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.

@FatalDistraction 11yo do not have puppy fat, They either are fat, or not.

@Napqueen1234 but there is a difference here. What I am saying is, that healthy diet is not related to income. What I think it is, rather, is that lower income families tend to have lesser education (no judgement, it's an observation) and hence know less about what is and is not healthy. So feeding a kid healthy diet and having that kid bigger than average is justifiable. Because if that is indeed true and the child has no underlying issues, they will grow healthy weight.

I do think a lot of people in general have lost sight of what is a healthy weight, and part of that is parents not seeing that their children are. The sad fact is that many are aware of their weight even from a really young age, I've seen children being bullied at 5 for being overweight, and then consequently being apprehensive about getting changed for PE etc, being weighed won't change that as long as it's done sensitively- and more importantly, the government actually providing more access to things which can help, like free swimming, healthy eating initiatives, support for parents etc rather than just a letter.

Stuff like crisps, chocolate, pizza, hot dogs are all more filling

No they're not!!! Any nutritionist worth their salt will tell you they're full of empty calories!!

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

If your child is overweight than as a parent you are to blame.

Junk food is not cheaper than basic fruit and veg.

You don't need to spend hours whipping up culinary delights every night, just swap the side of oven chips for a side of broccoli/peas/carrots or whatever. Keep crisps and sweets for treats now and again, not a daily item. Get rid of the fizzy drinks and have water.

You don't need to spend money putting your kids in clubs, try doing activities as a family - your DC will thank you for it. DS has never been overweight and has never been in any clubs, but he either walks, cycles or runs with me EVERY DAY.

Time & money are just excuses.

DH and I between us work 80 hours a week and for 5 years (while DS was 3-8) I worked away during the week. We still manage to eat reasonable healthy meals and get plenty of exercise in and none of us are overweight.

Someone in a small flat might not have much storage space
Very true, but something like a bolgnese sauce would last fine in a fridge. Bit boring having it a few days running but...

The other issue that gets overlooked is that of addiction. I mean I can afford the ingredients for a salad and have the knowledge of how to make salad but after a shitty day I don't want salad.

Totally agree, and sometimes that's 100% fine, but if it's your child that is getting fat, then sometimes it's a salad whether you want a burger or not.

You have the capability to do that though, not everyone does and these are the people who need the most support with things like cooking skills.

EVERYBODY has the ability to Google something and learn if they really want to. I don't know a single person (and certainly no-one with kids!!) that doesn't have the internet. I'm a pretty awful cook but I have learnt the basics, because I wanted to!

@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

but what if a child hasn't put any weight on during lockdown. Mine is still riding, walking, doing online dance classes. If they don't have a pre lockdown weight then it's pointless

It wasn't compulsory to put on weight during lockdown. It's right that there should be a focus on losing it.

I agree that a lot of people have lost sight of what a healthy weight for children (and themselves) is.

People use misleading euphemisms - someone recently described themselves as 'healthy' and it transpired that 'healthy', in fact, meant 'quite overweight'. People describe a child as having eaten 'well' when what they mean is 'a lot' without any consideration for the nutritional value or quality of the food they've consumed. People use 'curvy' when what they mean is obese.

IMO there needs to be a complete review and overhaul of what is considered a healthy diet. Overly processed 'fake' food is described as 'healthy' and people consider 'snacking' to be an essential part of their diet.

'Treats' are high carb processed crap that, far from 'treating' our bodies, damage them.

As for the cost, 4 chicken legs from Sainsbury's is £1.80; 500g minced beef is similar. Iceberg lettuce and cucumber around 50p each. Tomatoes for 70p. A few pence for a onion.

That's 2 healthy meals (roast chicken and homemade burgers and salad) for 4 for around £5.00. Both require zero cooking skills and are a damn sight cheaper and healthier than most of the processed crap.

The other issue that gets overlooked is that of addiction. I mean I can afford the ingredients for a salad and have the knowledge of how to make salad but after a shitty day I don't want salad.

