The children being stuffed full of junk food while mummy’s at work
THERE are certain foods which set off all good mothers’ warning bells: sweets, chocolates, chips and chicken nuggets among them. Most diligent parents would say that, if unhealthy snacks and junk food like this are to be consumed by their children at all, they should be an occasional treat.
And it was this dictum that slim, healthconscious teacher Chloe Busby, 27, strictly followed for her daughter Maisie, now four.
Imagine, then, Chloe’s horror when she discovered Maisie was being fed a daily diet of relentless junk behind her back by the childminder.
Despite Chloe’s request for healthy meals of grilled chicken and vegetables or pasta with fresh tomato sauce, her tiny daughter was gorging on a menu that would make most parents blanche.
She was consuming everything from enormous sausage rolls to burgers and chips at McDonald’s, sweet Belgian waffles and bag after bag of crisps — despite the fact that she was only two at the time.
Eventually, as all small children do, Maisie let the cat out of the bag and once Chloe and her husband Lee, 30, realised what was going on, the childminder was dismissed.
But her legacy remains, some two years on. For Maisie, who started school in September, still refuses to eat the healthy meals she once happily devoured at the table of the family’s London home. And if she’s denied junk food, she throws tantrums.
Chloe’s story is one that will resonate with many working mothers. A child’s diet is yet another thing that has been handed over to be administered by someone else as more women pursue careers.
And the decisions made by carers, who may not have the same concerns about the child’s future health and wellbeing as a parent, can have lasting consequences.
Although most small children lurch from loving a food one day to refusing it the next, Chloe says Maisie’s pickiness is more than a passing phase.
‘Maisie labours over grilled chicken breast with vegetables, yet I know she would polish off processed chicken nuggets and chips if they were offered,’ explains the exasperated mother, who also has two sons, Archie, seven and Charlie, two.
‘I believe she lost the ability, and the patience, to chew proper butcher’s meat while that childminder was feeding her processed rubbish.’
Experts warn that stories like Chloe’s are becoming more common as rising numbers of women juggle careers with raising children.
Nutritionist Dr Lucy Chambers, a spokesperson for the British Nutrition Foundation, says most young children are being fed by people other than their parents regularly, whether this be childminders, nannies, nursery staff or grandparents, and they are very influenced by the eating habits of these adults.
‘Anyone looking after young children should be aware that they are not only responsible for providing them with good nutrition on that day, but also for helping them to develop healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime,’ she adds.
According to official figures, there are around 48,000 childminders and an estimated 160,000 nannies in the UK, with soaring numbers of parents relying on childcare to work.
Although most heed parents’ wishes about healthy foods, there are many, it seems, who do not.
SUCH bad practice couldn’t come at more a critical time for our children’s health. Public Health England reveals that one in ten children aged five is obese.
By the time they leave primary school, this figure doubles to nearly one in five. A staggering 4.3million of the UK’s 13million children are overweight or obese.
In general, pre-school children should be eating about five portions of starchy foods, five portions of fruit and vegetables, three portions of dairy foods and two portions of protein foods (three if vegetarian) a day, while avoiding sugar and salt.
It’s a far cry from the foods Chloe Busby’s childminder was giving the children in her care even though she insisted she would provide meals cooked from scratch, such as pasta with fresh vegetable sauce.
The reality was different, as Maisie’s changing appetite revealed. ‘Maisie stopped eating her dinner when we got home because she wasn’t hungry after snacking on rubbish all day. Instead she’d ask for sweets and crisps,’ says Chloe.
It was the waffles that eventually proved the downfall of Chloe’s childminder. The sweet pastries typically contain over 200 calories and almost half the daily recommended intake of saturated fat.
Yet, one day, Maisie happily told her mother that she had been to a café for waffles — and that she had eaten them there ‘lots of times’.
‘Then one of the other children the childminder looked after alongside Maisie told me: “We had McDonald’s today.” I thought, hang on a minute, when did I agree to any of that?’
Mercifully, Maisie remains a normal weight for her age. But the damage to her developing food preferences has been done. Healthy meals, which were once a joy to eat together as a family, are now a struggle.
