Government wanting to weigh children

[birthdaybelle]

Anyone see this on Jeremy Vine this morning? Loads of backlash (rightly so!) about children's mental health and eating disorders etc. But what stands out to me is another bloody bashing of every day people trying to feed their kids on meagre wages or benefits.

More shame piled on to us because on top of everything else, our kids are fat.

It's a fact that kids are getting fatter and something needs to be done.

However, it's a myth that "healthy" food is more expensive than "junk" food. Every supermarket has low cost options on fruit, veg and meat. It may not look as pretty perhaps as some of the other, more expensive stuff, but it's there and it is more affordable than fish fingers and oven chips!

I also don't buy in to the ignorance thing. If parents really wanted to help their kids, they don't need the government to tell them what to do! Nowadays, with the internet, there is no excuse for even the most poorly educated to not know what healthy eating is. Everything is on Google! Those that say, "I want to help my children but I don't know how because I was brought up on junk food, I don't know any better!" in this day and age (and to be honest, in the past 10-15 years) is just being lazy and looking for someone else to blame. Unless you have been living under a rock you know how harmful junk food is and if you really want to do something about it, the resources to find out how are out there. There are multiple blogs / sites for eating well on a budget, exercising for free, time management, tips for getting kids on board, it actually takes very little effort to find help but people want to be spoonfed and to blame others. Harsh but true.

@runbummyrun

What is this lockdown weight!?!

Why has everyone got fat?!

Well, everyone got fat before lockdown but lockdown has made it worse - people not exercising as much because they aren't walking the kids to school, or even the walk from the carpark to their office. The kids aren't running around the playground. Bored kids saying they are hungry when they aren't really, portion sizes getting bigger, more comfort eating. All my colleagues have gained weight in lockdown, it's not rocket science to think kids would have as well.

I don't think it is true that parent know when their kids are fat. So many people cannot see what is directly in front of them, literally. Some people just don't want to see it.They say things like puppy fat, stocky, strong when actually the child is just overweight, plain and simple.

Parents with overweight children need to move heaven and earth to get their weight into a healthy range. I say this as an overweight child who took my own weight in hand in my early teens. I shouldn't have had to do that, my parents should have made better choices for me when I was too young to make them for myself. An overweight child rarely has a happy childhood. It shouldn't be that way but that's the unfortunate truth of the cruel and judgemental society we live in.

Lockdown has been tough and my heart goes out to parents in poverty who don't have the money or mental energy to feed their children healthily. But let's be clear about the effect it has on the children, who have no control over what they eat.

My son was in reception last year so he was weighed, they over weighed him by 7lbs (at that point he was weighed every two weeks by his physio to make sure he wasn’t losing weight as his physio was quite intense for his age). So due to the error the person made who weighed him we got the over weight letter, just looking at him shows he isn’t over weight. His ribs are visible front and back, it he lays down his hip bone is visible and he has good definition in his legs.

Weighing someone isn’t hard, getting it wrong by 7lbs is pretty impressive on a four year old!

@BarbaraofSeville

“Lack of money is rarely the primary reason why children are overweight. After all it costs a lot more to buy fast food, sweets, sugary drinks, crisps etc.”

Your right fruit, veg, making from scratch can be cheeper. But you can buy cheap white bread from Aldi for 50p, tub of chocolate spread for 89p, and a 24 multipack of crisps For about 1.99, pack of 5 chocolate bars for 50p maybe. That’s probably going to last longer than 6 tiny apples for 89p, a block of cheese/pack of ham that’s 1.99 and some better quality bread that’s £1. Stuff like crisps, chocolate, pizza, hot dogs are all more filling. It’s cheaper to buy 6 burgers than it is to buy a pack of chicken breasts, you can buy a bag of chips that might last a week for 89p.

You can eat well with limited funds, but it’s hard, and not everyone can cook, not everyone has a big enough freezer to store plenty of frozen stuff.

In relation to the original OP I do think weighing children even yearly should be something done so you can check their weight to see big jumps/decreases. A little like they do with babies. I think a lifetime of obesity and weight related issues is more damaging to a child/adult than them being asked to stand on a scale once a year. It needs to be done properly, and not infront of everyone and the school needs to work with the parents to help them make the changes if needs be. How many time’s do you see posts of weight loss on this forum saying that they are overweight as an adult and they were overweight as a child, that mum and dad made bad food choices and they are unable to break that habit that developed in childhood.

