very fatty food, even oven or lower-fat chips. Processing can result in a loss of vitamins.
TINNED BAKED BEANS
Beans offer useful fibre, some protein and beneficial vitamins. But tinned versions usually contain surprisingly large amounts of sugar and salt. This makes them less healthy than we might think.
TINNED TOMATO SOUP
The healthy nutrition offered by the tomatoes is outweighed, or at least cancelled out, by the unhealthy amounts of sugar. Another ‘savoury’ food that is usually surprisingly sweet.
PIZZA
A disc of highly refined bread dough with a very thin smear of sweetened tomato concentrate and some rubbery processed cheese, most kid’s pizzas are temporarily filling but low on any positively beneficial ingredients.
SWEETS
Children’s chocolate confectionery is basically a mixture of chemically hardened vegetable fats, vast amounts of sugar and small amounts of cocoa solids, with chemical flavourings. Fruity sweets consist mainly of sugar, mixed with sometimes natural but mainly chemical flavourings, colourings and other additives.
BISCUITS
Typical children’s biscuits consist overwhelmingly of highly refined flour, generous quantities of sugar and chemically hardened vegetable fat. Healthier-seeming versions prominently featuring ingredients such as oats and dried fruits often contain even more sugar than the standard biscuit and surprisingly large amounts of fat.
CRISPS AND EXTRUDED SNACKS
Crisps are both fatty and high in salt. Flavoured ones nearly always contain chemical additives and sweeteners in various forms, too. They are not filling and offer little good nutrition, so they will leave a hungry child dissatisfied and most probably thirsty, too.
Extruded snacks come in shapes such as hoops, flying saucers or wafers, not slices. They are called extruded because they are made from a mixture of dehydrated potato, starches, emulsifiers and a number of chemical additives which is forced out (extruded) in a particular shape. They tend to contain even more additives than crisps.
FIZZY DRINKS
These are basically water that has been carbonated and then flavoured with artificial – or occasionally natural – flavourings. They also contain other chemical additives such as colourings and huge amounts of sugar or smaller amounts of chemical sweeteners. The routine presence of certain chemical preservatives and flavourings is now being linked to allergic reactions of all sorts, but particularly oral disease causing puffy lips, mouths and swollen jaws. These drinks contain nothing that is beneficial for health; instead they include ingredients that are known to attack good health. A typical can of cola contains the equivalent of seven teaspoons of white sugar. Drinks with sweeteners may have fewer calories and won’t attack tooth enamel but some scientists believe sweeteners may pose a risk to health.
SQUASH
Squash in its many forms often presents a healthy image based around the goodness of fruit. Some do contain real fruit juice in very small quantities but otherwise their ingredients are similar to fizzy drinks, just without the carbon dioxide, and the same objections apply. Even when considerably diluted, they can acustom children to a level of sweetness that makes ‘real’ drinks seem unpalatable by comparison.
ICE CREAM
The more expensive ‘premium’ ice creams contain a lot of fat in the form of cream and a lot of sugar but there is some nutritional goodness to be had from the non-sugar ingredients and they are fairly naturally made. Cheaper ice creams aimed at children, however, are highly synthetic concoctions of air, water, milk powder, hardened vegetable fat and lots of sugar blended together with chemical emulsifiers, stabilisers, colourings and flavourings.
The slightly wider range of popular children’s foods and their limitations
APPLES AND BANANAS
These are really nutritious foods and it is good that children eat them but they are the only fruits that many children eat. If they are given them all the time, they may get bored with them and decide they don’t like fruit in general.
FROZEN PEAS AND SWEETCORN
Frozen vegetables are a useful and nutritious stand-by. But peas and sweetcorn both taste quite sweet. Children need to get used to a range of vegetables with different flavours, such as the tartness of a fresh tomato, the refreshing quality of cucumber and the pepperiness of watercress.
TOAST
Toast is only as good as the quality of the basic bread and what you put on it. Most mass-produced British bread is pappy, light and insubstantial. It takes many slices of this sort of bread to fill you up because it fails to satisfy. Children may be spreading fats or jams on each slice, so when several slices are being eaten, the fats and sugars in the spreads can easily dwarf any goodness to be had from the bread.
YOGURT AND FROM AGE FRAIS
A straightforward natural yogurt or fromage frais, flavoured with fruit purée, is a healthy and nutritious food but most children’s versions have so much sugar or artificial sweetener in them that they need to be thought of as puddings. A thick fruit compote layer can be surprisingly sweet, and it’s now common for crunchy, sweet additions to be sold as part of a yogurt or fromage frais dessert. Cheaper types often contain no fruit, just chemical fruit flavours. Some that do contain fresh fruit routinely include chemical preservatives, which are not beneficial for health (see page 120).
If we let children eat almost exclusively from this typical range of children’s food, what does their diet amount to? We can sum it up as consisting overwhelmingly of processed foods composed of:
• lots of protein
• lots of refined carbohydrate or starchy food
• lots of fat, sugar and salt.
Fruit and vegetables are almost entirely missing or under-represented.
This is more or less the opposite of what children should be eating for good health. Though there is still surprisingly little consensus on what constitutes a ‘healthy’ diet, most nutritionists would agree from various perspectives that this classic children’s diet is a disaster.
With its almost total absence of fruit and vegetables – the key category of food that all nutritionists think is healthy – and its heavy reliance on refined carbohydrate, sugar and fat, not to mention the excessive amounts of protein, the typical children’s diet seems to be incompatible with long-term good health.
This modern form of malnutrition, learned in childhood and very likely carried on into adulthood, is clearly implicated heavily in the growing prevalence of obesity. It is also increasingly viewed as a strong contributory factor in a surprisingly wide range of illnesses, from heart disease to cancer. If our children continue to eat this way, the prognosis for the nation’s health looks very gloomy.
For parents who feel they can’t live with that thought, Parts Two to Four of this book concentrate on practical ways to break out of the children’s junk-food ghetto. Healthier Look-alike Alternatives to Common ‘Children’s Foods’ (pages 114–19) points you in the direction of foods that have the appeal of junk for children but are healthier and more natural.