WITH one in three youngsters obese, it's arduous to disclaim the UK has an weight problems downside.
And as each mum is aware of, it's robust maintaining children on the straight and slender in relation to wholesome selections.
Particularly when grocery store cabinets are crammed with low-cost, family-sized baggage of chocolate, and adverts for quick meals pop up between children’ reveals on YouTube.
So is the brand new NHS Meals Scanner app the answer?
Through the use of your smartphone to scan barcodes, it instantly tells you the way a lot salt, sugar, saturated fats and energy are in something you eat.
And cleverly, after the app — which was launched this month — tells you the way unhealthy your choccie biscuit is, it offers you a more healthy various.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
As an absolute management freak and wannabe supermum, I believed I used to be doing every little thing I may to feed my husband Scott, 46, a mortgage adviser, and two sons, Max, 12, and Rufus, eight, a nutritious diet.
I fastidiously plan meals. I take a look at all of the labels on merchandise and I primarily cook dinner from scratch. Our favourites are curries, chilli and soups and I even attempt to make my very own pasta sauces.
If I’m actually trustworthy, we're a fan of a pudding and love goodies in entrance of the telly.
On weekends, after all, all mother and father let issues slip. I’m no stranger to a microwave prepared meal or a pre-prepared jar of bolognese sauce.
Normally I say that if the youngsters refuse fruit, they don’t get sugary treats. However after I’m drained or confused, I give in and the junk meals creeps in.
I’ll be frazzled from working all day and if I’m late with dinner the youngsters will moan for a bag of crisps or a biscuit. I give in as a result of I do know they’re hungry.
Equally, when grandma comes on her weekly visits she dishes out sufficient sweets to feed a small military, I don’t need to be a enjoyable spoiler.
And when Rufus refuses his weekday breakfast of toast, I let him have sugary cereals — in any other case, he merely gained’t eat.
However on the entire, after I see different mother and father pushing their procuring trollies filled with fried rooster and 24-packs of frozen fish fingers, with their obese children in tow, I really feel quietly smug. I'm a health-conscious mum.
‘HONEY-ROASTED NUTS WERE BIGGEST SHOCK’
Or so I believed till I attempted the all-singing and dancing app.
Not solely does it inform you how a lot of the unhealthy stuff you eat, it shows it in cute photos of sugar cubes or salt sachets, so you possibly can REALLY visualise how horrible you're being.
In response to Authorities pointers, a household of 4’s advisable every day restrict of sugar is 27 cubes, round 85g of saturated fats and 46 sachets of salt. And I used to be assured we weren't consuming anyplace close to that.
However after scanning every little thing our household ate over a mean Saturday, I used to be shocked.
We have been 4 instances the sugar restrict and ate double advisable saturated fats quantities.
And it's not as if we have been overindulging.
I'm speaking Kellogg’s Krave cereal for the youngsters’ breakfast, waffles for me and Scott, and fruit for us all.
Then it was pizzas for lunch — however a family-sized one between 4 of us — and a facet of salad, and fruit.
At time for dinner, we had spag bol, with a jar of shop-bought sauce, full-fat cheese sprinkled on the highest.
It was the weekend, in spite of everything.
All through the day, to stave off my rising lads’ starvation, I stuffed them with one Penguin biscuit every, fruit, Walkers crisps and a yoghurt.
After the youngsters’ supper I totted up the totals for the day and I used to be astounded to find our every day sugar consumption amounted to 112 sugar cubes.
Saturated fats — the kind linked to coronary heart assaults — got here out at 165g, which is almost double the utmost we must be consuming.
Fortunately, our salt consumption was 43.4 sachets, which sounds actually unhealthy however is only a fraction under the advisable quantity.
However seeing these figures on the app fully rubbished my perception we have been consuming healthily.
The largest shocks have been the honey-roasted nuts Scott ate within the night and the pots of yoghurts I’d given to the youngsters that morning.
The nuts had 7.9 sugar cubes and simply over three sachets of salt in a bag whereas the yoghurts contained virtually ten cubes of sugar and a sachet of salt.
‘THE BEST BIT? IT’S CHEAPER!’
So what does all this imply?
Nutritionist Amanda Ursell says: “Consuming this quantity of sugar and saturated fats every day can result in a number of well being issues – and even raises the danger of some forms of cancers, since each habits can up our danger of weight problems.
Carrying additional physique weight will increase the danger of 13 various kinds of most cancers and is the one largest preventable reason for most cancers after smoking.
“With an consumption of 112 cubes of sugar there’s an actual and main concern for the kids’s enamel. Sugar feeds micro organism in our mouths, which in flip creates plaque and decay.
"This explains the direct hyperlink between a lot of sugary meals and drinks with the necessity for decayed enamel to be extracted by the dentist.”
I’m 47, and listening to what Amanda mentioned, I wished to do higher. I believed there was no manner I’d get the advisable swaps from the app previous my children, however it was not simply boring stuff, corresponding to “swap a chocolate bar for an apple”.
After I dished out a chocolate Alpen bar as an alternative of the standard Galaxy, the youngsters lapped it up.
With two and a half fewer cubes of sugar in every bar, it felt good figuring out it could not destroy their enamel.
Swapping our common Muller Fruit Nook yoghurts for the sunshine model saved simply lower than three sugar cubes per pot.
Switching Walkers crisps for Snack A Jacks meant chopping out one sachet of salt per bag.
And changing Dolmio bolognese sauce with the lighter possibility saved 4 sugar cubes.
For dessert, nobody seen that I’d changed our common Carte D’Or ice cream for the model’s lighter model, which is seven sugar cubes fewer.
The one grumble I acquired from both baby was after I provided jam on toast as an alternative of Nutella at time for supper.
It saved one dice of sugar however the children a lot want chocolate. They nonetheless ate it, although.
All in all, the swaps within the app reduce our salt consumption by virtually 15 sachets, sugar by just below 65 cubes and saturated fats by 98g.
And the very best bit? I believed it was going to break the bank to eat more healthy since you at all times hear that contemporary is costlier than frozen or tinned. However my authentic Saturday store price £26.95, whereas the swaps got here to £21.80, over a fiver cheaper.
My one grievance, nonetheless, is that the app didn't recognise each merchandise I scanned.
Nonetheless, with just a few easy swaps I had almost halved our sugar consumption, slashed the saturated fats by almost 60 per cent and shaved off 14 sachets of salt in 24 hours.
I’ll now incorporate these swaps in my weekly meal plan.
It’s more healthy — and cheaper.
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