Eating salty, sugary, highly processed foods is now a habit for most of the nation's children, according to a new report from the Children's Food Trust. Helping them to change these preferences is one of the biggest public health challenges we face.
The Children's Food Trust's first State of the Nation report looks at what children currently eat in the UK. It finds that salty snacks, sweet breakfasts, sugary drinks, visits to fast food outlets and (for older children) buying fried food or chips on the way home from school are now part of most families' everyday life.
Sugar emerges as a big worry. When asked ‘Does your child have too much sugar as part of their everyday diet?’, parents answered ‘yes’ for 50% of children. Cutting down on sweets and confectionery, getting rid of sugary squash and buying different breakfast cereals were the steps most parents wanted to take to cut down their children's sugar consumption.
But when asked why they hadn’t already made those changes, more than a quarter of parents who wanted to take action said they were habits which are hard to change. Almost one in five said their child would complain too much. The report concludes that changing these eating habits is one of the biggest challenges facing parents, food providers and policymakers.
Published Friday 16 December 2016
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