I would of thought that making absolutely sure ALL GM ingredients are labelled clearly on all products containing them would help the health of many

It's not a case of GM foods per se. That has not been proven to be unhealthy. However, clear, concise labelling of all processed foods should be mandatory; including the exact amount of sugar, salt, fats (including which types of fats), and additives (including all the E number stuff).

"Some people have neither the resources nor the time to put a freshly cooked, hot meal on their children's plates every evening. As long as they sensibly combine food - for example, fish fingers with mashed potato and a portion of veg - they won't go far wrong for their children."

Too bad we are fed this myth - people believe it and don't even bother trying to cook even the most simple meal. Who benefits from fish fingers and other extensively processed crap? Hint: not kids, not families...

Mums wouldn't have time to read labels to see if something is healthy or not. It needs to be simplified for them by using words on the box they will open like "Healthy" "not So Healthy but won't kill you" and "Unhealthy".

A simplified 3 step labelling system for "under pressure mums".

#3 thats one of the reasons that school meals started it was a way of making sure children got at least one good meal a day. Now we have a mums who feed their kids rubbish moaning they dont have time to cook a proper meal well even on the tightest budget and with very little time you can cook good food.

Why are you going on about packets this lables that buy fresh food and cook it even if you batch cook and freez its better than the packet rubbish

Yes those nasty food companies (who rule the world unfortunately) should be made to label their crappy food products either: 1.Healthy 2.Healthy-ish and 3.Crap. that should help all of us. x

Dave @ 4

"Mums wouldn't have time to read labels to see if something is healthy or not. It needs to be simplified for them by using words on the box they will open like "Healthy" "not So Healthy but won't kill you" and "Unhealthy"."

Problem is that no one is going to face the supermarket checkout trolley watchers with a couple of packs of your suggestion 2 let alone 3.

You know the people I mean - the ones who stare into your trolley and mentally assess your character and 'parenting skills' based on how many cabbages, bananas or evil 'turkey twizzlers' (whatever they are) you have in your trolley.

Basically, I'm getting fed up with the blanket bombardment we get on this issue. A lot of people already know that its not a good idea to feed your kids junk all day and every day. Educate the ones that don't and leave the rest of us alone to get on with our lives and let us decide all by ourselves (like real grown ups!) what to give our children to eat.

These food people are beginning to turn into control freaks and I for one, am getting to the stage where I'd like to shove a turkey twizzler where the sun don't shine.

Joanna

Not sure about these basket watchers but then again I don't give a stuff what people think of what I buy. Maybe it's a "woman thing". However, welcome to the nanny state, fun isn't it? Being told what to do and how to do it..............

Ban smoking, ban drinking, ban junk food, ban pollution, ban fatties......we get sick of hearing it too.

But #7 - how do you "educate the ones that don't"?

There's too much guilt in food. I have aimple Solution. There needs to be a law that says that food that will kill children has big skulls and crossbones on them and you have to walk over broken glass to buy it and the sales assistant has to wear a black robe and carry a scythe; and other food that won't kill your weans is served by nice ladies in fairy costumes.

That'll sort it out.

Johnny, I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your pamphlet.

Is it only mums who shop/cook. I thought times had changed with most mums now also working women. What about Food & Nut info for working dads? I know at least 2 families where the children look forward to 'Dad's night to do the tea' because that night is either take away or a trip to McDonalds. Much preferred to mum's healthy home cooking.

Duncan 11 - my informative pamphlet "Mothers of Britain - How Not to be a Horrible Slag who is Killing your Kids with Poisoned Food" is available from the British Potato Council at £5.99 inc P&P or from all good bookshops and branches of Morrisons.

Marvellous Johnny. And I notice that a laminated large-print version is available in Bookworld for £4. That's Christmas sorted!

No it's not only women who shop and cook. Us guys do our bit and in my situation it's split pretty much 50/50 as she works funny shifts.

Mums can't take all the credit for fattening up thier kids now!

