What the fuck is wrong with parents?

I really hoped that poster a parody, but who knows. I have one fat teen two skinny. The fat teen is by far the healthiest of the three. We all eat the same meals, the fat one, when they snack it’s raw veg (carrot, cucumber, pepper and lettuce, the skinny ones eat mainly chocolate, crisps and pizza. All 3 do lots of sport.

It’s genes that make the difference. The thin ones look just like me, my side of the family are all naturally thin. The fat child looks just like their dad. All of his family are overweight despite not seemingly eating much other than healthy food.

ThevGP is very unhelpful (try doing more sport, etc). I think that by the time they’re adults we’ll have isolated the gene causing the weight gain and have prescribed WLI to these people based on an actual genetic deficiency.

It is not saying a quarter of kids are obese. It says a quarter of GPs have seen an overweight kid under 4.

So, say each GP has 100 kids under 4 on their books. If one of those kids is obese, then it makes the grade. However, only 1 in 4 GPs have a kid under 4 who is obese. That would be a quarter of 1 percent. 0.25 percent. 1 in 400. That is a very low number.

Stop the pearl clutching.

“Generally eat the same”

the slight difference in snacking fizzy drinks or other things will be the margins where the weight gain is happening. As well possibly a lower motablism or less active life than their sibling. etc

and even more likely hiding treats in their room

People are permissive and think restricting snacks and sweets is mean and horrible.

and that give an apple and vegetable sticks for a snack is akin to bullying.

low impulse control and ill disciplined with themselves and their children

I’m in 2 minds with this.

Going by my own personal experience, DC2 who is 16 has always been on the 99th percentile from 2 weeks old.

His whole childhood we were told he was morbidly obese, even tho he was head and shoulders above his peers.

He is now 6ft 4 and weighs over 20s he is a professional athlete, training several times a day, 6 days a week (plus midweek and weekend games) with under 10% body fat, he is an absolute beast of a kid.

The difference with him tho, you can visibly see he is NOT obese/over weight, however he would still be included in the obese statistics.

The BMI calculator isn’t fit for purpose, it doesn’t included a lot of anomalies,

BMI is useful data on a population level (ex. for research purposes), but not on an individual level to determine one's health. BMI doesn't account for things like body fat distribution so it isn't always an accurate determinant for how healthy someone is.

And this type of approach to food is just as bad as people who only provide UPF's.

Balance is so important.

Yes, this idea that restricting junk food at all will lead to them developing eating disorders/cause obesity later in life, seems to have taken on a life of its own and become a handy excuse for people to not take any responsibility for their children’s diets.
I would love to know what sort of evidence it is based on. I am sure there are many people with eating problems who can look back at their childhood and see a plausible root cause in their parents’ weird or overly restrictive attitudes to food, but somehow it has jumped to it being not ok to tell a child to just eat a couple of biscuits rather than the whole pack, or say no you can’t have crisps now because it will be dinner in half an hour.

Shuddering? You may have serious issues with food.

I have 3 children. One is overweight, one is underweight and my other is average weight for their height.
I don't do anything differently. They all eat the same main meals, all take similar packed lunch, all have access to snacks.
Strangely I would say my child who's overweight is the healthiest because she does an insane amount of exercise.
We do have chocolate and crisps as well as fruit, crackers and bread sticks but once the unhealthy stuff is gone I don't tend to replace it quickly.

People want to be friends with their children these days far too much. It’s ok for your kids to tell you they hate you when you say no in fact it means they feel secure. I just happened to have a very good friend who I had known since I was 19 who ended up being a psychologist and this was a very good piece of advice she gave me after I told her DS had said this to me.

The different times for children to eat has always baffled me @PoppyFleur our kids are all adults now but lost of my friends all had kids very close in age, we met one set of friends at ante natal classes. They all fed their kids earlier and different food. I didn’t even know it was a thing as my family never did this. But as adults one is a bit overweight, one is a vegan and one is a complete gym bunny and in to sport, the rest, nothing to note food or exercise wise.

As a child snacking was forbidden and my Mother told me eating in the street was common and not allowed. I’m 59 and by then those attitudes were falling by the wayside but my Mother had me when she was 41 so was raised by a woman who had attitudes more like my friends grandparents.

I work with a lot of schools and the healthy eating policies are ridiculous.

Children are allowed a piece of fruit or toast. Unfortunately, Fruit Winders also count as fruit in the majority of schools!

At primary school, my daughter had a single Dairy Milk minature from the Christmas Celebrations tub removed from her lunchbox. When I queried it, I was told she could have a Penguin or similar because it was a chocolate coated biscuits and had less chocolate on it. Except that a single Dairy Milk miniature has half the sugar and is less that half the calories of a Penguin.

Makes no sense.

I completely agree with this.

One of my friends refuses to eat daal because, in his culture, it is poor people's food. It baffles him that its on restaurant menus in UK and that anyone would buy it because, in his family, it signified not having enough money or 'punishment' - he calls it 'punishment food' 😅

Yet daal is a healthy food that is also really cheap to make!

I had an Italian boyfriend once who taught me to make Italian 'peasant food'. All healthy and requiring minimal effort or work. And great as I was a single parent at the time on a lower income!

I can answer for my exh.

He was diagnosed with T2D about 10 years ago. His weight has yo-yo'd since as he's fluctuated between trying to lose the weight and reverse the T2D and not seeing why he should.

Our children are adults now so don't visit as often and are also in control of what they eat but, when they were younger, his diagnosis had the opposite effect to you'd expect.