Chloe says she felt too awkward to confront the childminder but parted company with her in March 2014. Today, she has taken a career break to be a full time mum until her youngest child, Charlie, starts nursery in a year’s time.
She is unequivocal in her advice to other parents who may find themselves in her situation: interrogate the childminder, and be firm.
Susan Hughes, 40, from Hertfordshire, had a similar experience when she hired a childminder for her daughter, Liora, now six, in 2013.
Susan, a staunch vegetarian who runs a healthy eating catering company, told the childminder that she would not countenance her daughter, then two, eating any junk food. And her daughter was on a pescatarian diet, where meat was strictly forbidden, but fish was permitted.
But despite these simple rules, and the fact Susan that provided all of Liora’s meals to be eaten in her absence, the childminder refused to obey her request.
‘Within a few weeks, Liora started telling me she’d been eating sweets,’ recalls Susan, who is married to Daniel, 39, an IT consultant. ‘Then I went to pick her up one day and found her devouring a pain au chocolat.’
The chocolate-filled French pastry contains over 300 calories and half the saturated fat an adult should eat in a day — never mind a child.
Susan adds: ‘The childminder simply shrugged her shoulders and said: “Liora wanted one instead of her dinner when she saw the other children eating them and I didn’t want her to go hungry.”
‘When I quizzed her, she nonchalantly admitted to regularly giving Liora sweets.’
The impact was almost immediate. Liora started to refuse the healthy meals she’d always eaten and constantly pestered for sugary snacks.
The final straw came in February 2014 when she told her mother the childminder had given her pork sausages — how on earth would Susan tell her Jewish husband? Susan parted company with the childminder and found a ‘brilliant’ replacement who looked after Liora until earlier this year.
While Liora did not gain weight, the poor eating habits continue.
There is no detailed official guidance or nutritional training in place for nannies and childminders.
Dr Chambers says it’s important parents ask potential childminders lots of questions.
‘Ask to see menus and evidence of training or awards that they have in the area of food and nutrition and ask other parents for their opinion on what’s offered.’
DESPITE maternity nurse Shairra Deleon, 33, doing just this when she hired a live-in nanny in July 2015 to look after her now two-and-ahalf-year-old daughter Kayla, her requests were ignored.
‘Like most working mums I feel horribly guilty that I’m not there to oversee mealtimes,’ says Shairra, a single parent who lives in London.
‘To try and ensure that Kayla was eating well, I would write a weekly meal plan for the nanny and buy all the fresh ingredients she needed.
‘But I soon noticed that come the end of the week, most of it would still be in the fridge. When I confronted the nanny she told me: “I don’t cook!”, then admitted to taking Kayla to fastfood restaurants with money I’d left for emergencies.’
But worse was to come: ‘Once when I FaceTimed them on my phone from work one evening, I could clearly see Kayla in the background drinking a bottle of Coke.
‘I was horrified. I’d explicitly said fizzy drinks were banned.
‘She made some excuse about it being a one-off, and Kayla being thirsty, but I had my suspicions.’
At weekends Kayla refused the chicken and pork dishes with fragrant rice and vegetables she used to love.
‘Instead, she’d ask for biscuits, chips and crisps and there were tantrums when I refused,’ says Shairra.
Last March, after eight months, Shairra sacked the nanny and found a replacement.
‘This one respects the fact that I want Kayla to eat freshly cooked meals. I’m not saying she can’t have the occasional treat such as a lolly or ice cream, but it should be just a little taste and not every day.’
To the parents’ relief, paediatric dietician Judy More assures them a child’s cognitive development is unlikely to have suffered.
The long-term impact is, she says, more psychological.
‘Children who are getting mixed messages about what they’re allowed to eat may refuse to eat meals if they know someone else will give them snack food instead.’
Indeed, Shairra admits that getting Kayla — who, to her relief, is still a normal weight — to eat healthy foods is an ongoing challenge.
‘At least this nanny is working with me as a team. But it’s going to take a lot of perseverance to reverse the damage done to Kayla’s eating habits by the previous one.’