Duncan @ 7

I suppose you could try reintroducing cookery and nutrition classes back into secondary schools..... That would be a start and then if they still choose to warm up and eat junk its their funeral.

Alternatively, give them all a copy of Johnny's pamphlet and their own personal self appointed busybody to enforce the rule that only 'healthy' food is bought and eaten.

Well Joanna #16 I believe Home Economics is still taught in schools. I don't think it's working in the way you'd hope though. And I think we are "bombarded" more with advertising and marketing for processed foods than we are with healthy eating messages.

There is a vid out there that is well worth the watching called ...Sweet Misery(Aspartame) and is a must for you all.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=187178367888209...

Duncan

Home Ec isn't taught anymore nor is PE I'm afraid. Certainly not to the same level as we knew it.

Scott, how you doing mate? Still being "watched"?

Johnny - Your onto a winner with your pamphlet (sorry to be parochial but can we have a Scottish version please?)
I remember a radio discussion once where a former lettuce grower had given up supplying the supermarkets because the only way he could do it was to "drench" them in pesticide. They apparently rigourously cheked and rejected them for the slightest blemish or having a fly in them etc, but dripping with carcinogenic (sp?) chemicals was fine.

Andy, 20 - The British Potato Council is a proudly unionist institution.

#21 and onionist too.

http://www.britishpotatoes.co.uk/viewrecipe.asp?id=34

I know of some that dont even know, how too peel a potato!, or prepare any sort of veg or fruit,what would they do without a microwave!, Maybe we should ban the microwave!, until they learn too cook.

I know of some who don't even know how to punctuate a sentence! They haven't got a good grasp of spacing between words, don't know the difference between 'too' and 'to', and use an exclamation mark immediately before a comma.

Maybe we should ban the computer, until they learn to write.

I'm surprised Paul Voltaire hasn't got something to say on this issue

Shock horror! After continual bombardment with healthy eating info some people still aren't changing!

Perhaps we should just accept that many people don't give a sod and leave it alone. I know every time I hear Jamie Oliver or see a healthy eating ad I want to go eat burgers till I'm sick.

Duncan

As Dave has already pointed out, cooking and nutrition is not taught at secondary school level in the way that it used to be. At one time it was called Domestic Science or Home Economics (posh names for what was bascially cooking) and was on the national curriculum.

The healthy food message is very well publicised in this area of the country. I have no quibble with that, however, I do object to the assumption that everyone is incapable of feeding their children a decent diet without being 'nannied' by the state. There is even talk of opening and checking children's lunch boxes, which I do find a bit draconian.

At this rate they will be following people home to make sure we're not secretly scoffing 'bad' food. Right just nipping off for lunch - lard and processed cheese toastie made with plastic white bread of course washed down with a well known high fat, sugary, fizzy drink!! :D

I think people do give mums too much of a hard time. Kids can be a nightmare - no matter how hard my mum tried to feed me healthy food, I flatly refused to eat anything remotely resembling a vegetable until I was about 12 years old. She must have felt like killing me! But what can you do with a kid like I was - force feed it?

Until I was about 12 all I would eat was pasta, cheese, chicken and bread. I am now one of the healthiest adults I know - I'm not overweight and am almost never ill. And now I'll eat anything - vegetables, seafood, oriental food, anything at all, I'll try it. So although I have a problem with people who feed their kids chips and burgers every day, I wouldn't lose sleep if I had kids that wouldn't eat their '5 a day'. It doesn't necessarily follow that your childhood palette contiunes into adulthood.

What would happen if you gave the kids buckie to wash their veges down with as an incentive? I'm sure more than "5 a day" would be eaten!

Joanna - My bairns are at a local primary and their lunch-boxes are checked periodically. Any persistent offending items such as Mars Bars, Irn Bru etc leads to a call from the Head Teacher.
The way I look at it, a teachers job is to teach, more than to be child psychologists or social workers, it is therefore the responsibility of the parents to ensure they give their bairns to the schools in a fit condition to teach.
If you have/had children you will know the effect caffeine and E's can have on them, even a small amount of that stuff can have them speedwaying round the walls and not in a fit condition to teach.
Its one of those 2 way responsibility things many people seem to have problems with.