Well quite, that's why rather than sweep it under the rug, if actual support was offered to those who needed it re: weight, it could help throughout their lives at breaking the relationship with food and emotions; which a lot of the time (but obviously not always) originates in childhood. I agree that sending a letter is no use, but if it was an opportunity to try and offer realistic and helpful support, that would be of huge value. Rather than essentially everyone ignoring it because they're worried it might offend someone. There isn't enough support across the board for those with disordered eating or EDs such as BED, because the affects are not as much of an immediate risk as something like anorexia, and itd be great (but optimistic) to see it becoming a conversation and not something to shy away from or ignore. A starting point would be in schools.

And there are far cheaper places to shop than sainsburys!

Junk food is not cheaper than basic fruit and veg.

In some places it really is cheaper.

Our nearest shop is a corner shop type convenience store. They sell very little in the way of fresh fruit and veg and what they do sell is priced at a premium - e.g., £1 for three apples. For £2 I could get six apples or I could get a no-brand bag of 20-something frozen nuggets and a bag of oven chips for £1 each or a low quality, high fat smokey sausage for around 80p and a box of day-glo orange "heat to eat" cheesy pasta for around the same.

Most people here shop online or travel up to the next town where there is a supermarket however shopping online requires a bank account and a minimum spend of £40 and travelling to the next town costs either petrol or bus fare (£6.40 for an adult return plus £3 per child).

For some people they really are reliant on convenience foods and junk foods really are cheaper than the alternative.

Wow...

1. why is it even a thing to complain about school weighing your child? Why do the British have to object to common sense things?

If a kid is overweight, then s/he might get bullied about it regardless if the school had weighed him/her. There is no real correlation between the two.

1. Why is it such a devilish idea that the governing bodies want to know the general population statistics? Those could (should) inform policies.

1. It is not a necessary thing to be overweight even on less healthy food. It is a very first world thing. In this country I find that people lack self control, common sense and resilience. They also like to blame others/other factors for their bad choices.

Just because the gym is closed you don't have to put on weight. Calories intake should be regulated. You might not be "fit" or develop your muscles, but you won't put on weight either. In the past 6 months I've put on an extra 2 kilos. Because I know I walk less I eat a bit less. It's that easy. My muscle tone is crap as I can't go climbing and can't be arsed to do workouts at home. But I did not become fat by any means. And it was just a minuscule effort.

1. The amount of overweight children in this country is terrible. And it's never the parent's fault. It's the system, the school meals, the junk food being available*..... Oh, and everyone has a medical story or MH issues that prevent them from taking in just enough calories, so again: it's not their kid's fault or their parent's.

*Just because junk chains are open you don't have to eat there.
The pre-prepared food plates in big chains are actually not that bad as they were a decade ago. So eating premade again, shouldn't necessarily equate to being fat

1. It is a common uk population exercise to be in denial. My kid is only chubby... don't say s/he is fat as it is fat-shaming.... don't call it what it is, call it by some other name so it won't hurt....

Fat is fat. It's not equal to ugly, but certainly equal to unhealthy in most cases. This euphemism culture is not helping

1. Why is there no middle ground? I see/hear a lot of kids wanting to be like models. No, that is not healthy either. Not being fat, and being a size 0 has nothing to do with each other.

@BarbaraofSeville

This might also pick up any children who have lost weight/not gained/grown as expected during lockdown because the family doesn't have enough to eat, and then they can be signposted to help, foodbanks, benefit checks, social services if necessary.

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.

If you were short of money you wouldn't buy these things and concentrate on cheap nutritious foods like eggs or beans on toast, baked potatoes, bananas etc. And if you can't/won't do that, then it's not a money issue is it?

Yes, we've lived on benefits and we just ate very simply, not much variation but otherwise healthy.

Also important to note that it picks up on children who are underweight, it can be really important.

Quite frankly people shouldn't object to children routine weight/height checks any more than they should object to dentist appointments, eye tests, or vaccinations.
But it should be done sensitively (e.g. maintain patient data confidentiality)
A yearly checkup at the GP would make sense.
Doing it through schools is more likely to go wrong.

