Allotments 4 All

This morning I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I saw the new Birdseye kids meal ad on TV.

It is the one that starts with a shot of a supermarket with people wandering around shopping and then Captain Birdseye sails his ship in through the far wall. He then jumps down onto the tops of the chiller cabinets extolling the virtues of the new “Balanced” kids meals saying how wonderful they are for children.

The people around all start to cheer and then there is a shot of them throwing their shopping away to grab his meals. This includes a shot of a woman looking at the bunch of fresh carrots in her had and then slinging them over the top of the veg stand!

Surly fresh veg is more “balanced “ than a processed meal???? Surly we should be encouraging kids to eat fresh home made food so they know what a carrot/parsnip/leek/sprout/etc really looks like?

I often wonder what proportion of the population in 20 years time will know what real food is. I have heard tales of people not knowing that milk comes from a cow, that they did no know pork is actually a bit of a pig, but I always have taken these with a pinch of salt, metaphorically speaking as we all know most processed meals have too much salt in them! Maybe I shouldn’t and I should be more worried!

Jerry
Disgusted of Sussex!

I wonder what non-veg/food ingredients are in them - salt, food colourings & additives, additional vitamins.... (haven't looked at birdseye things for ages, so don't remember whats in them). I wonder what they would say if they caught my son eating broccoli (well calabrese)while it is still ON the plant - you can't get fresher than that!

I like that Multi - fresh off the plant  :)

But seriously you're right Sanders - it's disgusting what they are advertising as a 'balanced' meal, trying to say that it's better than fresh veg  >:(

I think it's already bad enough that all the supermarket veg are bred for appearance and not taste, and they use all those chemicals too.

thing is, will the advert influence people, who may see it as an easy option? just bung it in the microwave and there's your X portions of fresh veg??
makes me cross  >:(

Next, will we have those Star Trek "replicator" meals?

Jerry, kids today don't know what they are actually eating. If they saw all the ingredients that make up the "junk food" they like to eat spread out on a table, then they might think twice about eating it in the first place. We have had kids come round to our house that haven't known what a sultana was (at 10 yrs old!!!).

I bought organic milk in the presence of my kids about a month ago.

"Why, Dad?  Mum doesn't buy that stuff."

Spun a silly story, about how organic milk is made direct from grass, not by cows.  As it isn't processed by any animal, it's untainted by any of the medications fed to cows - it's clean, healthy, pure milk from grass.

Well, b....r me - my kids (YES, my own kids!) didn't bat an eylid; it took a full day before they realised they'd been had.

All best - Gavin  

After reading the thread I actually left the advert on when it appeared instead of switching channels as I usually do. Thought was, if people sue for slipping over on wet floors, just think how much you would get for being hit by a  boat, or a bunch of carrots.
Seriously though, there are people not far from this site who refuse to eat vegtables from the allotments because they may contain creepy-crawlies!.
And I can remember from 35 years ago the parent of one of my pupils being astonished that potatoes were dug out of the ground.
Makes one realise just how fortunate our children are to have eaten home grown veg and fruit for most of their lives.

Slightly off subject but something I've been wondering about.

We all know that kids today are taller than a couple of generations ago and the general believe seems to be that this is because of better nutrition.
As I was talking about this with some people, I mentioned that not only are kids taller, to me it seems that they also seem to be physically more mature at an earlier age. Someone suggested that this may have something to do with hormones given to livestock and ending up in the meat that gets eaten.

Scary. What are your thoughts about this?

I heard somewhere that the hormone disruptor things are in cosmetics/beauty products such as shampoos.

Hi Ina

If the meat theory were true, wouldn't it then follow that all children raised as vegetarians would be runts ?? ;D

How did I know this was coming?  

Ina, it`s been going on for centuries.  In Plantaganet times the average height of the common man in England was about 5ft 3 inches; even in Victorian times it was only about 5ft 6inches, which is why most garden tools today are still made with handles too short - we haven`t yet got round to altering the machines that make them.  My father was taller than my grandfather, I am taller than my father was, and my own sons are taller than me.  In my youth (long before hormones and anti-biotics were fed to cattle) it was blamed on free school milk and school dinners.  The real answer is that the amount of food (whether good or bad) consumed by the average individual has steadily increased over the last 1200 years, and most of us now eat more than is either necessary or good for us.

I too have heard that theory Ina, don't start me off on chemicals etc!
Oh alright, just a quickie!! Our youngest was diagnosed as borderline attention deficit, now most of my family thought this a bunch of poppycock, so I sat back and let her Nan feed her a tube of smarties, (knowing she was spending the afternoon with sid Nan and not me!!) After Nan had peeled her from the ceiling, she never gave my children sweets again!! They get grapes, kiwis,apples etc. from her as a treat! Having my youngest, made me become an even more avid label reader than I was before!! DP

Yes Hugh, I realize that but what I was wondering about was not so much the people getting taller but the early physical maturing. When I was young (oh I hate saying that hahaha) it was an exeption to see a 13 year old girl with an almost mature body shape, now I notice it so much more often.

Some years ago there was this problem on a Caribian island (think it was Puerto Rico) affecting very young children. It was proven that certain hormones fed to chickens where the cause.

Slightly backtracking a bit my step daughter watched a program on how chicken nuggets were made a few years ago and will now not even look at chicken nuggets that are not made of chicken breast and she looks at the packets to check if they have been reformed - if they have she wont eat them

Shes only 10 but boy she has an opinion! if we go out to lunch she would rather go to the pub and have a prawn salad than McDonalds! she would also rather have plain pasta than spuds of any sorts.

Sam

Pixie, you are lucky to have such a sensible child! I see she eats prawns. I have only just managed to get my daughter to eat them (by disguising them in batter!). However, I have noticed that most kids are not keen on fish nowadays unless it's in fishfinger form.
Re added colourings, Doris: I remember when I was at school, a girl who got terrible headaches from eating anything that looked artificially "red/orange". Back then, this was virtually unheard of and we couldn't believe that such an affliction could exist!!!
When my daughter was young I never gave her any fizzy drinks, but when she went to visit Granny out came the coca cola and she was as high as a kite!