Month: January 2016

Therefore working on this idea that parents may feel they don’t have the right skills or find it difficult to find the best value fresh food available to them. I came up with one solution, a website, which does all of this for them. This works in 5 easy steps:

• First step: enter your postcode and the radius you are willing to travel to shops, Refine any shops you do not want to include
• How many people are you feeding
• Your budget for the week
• Select your favourite meals, for example 7 meals for each night of the week.
• The final step allows you to see the schedule and recipes for each of your meals

Likewise money for fresh ingredients could also be a factor affecting this, many people don’t like buying fresh food, as the sell by date is limited compared to frozen foods. ‘Almost 50% of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK comes from our homes. We throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year in the UK, and more than half of this is food and drink we could have eaten.’ (lovefoodhatewaste, 2015). Proving that we throw away to much fresh food that could be used if scheduled meals were correct.

From research I gathered it suggests that the parent is in control of their child’s weight as they are responsible for ensuring their child grows up with the correct ethics towards food. I also believe this to, I think that it is important that the parent ensures they have nurtured their child correctly so they do not fall into the vicious cycle of obesity. As the child cannot cook, does not have money to buy food, and does not yet have the knowledge of choosing what is healthy for them and what isn’t. I think it is important that as a parent they point their child in the correct direction to live a healthy happy lifestyle.

I then went on to look further into trends in the consumption of fruit and vegetables, shown in the graph below:

 (Health Survey for England 2013, 2014)

Information gathered by the health survey for England in 2013 shows what percentage of men, women and children ate their 5 A DAY. Presenting in 2013 25% of men, 28% of women and the lowest of 16% of children had their 5 A DAY. This is lower than the previous years, and has declined since 2009. Also ‘in 2013 6.8% of adults and 6.7% of children included no fruit or vegetables in their diet.’ (Department of Health, 2012) Verifying that England still has a long way to go with incorporating fresh fruit and vegetables into children’s lives and also parents.

It has recently become more convenient for parents to opt for convenience food, which normally contains processed food. From looking at the graph below:

(Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2014)

This graph published by the government of common trends in UK households published each year gives detailed statistics on purchased quantities. It shows expenditure and how different households have spent their income on different food and drink. From this graph we can see that ‘Mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids are higher in the eating out diet. They are found in olive oils, rapeseed oil, vegetable oils, fish oils, nuts, milk and some meat and meat products.’ (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2014) Proving that convenience is not always the best lifestyle to lead. You can be consuming 3% more mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated by eating out.

Finally after looking in to the rise in technology factors relating to obesity, and also some genetic conditions that also relate to obesity I came across a child’s diet. This being by far the biggest variable, as the genes that can be inherited are rare. Also technology has to be monitored by a parent and a new media product or service could not alter this. I researched into how obesity can change a child’s life both in the short term and long term and I found that a child can develop the following:

• Type 2 Diabetes
• Depression
• Bowel cancer/Breast cancer
• Stroke

After discovering many conditions that are significantly detrimental to an individual’s health I found further research into how and why a child’s diet is the most important factor. Firstly I researched into school dinners as mass time of a child’s life is spent here, the UK government first realised there was a significant problem with school dinners in 2006 once they realised there was a problem with child obesity, the government came up with many solutions to improve school dinners but they proved to be to expensive for most schools. Therefore in 2014 on the 17^th June many primary schools had new school dinner standards. These were designed to make nutritious menus that were also imaginative; these standards are now mandatory in all schools (Department for Education et al. 2014). If this statement is correct then I assumed that a child’s diet wouldn’t be affected by what they eat at school, and therefore would be affected by what they eat at home. Many specialists say that dietary problems are caused from a young age, for instance if you breastfeed your baby, the baby takes however much they may need. Yet studies show that if you bottle feed you are more inclined to ensure that your baby finishes every ounce rather than stopping when they signal that they are full. This is because of the packaging used on the back of formula, stating the weight of your baby and how much they should be eating. Physically every child is different, and every situation is different. Consequently this is unpredictable, whereas breastfeeding gives the child as much as they need with the baby being in control of this. Breastfeeding also gives the parent peace of mind if their baby isn’t eating as much as normal, it probably wouldn’t cross the parents mind. However if the baby does not finish the formula milk the parent is more likely to panic, causing stress on the parent and child.