I think it should be much more of a normal thing to have weight checks, alcohol intake check and smoking cessation support (if relevant) as part of every healthcare appointment, for adults and children alike. Not for accidents obviously, but even then some of it might be relevant on some occasions.

I am slightly overweight (BMI 26) and didn't really notice it for several years because I am tall and carry it fairly well. I went to the doctor a few times in that period and yes, it probably would have woken me up a bit if it had been pointed out to me.

We talk about prevention being a good thing and I think this is what it would look like in practice.

And people saying it will cause eating disorders - we have a much bigger obesity issue than we do an eating disorder one (if you don't count overeating as an eating disorder). Weighing people is not the problem, how the results are handled is.

We had a seaside break recently and I was shocked at how many significantly overweight kids I saw. During lockdown some of my DCs friends have tipped into being overweight from previously just being quite stocky.
In our house we're all heavier than we were five months ago. Luckily for us our DCs were v slim before hand so the damage isn't terrible and they are a long way from being "overweight". They went from playing sport 5/6 times a week as well as running around the playground at break, to doing not much at all for quite a while. However hard you try to stay active in lock down, it just wasn't practical to keep up the level of activity my DCs were used to and that's had an impact. I'm not in denial about it, their sports have started up again which I'm so thankful for.

Looking around at kids now, and comparing it to how many overweight kids I knew in the 70's / 80's when I was growing up, I can see the obesity disaster unfolding and it's really really sad.

How can they possibly know if children have gained/lost weight in lockdown unless they were all weighed the week prior to schools shutting down?

I'm not opposed to a programme of weighing children because it can lead to national initiatives to combat the things they're finding from the data, but the idea that they're doing it to check lockdown weight gain is just stupid and a waste of time/money without a baseline to compare it with.

What I'm saying is telling people their kid is fat, when they have no money to improve their diets or time to cook from scratch or time to take them out for activities or funds for clubs and sports etc. Is just pushing the blame on to parents and kids

^ really?

Well parents are to blame. Who would you like to blame for not feeding your child healthily and teaching them the importance of exercise.

Unfortunately as a nation we are getting bigger
Saying things like people can't afford to feed their kids a healthy diet doesn't help it gives people an excuse
We don't want our kids to be overweight and us as the parents are the ones who decide what they eat
They have to step in because we are not stepping up
We could argue they could do it in a different way but and they definitely should not be tutting whilst weighing kids that's absolutely shocking
But it's best to nip these things in the bud as soon as possible

Weighing children is nothing new. Growing up, so 80s and early 90s, I was often weighed at drs appts etc. If anything it seemed to have fell out of favour. Surely it should be seen as a track of a child's development, along with height

They’ve always done this, haven’t they? My son was weighed in reception and year 6, along with the rest of the class. It prompted loads of complaints and outrage amongst parents because they had a letter saying their child was overweight.

I was particularly friendly with one of the mums and she was completely shocked and outraged that they would say this. She kept using the phrase ‘not an ounce of fat on him’ when I could see that his belly was very rounded and seemed to have cellulite. Whenever my son went to their house, they would be offered biscuits and sweets after school, pudding after their dinner and then walk to the shop for sweets. This was their everyday routine. She thought my son was having her on when he said he wasn’t allowed to eat those things every day. A few years on, and the family are all a normal, healthy weight and the son is fit and active. It seemed to open her eyes and she overhauled their diet with simple things like fruit snacks instead of biscuits. They didn’t realise that most people don’t eat things like that all the time because that’s how they’d always eaten in their own families as children. She really had lost sight of what a healthy weight was. So I guess that was a success story for this scheme!

Sadly, a lot of my son’s friends are still overweight and it’s getting worse now that they’re in high school. A couple are more than just overweight and seem to be obese, with the kind of hanging down stomach you might see on an older man. Their parents are typically very overweight too and seem blind to it in their children. It’s a real shame. They are lovely, bright kids with so much going for them but they’re being set up to suffer with health problems right from the start.

Parents are mostly to blame, I'm afraid. They're the ones in charge of the majority of their kids' diet and care.

If dinner is always something and chips, unhealthy snacks are freely available and kids are allowed to slump in front of the TV the whole time rather than taken for walks and to the playground, there's not a lot anyone else can do for the poor children.