The real issue for the government here is economic (everything is about money, after all). People with a bad diet are more often ill, and therefore contribute less to the economy and take more resources from support services than similar people with a better diet. It is just a trend, of course, so it's not possible to point at a particular individual and say that he or she is definitely ill because of bad diet, but the epidemiology makes a very strong case for cause and effect.

That effect itself points to a rather difficult truth - that people do not value their health enough to change their diet. A threat to health is one of the most basic threats we can have, and yet it does not work. So it suggests that a threat to anything else would not work either.

So what do we do? I don't want to keep paying the price of preventable illness. We have to try something.

The revenue generated from smokers and alchoholics far out weighs the cost of treating them so money left over can be apportioned to treating fatties. After all, the NHS is a huge industry and employer and nutritionists and dieticians need to make a living.

There's no way to accurately make that calculation Dave. You can assert it but you can't prove it.

I can prove it Duncan and I will. All stats are freely available under the Freedom of Information and my lass works in the medical industry and my auntie is on the GMC and my uncle is an actuary of some repute. It's quite staggering actually how much revenue is raised and how much spent.

Incidentally, obesity and obesity related diseases cost more to treat than smoking related diseaes.

Have a splendid evening.

I agree with you, Andy, but its probably not the likes of you and me that need educating on what to feed our children, or put in their lunch boxes. The child that has 'behavioural problems' is invariably the one who has the packet of cheesy snacks in his hand at break time while the others have a healthy snack.

Perhaps the government should turn their attention to the manufacturers of these products, instead. OK, no-one is forced to buy anything but some of the advertising is awful. That advert for a well known, brightly coloured, almost fluorescent drink brand, where the cartoon child is made out to be a freaky nerd for liking vegetables. That one should be banned and any others like it.

Oooh!

Go on then. I look forward to your proof of which illnesses are smoking related, alcohol related and poor-diet related.

Show your working!

;-)

No problem big boy! ;-)

Might take up to 20 working days though to compile as that's how long the FOI process can take to work..............

I'm sure you'll be about then

I never leave...

There certainly are a lot of men on this board commenting on how mothers are not feeding their children properly. Maybe if they spent a little less time commenting on how other people are not as good as them and a little more time doing something good for their community we would not have problems like this.

#40 No there aren't. What a load of rubbish.

I think every school has not only the right but the responsibility to enforce rules which are in the interest of the children they are 'educating' - certainly, healthy eating is, and must be (as many parents are ignorant) part of the education children receive.

A school is quite right to ban fizzy drinks in school - if parents want to give them to their kids non-stop out of school time, of course it is their (misguided) right to do so.

And, no.26 - maybe you should stop watching TV.

#27. Joanna: "Home Economics (posh names for what was bascially cooking)"

1st and 2nd years have no choice but to do Home Economics.

Home Economics when I was at School in the early to mid 1990's was a 1-2 hr cookery session for 1/2 of the year in 1st in 2nd year. The other 1/2 was sawing or reading one of those books that questions at the end of every chapter and spending about an hour or 2 in each year waching Hygeine the moive.

In 3rd and 4th year (Standard grade level) it was 2 hours cooking 2/3 of the year and sawing and again at least an hour a week reading thouse two books which Questions at the end of every chapter.
Needless to say my Home Economics teachers knew how to make an easy (Commonsence) subject difficult as Some for my former course mates are are doing their teaching Post grads so they can become thoes sorts of teacher (Hey I'm sure they'll be better at it than my teachers where.

In 5th year I did moduels Home Economics, That wasn't just cooking either we'd written work on hygien and cooking methods.

And this story is tell us something new

No

Everyone lies to an exitet about what they eat. what there feeding the children. Though I must adimit I would have hoped they were doing it to incourage their children to eat healthly. Sadly not the case.