A very specific childhood experience arose from being a “weird-lunchbox kid” growing up in the 90s with a food-conscious mother. It was the sense of palpitating trepidation felt when opening your school lunchbox, knowing that what lay within was going to be seen as “weird” in comparison with the sliced-white-bread-plastic-ham sandwiches, cheesy Wotsits and Club biscuits everyone else was gobbling.
What’s that?” your classmate would ask, their nose wrinkling as they took in yesterday’s veggie curry, crumbling homemade falafel or – my mother’s speciality – a “deconstructed sandwich” of doorstop-thick fresh bread, filling of some kind (often cucumber) and attendant crumbs floating freely in the bag. (Why bother assembling at all?, my father asked once, when you could simply throw in all the elements and shake?)
Now, though, it’s 2025, and the weird-lunchbox kids, but more importantly their parents, have been vindicated by continuing revelations about the dire health outcomes of eating ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Most recently, diets with high levels of UPF have been linked to harm in every major organ in the human body, not to mention a range of health conditions. News to some but not my mother, a pioneer of healthy eating and cooking from scratch, an early adopter of quinoa and reader of food-packet ingredients. This was the age of Cheestrings and Micro Chips – I still know the jingle for the latter by heart – yet my mother doggedly resisted. At best, her insistence that such food was unhealthy fell on deaf ears, and at worst, was rudely mocked, not least by me. I knew what an E-number was before I knew my times tables. If an unrefined carb existed, my mother knew about it.
These days, people talk about UPFs in general conversation. Books and social media accounts devoted to eliminating them from your diet have hundreds of thousands of followers. It must be a strange feeling for my mother, after being ignored – and even actively fought – on the topic for so long. I’ve written before about having to hide Super Noodles packets in the same way my friends hid packs of 10 cigarettes, a line that still makes her laugh uproariously. We once had a row about a packet of Pom-Bear crisps. There were times where all I wanted to do was eat like other children, and that battle played out on a weekly basis in our house. Mine can’t be the only weird-lunchbox mum who is left with an abiding feeling of “I told you so”. And I can’t be the only weird-lunchbox kid who, after decades of pushback, is left with a feeling of … what’s that – guilt? Or, perhaps even stranger, could it be gratitude?
I’m a mother myself, now, and I mostly cook from scratch, as does my husband. Ready meals are a rarity in our house. Now I’m the one standing in the supermarket aisle, reading long lists of ingredients on the back of packets. Like my own mother, I try to do a roast most Sundays and, while I have occasionally resorted to gravy granules, I mostly make my own from meat juices, as she taught me, and as her mother taught her. I say this not to boast, but to highlight the benefits of education around food and cooking. Those skills have made such a difference to my ability to feed myself and my family in a healthy way. I feel I owe my mum a great deal of thanks for that.
Too much discussion of UPFs is divorced from issues of class and economics, and feels shaming, particularly of women. Cooking from scratch doesn’t make me better than someone who can’t. It only means that I was taught how to do so, and have the resources to. I am fortunate enough to be able to buy the sausages from the butcher that have fewer additives. In the 90s, my mum, who was feeding us on a shoestring budget, used to have to go to the health food shop, or would drive out of her way to the supermarket that sold the cheapest cuts of meat. Not everyone has enough time to do that, or to cook from scratch, especially in 2025 when we are working longer hours than ever.
In some ways, it is easier than ever to eat healthily, in that alternatives to UPFs are more widely and readily available. That’s a positive outcome of this debate’s prominence, though the cost of living remains a huge barrier. What I like less is when the moral burden is placed on individuals, usually poor ones, as opposed to the retailers and corporations profiting from the sale of UPFs. Years before this conversation reached the mainstream, my mum would insist that the problem was systemic, and requires systemic solutions. She’s also never gone full Gwyneth Paltrow: I’m pretty sure she’d still rather consume cheese from a can than smoke crack cocaine.
And look, I’m not going to say sorry to her for being 13 and wanting to eat a packet of Pom-Bears. Sometimes, I just don’t want to hear it, especially as everyone else is banging on about junk food now as well. We still don’t see eye to eye on Super Noodles, though I’ve graduated to proper packet ramen. A recent study linked instant noodles to serious health conditions due to their high levels of salt, so in that sense my mum has always been right. In another, they’re just so delicious I can’t help myself. Sorry, Mum.
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