead is perfectly good enough. 

Some days the children have wonderful balanced diets, other days less so. I do my best, and that’s all any of us can do. 

Stay well, warm and happy guys x

Pollycat

Bluegreen143 said:

Interestingly it’s only recommended to give children full fat milk until age 2, then you’re meant to switch to semi skimmed and from 5 can give skimmed if wanted. 

I personally think all milk except whole milk (delicious, creamy wonderful stuff that it is!) is vile so I steadfastly ignore that particular recommendation and we all use the same milk in this house. 

With regards to the article, we’re blaming that poor woman for allegedly feeding her children unhealthy food and for all we know she has a budget-sabotaging husband who adds treats to the trolley for himself (no, is that just in my house then?!)

I do think on balance a healthy whole food diet can be cheaper than eating lots of treats and convenience food but you definitely have to know your way around a kitchen. 

Full fat milk provides Vit A.

I'm not personally blaming that "poor woman" (poor woman? Really? Why? She gets paid for writing articles for MEN).
I'm criticising her food choices.
There's a difference.

We know what she bought because it's all laid out on the table.
We have no idea if she even has a husband (or wife) let alone if he/she is feeding the children unhealthy food.

Pollycat

EssexHebridean said:

Another thing on the rise is the incidence of eating disorders and disordered eating - and there is a known link between that, and demonising and labelling food as “good” and “bad” - when what we actually mean is more nutritionally dense/less nutritionally dense. Teaching a child to be scared of sugar is no more good for their health than teaching them it’s OK to eat it in unlimited quantities. Not fortunate enough for a grammar school education here, it was the local comp for me, I took packed lunches to school for pretty much the entire time I was there though. And yep, allowing that frequently my Dad wouldn’t be home from work until 6.30/7pm, I did often have a snack after school as midday lunch through to tea when he got in would indeed have been a very long time for a child to go without food! 

I too can imagine what “Eat Well for Less” might say about that shopping - but nutritious they certainly are not, a good example of that is their habit of comparing the sugar content of particular foods to cubes of sugar - an entirely irrelevant comparison as the body deals with sugar in foods completely differently to simple “neat” sugar. It’s things like that which have lead to a lot of young people now seeing fruit as “bad” - they’ve been taught that sugar is to be feared, then find out that fruit is full of sugar…

There is a difference between “making excuses for poor dietary choices” as inferred,  and calling out judgement and demonising of foods - both of which are known to have harmful effects on the people they are commonly aimed at. We have no idea what the reasons for the choices in that shopping trip were, how long the less nutritionally dense foods might be expected to last and many other factors. 

Often when I see judgement of this type particularly in the media I question wonder how “healthy” those throwing the judgement around really are in their own lives - or whether they consider blindly that that slim = healthy, while getting poor sleep, little moderate and no vigorous exercise, perhaps having smoked, drinking alcohol above the recommended levels and dealing poorly with stress. All of those factors can in a many cases be more harmful for health than being “overweight”. (If anyone is interested in knowing more about these issues, both Pixie Turner and Joshua Wolrich have written informatively on the subject - both have books published), and both have nutritional qualifications to back them up. 

@Floss - you and others make extremely good points on this subject - thank you. 

Perhaps some of the astonishment around after school snacks comes from the fact that increasingly it seems that people cook separate meals for children now, and they eat before the parent(s), so at an earlier time? I always simply got given a smaller portion of whatever Mum and Dad were eating - Mum would have given short shrift to the idea of buying special foods for me, or cooking two meals! 

Criticism (and judgement, perhaps) may indeed be part of the world of journalism, but I think we can probably agree that it’s unlikely that the writer of the article is likely to check in here to see the comments made - however we may well have visitors to the boards whose shopping baskets bear a resemblance to that in the article. For my money, we’d do better gently encouraging those people, and encouraging them to make different choices if that’s possible within the constraints they have, rather than throwing around insulting and divisive language around the subject, and potentially making them feel that the boards are not for them. We often direct people to OS from DFW - but attitudes like this would genuinely make me hesitant about doing so, in the future. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We have a saying on DFW that it’s for help and support, not for judgement - it could be a game changer if that ethos transferred across the boards as a whole IMO.

I really doubt that Ms Gill will be reading this thread.
Anyway, she can read one of the comments in her article 

Have to say though, she buys a lot of sugary crap

I also really doubt that children/young adults will be reading any 'demonising and labelling of food' on this thread. 
They are much more likely to be influenced by the 'influencers' and 'celebrities' that they follow on whatever social media platforms they appear on. You only have to look at the latest crop of Love Islanders to see why children/young people may be in danger of suffering from eating disorders and disordered eating.

I'm not in the media but I'm almost a septuagenarian who has managed to reach that age without being obese and suffering any health issues. 

My comment on snacks was based on my own childhood experience. I was clear that this was decades ago.

Personally, I really doubt that these comments about a journalist's shopping basket would deter visitors to this board.
You have a different opinion.
And that's fine.

As I would not like this thread to be closed or worse - deleted, this is the last comment I will make on Ms Gill's shopping basket.