He was, understandably, very upset at his diagnosis and spoke to me at length about it at the time (we'd split up by then).

He was very focused on sugar being a poison - "I've been literally poisoning my body!" "I'm not eating that shit anymore. I'm not being complicit in poisoning myself!"

But he still wanted to buy the crap he used to eat and so would buy it for the childen instead.

They only saw him EOW so they mostly ate with me but every time they came home from his, there were tales of absolutely appalling food they'd eaten and every time they came home with large tubs of Haribos or this Millions sweets. Everytime. I had to throw them out because my cupboards ended up looking lime the PTA cupboard the morning of a school disco!

Anyway, I did speak with him about it.

He explained that he was really resentful that he could no longer eat sugar or the sorts of food that he'd eaten before that contributed to his weight gain and T2D and that it made him happy to see his children enjoying it instead! In short, he was resentful that he could no longer 'treat' himself or have 'nice things' and so ate vicariously through them.

I pointed out to him that he was giving them the exact foods that had caused his illness and that, if he considered sugar to be a poison, then he was effectively choosing to poison them and encourage similar eating patterns in them that he was now rejecting; that he was setting them up for the same health problems. He disagreed and said he just wanted his kids to know he loved them.

He did take it on board a little but it only had a limited impact on how he chose to feed them. He equated really unhealthy foodstuffs with love.

I can't speak for anyone else though.

I just find this kind of reaction so OTT and ridiculous. Surely if the rest of your diet is ok, having shortbread from time to time, even with (shudder) white sugar, is fine.
Loved making shortbread with my gran, make it with my daughter now. We are both fine.

I live in a pretty deprived area yet I don't actually see many fat and obese children. There are a few but not loads.

My <now adult> children used to love making shortbread & biscuits for our work-men & used to hope that there would be some leftover.
Short bread is banned in our house, home made or shop bought. Refined sugar, white flour, low in fiber, protein, and micronutrients. It is so unhealthy I am shuddering reading your post. Flapjack would have been better for your dc and probably for the work men too.

That's alot of nonsense. Schools still teach basic cookery up till 3rd year (Scotland) so end of Year 8.

Agree with this completely. I was told my 2 year old was overweight because he was the 98th percentile. Not once did the health visitor consider the fact that he’s the height of the average 4 year old. He’s the most active little bean, a little fruit bat when it comes to snacks and you can visibly see his ribs.
I’m not saying I think these statistics are wrong (I haven’t looked into it enough) but how are they calculating it because technically my child would be on that list and he is definitely not unhealthy.

The UPF problem is growing. At one time, perhaps a decade or so ago, Italy had the highest childhood obesity rate in Europe. The government actually worked to reverse it. We are seeing the problem grow in middle income countries like Brazil and Mexico.

The cheapness of processed foods (and their caloric density) is an issue. In other countries, the relative costs are different: in particular fruit and veg are easily available and cheap, and chicken nuggets aren't cheaper than buying a chicken. Another factor is time poverty. US and UK have longer hours and fewer allowances for families. Parents are more pressed for time and more likely to use convenience products.

Poor parents also feel like they can’t buy their children new trainers or electronics, but a packet of crisps or a fizzy drink is an affordable treat. The sheer availability of junk is an issue. A British or American child will be presented with far more opportunities to purchase.

I'm not adverse to giving my dcs pizza and chocolate, and I love a maccies, but childhood obesity is also due to adults being so reliant on driving. I don't drive (DP does) so my dcs often have no choice but to walk, people seem to think my kids are hard done by because they have to walk 10 mins to the shops with me rather than hop in the car.

It has taken me a long (generally happy) marriage, diabetes, WLI Etc. to get here, but I have cracked it…

I do the shopping, buy minimal junk-food snacks, more vegetables, fruit for snacks, fill the freezer with healthy food that can be cooked in the air fryer, swapped out chips for sweet potato fries and provide a variety of salads, soup plus one “old normal” (cottage pie, curry, roast etc.) meal per week. I’ve stopped asking what people want and now just put it in front of them!
One DC lost 7lb in 2 weeks, and is delighted!

There's a lot more to social services than taking kids!!! Family support workers can go in and support and educate parents in healthy eating, routines etc. There are tons of community programmes focusing on healthy cooking on a budget etc. I do think it is more of a role for GPs to refer people to these programmes that you would find in most communities

kids are raised in frozen shit out of the air fryer not a vegetable insight

Born and raised in the UK to parents who are Mediterranean. There is poverty everywhere but it is only in the US and UK where I hear this type of reasoning.

Most cultures have their own ‘peasant food’ recipes; most are vegetable and legume based, easily prepared and cooked within minutes. Tinned pulses are cheap and nutritious, no need for soaking or long cook times.

However, from my personal experience, some people have fixed ideas on what children should be eating. My English in-laws viewed the pulse based ‘peasant food’ meals I cooked for DC as insufficient bordering on neglect. It was clearly so much of a hot topic of conversation amongst the family that one of my sister in laws was concerned enough to talk me through the British way of doing things. Did I mention I was born and raised in England. Apparently, children should be fed earlier than adults and different child friendly meals that didn’t include lentils and butter beans. DH was mortified.

Yes, poverty grinds you down; having to watch every penny and plan every meal is exhausting. But poor health is also exhausting and UPF is making us ill. Childhood obesity is on the increase, more children are being referred for dental surgery and clinicians are also seeing an increase in ailments due to malnutrition and poor diets.