Joe Wicks has revealed that his four children have never eaten at McDonald’s, while he himself has not visited the restaurant in more than a decade.
The fitness fanatic, 40, known as The Body Coach, has been a keen campaigner against ultra-processed food and is instead encouraging families to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients.
And in a recent interview on Times Radio during a conversation about his new book Healthy Start, Joe proved he practices what he preaches and avoids feeding his young children fast food.
The fitness coach shares children Indie, eight, Marley, six, Leni, four, and Dusty, two, with wife Rosie, 36.
Joe shared his thoughts on the popular restaurant chain: “They’ve never had McDonald’s. I haven’t had McDonald’s, and I loved McMuffin like a sausage and egg in the morning.
‘It was my thing. So I went at 7am before my boot camp, and I had a sausage egg McMuffin with a hash brown. And I said to my wife since I met her in 2015, I haven’t been to McDonald’s again, because the night I met her we were actually driving back from a rave and we stopped at the 24-hour McDonald’s in Wandsworth, and that was because she really wanted McDonald’s.
Joe Wicks has revealed that his four children have never eaten at McDonald’s, while he himself has not visited the restaurant in more than a decade [pictured on This Morning]
In a recent interview with Times Radio while discussing his new book Healthy Start, Joe proved that he practices what he preaches and avoids feeding his young children fast food.
“So that was the last time we had McDonald’s.”
Meanwhile, Joe, who appeared on This Morning on Friday, told presenter Cathy Newman that he believes too many parents give their children snacks between meals.
He shared, “If they turn down the food, instead of getting upset and offended and doing this kind of stressful thing, just say don’t worry, go away for an hour and play and I will heat the food for you in an hour, and nine times out of ten, when hunger strikes, they will eat it.
‘I think another problem is that people give their children a lot of snacks. I think we live in an environment where we’re taught to give snacks and these types of snacks all the time, so grazing all the time and little kids have pretty small tummies. So try to avoid snacking, just try to wait.”
It comes after Joe said earlier this year he was ‘offended and upset’ by the criticism of his documentary after he was accused of ‘demonising food and promoting eating disorders’.
The fitness mogul debuted his Channel 4 series in October, which is designed to show how ultra-processed foods (UPFs) packed with additives can still be marketed as ‘healthy’.
In the series, he unveiled what he called ‘the UK’s most dangerous health bar’, urging fans to buy the bars but not eat them as profits would go to healthy eating charities.
However, diet experts branded it a ‘scaremongering’ stunt, while fans accused him of ‘demonising sugar’ and ‘creating strange obsessions’.
The fitness fanatic, 40, known as The Body Coach, has been a fervent campaigner against ultra-processed food and is instead encouraging families to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients
They’ve never had McDonald’s. I haven’t had McDonald’s, and I loved a sausage and egg McMuffin in the morning.”
Joe has since shared his thoughts on the backlash, admitting he heard it from Emilie Lavinia Well enough podcast in January, he was “surprised by the amount of anger and pushback from the fitness community.”
He went on to say that he took the comment personally and was “offended and upset by it,” and also admitted that it had “broken my trust.”
He said: ‘I was really surprised by the amount of anger and opposition from the fitness community.
“It was actually other fitness coaches, dietitians and nutritionists who really pushed back with the narrative that you’re demonizing food, stigmatizing low-income families and promoting eating disorders.
“People take a clip, use it to create their content, to excite people, get engagement, get responses, and a few days later they, you know, sell their online subscription to you.”
Joe continued, “I’m really configuring my mindset about what I can do next in that space because I wasn’t ready for the response. To be honest, I wasn’t prepared for it.
I took it personally. I felt insulted. I was upset about it, but I just had to ride it out. But it definitely affected my self-confidence a bit.”
“I just wasn’t ready for the negative backlash of it. And it just shows that the system and the way it’s set up is just so normalized. People don’t want to hear that we should consume less of this.’