On the other side of the coin- my DD is three and in the overweight/obese category. She’s been 98th centile since my growth scans and has followed the same curve as a baby, toddler and now preschooler. She eats a healthy diet and we follow the Ellyn Satter DOR. I have raised it multiple times with the HV as I was worried and didn’t know how to help as she eats healthily and reasonable portions. We were referred to a dietician who measured her assessed everything and said it’s her normal growth curve and will likely even out. I KNOW her reception weight will be high, hoping by year 6 it will settle down. It makes me sad when people assume I give her crap and stuff her with food as I really really don’t. The occasional treat but otherwise all home cooked healthy food (I’m a nurse). Bodies are complex and not all kids are naturally thin.

I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I don’t know what we’d do differently if toddler DD was to be labelled as overweight (she isn’t). We’re hardly loaded financially and both work full time, so I’m afraid we do use the old fallback of pasta and sauce a bit too much.

For a lot of people I think it’s time and energy rather than just money. I can’t eat too many carbs due to PCOS and insulin resistance so when it’s down to quick pasta dishes I have to skip that meal, as I have too much work to do in the evenings to justify time spent making something different.

@birthdaybelle with all due respect, if a child is fat, it is the parent who is to blame. Low income is not an excuse to feed a child sweets/fats/rubbish/processed food. A box of chicken tights is £1.60, a bag of rice is £0.90, a bag of carrots is £0.40, a bag of potatoes is £0.90. That is healthy lunch, dinner, supper.

Majority of children I see in the street is overweight, and that is across the classes/income levels. (same with dogs, interestingly enough). Weighing them is a way to actually show the parents that their child is at risk of chronic illness, often due to the parents' bad choices (because let's be honest, a 3yo will not eat what has not been bought).

@user1493413286 and this and as a parent you’d know is absolutely utterly wrong. Parents do not know what a healthy child looks like/what healthy weight should be mostly because majority of them themselves are overweight and so think that fat is OK.

Whilst no one should be made fun of just because they are fat, it should be prevented if possible by healthy diet and lifestyle.

@ZooKeeper19 again just look at me op just above. We spend huge amounts of time ensuring our daughter eats very healthily, is really active, DH and I are both slim. Parents who immediately blame the parents so miss some kids whose weight may not be their fault.

I have too much work to do in the evenings to justify time spent making something different

An omelette is carb free, quicker than pasta and probably similarly priced.

There is a lot of talk about cooking skills and the cost of food but I think the issue of time poverty and burnout gets overlooked here, the quick easy options are often unhealthy.

Children's BMI are checked in school by health teams. Not only to find out whether children are receiving a good standard of nutrition (children who are malnourished rarely grow as quickly as those with a balanced diet) but to also look out for illnesses such as kallman syndrome.

@Napqueen1234. I would hope most people could tell the difference between a naturally chunky toddler who is full of health and energy to a lethargic pasty one who is severely overweight and has no stamina. A lot of toddlers are still growing into themselves and so may be a bit podgy while perfectly healthy... But it is easy to spot the other ones and I feel so sorry for them.

Then many people on here said that recent months have given them the chance to cook from scratch so there was time to spend on cooking, rather than heating up. Many were baking bread and cakes, hence the shortage of flour.

I’m sick and tired of the assertion and assumption that older people voted for Brexit and vote Tory and that’s why the state is planning these interventions. As has been said, weighing children has been the case for years, something must be done to stem the tide of obesity, which is becoming the norm and it is possible to buy and cook cheap food that is healthy.

@birthdaybelle

Sorry I should have said - this is specifically in relation to seeing if children have lost weight since gaining during lockdown.

What I'm saying is telling people their kid is fat, when they have no money to improve their diets or time to cook from scratch or time to take them out for activities or funds for clubs and sports etc. Is just pushing the blame on to parents and kids

You do not have to be well off to feed your child well or healthier options Most obese or over weight children have no choice what the parents buy and feed them up on. I dread to think playing "the poor us" games letting many people hide from the reality of getting some sort of healthy living/ Food and choices. A walks free, play is free it's the whole lifestyle Choices and laziness cause obese children Then there is roll on affect on the health system all because of this. Wake up

Young children learn about weights and measures all the time at school. If it is done in a matter-of-face way they won't think anything of it if they have their height and weight taken.

There are far too many children who are seriously overweight, some dangerously so. It seems that we as a society are so concerned about the possibility of them developing anorexia that we allow them to be hugely fat instead.