Honestly, being obese has such life long negative impact it is wrong not to step in when parents are not managing. It's not just that junk is disproportionately cheaper (often it's not) - it's a lack of early home economics education. If you are not taught to make cheap nutritious meals at home (the type my 80 year old father would make) or at school who is going to teach you? I grew up eating my vegetables because otherwise I would have been hungry. Vegetables are still cheap but they don't give the endorphins that cheap junk do. It's not easy though, we spend a fortune on food and given the choice my kids would eat pasta or pizza. None of them will eat freezer food though - as I never gave it to them whilst young so now they just won't eat it.

I live in an affluent area. In my children's state school I can't think of any children that are obese and there are only a handful of chubby children. Mainly two parent working families with plenty of money to spend on food and time to prepare it. Mums generally wearing gym kit on their way to exercise and very unusual to be in plus size clothing. Over lockdown I went to a park in a much less affluent area. I was shocked at a) how overweight so many mums were, and b) that my children looked much slimmer than the vast majority of children there (not all obviously).

It is really wrong that this is happening. I don't blame the individuals (not my place to anyhow) but I have read that children born now have a lower life expectancy than those people born in the 1980's. People shouldn't shamed but they should 100% to assisted to make the changes necessary to have a healthier lifestyle.

You don't need more money to improve your diet. A banana is cheaper than a Mars bar.

Until children are old enough to go to the shops on their own with their pocket money, pretty much all the food they eat has been given to them by an adult who has decided what to feed them.

If you don't feed them endless crap then they won't get fat in the first place. If you don't constantly ply them with snacks throughout the day they will be properly hungry come dinner-time and will eat more veg.

Normal veg - carrots, cabbage, peas etc. Not stuff like fresh baby corn, out-of-season broccoli, asparagus tips and edamame beans, which are far more expensive.

You can give them fruit. But don't buy the punnets of berries and tropical fruit that cost a fortune, give them apples, pears, bananas and oranges. They are relatively cheap - and certainly cheaper than cake.

Nothing wrong with occasional chicken nuggets, but don't give 10 of them to a five-year-old.

I have two biys (18 yo and 20 yo) who both went through the school weighing system, one marked as obese one as underweight - both ate the same diet (mostly healthy ) at home. The eldest has my build - I've always been in the overweight catagory on the BMI index - but as a child I swam and rode horses and as an adult I've played hocky, swam and cycled. I have remained the same ~ weight and size all my life and I'm now late 40's - Size 12/14, between 10 and 10.5 stone. I have never had a problem maintaining this and never been on a real diet. My husband (who my younger child's build resembles) had yo-yo dieted throught his adult life - he's really struggled. His mother is the same.

I heard about this new thing called intuative eating - listening to what your body craves and eating in line with that - is it another fad? Or can it be the saviour of people like my husband - who is addicted to sugar and emotionally eats?

Anyway point of my post is that people are very different - and a healthy weight can vary. I'm resigned to being healthy but overweight whenever I go to the doctors. Weight is part of the picture - a holistic approach would be to look at the whole lifestyle of a person - weight/activity/stress (Stress increases weight gain even on calorie restricted diets) job/environment/addictive behavious/family stucture ie- a holistic (wholeistic) approach.

Once you break down a person's life structure like this it will become very obvious where the issues that need tackling are - and they may not be with food per sae.

They weighed dd as part of the reception health check (that I refused consent for but that's a different story).
She came out as obese, and I got referred to a dietician. Fair do, if that's what it takes... However it turns out that the person doing the weighing was breathtakingly incompetent. Not only had she weighed dd as almost a stone heavier than she actually was, they had completely failed to account for the fact that dd was wearing a kilt pinafore thing and a heavy woollen jumper.
Dd was actually on the 40th centile and there was actually nothing wrong with her weight or diet.

So if they bring in this proposal to weigh all children, I will be refusing my consent for it.

Obesity is a risk a kin to smoking or alcohol when it comes to cancers later in life.
Weighing in combination with education about healthy lifestyle is imperative to reduce future risks to our children.
It would absolutely need to be managed in a tactful and supportive fashion!

I think this is a good thing. If a child has lost a lot or gained a lot of weight during lockdown then there has clearly been an issue. Ignoring it won’t get to the bottom of it- maybe the parents need more support. I think they will need to control what they do with the information ie all kids get some sort of letter- not just the overweight/ underweight to prevent bullying.

My friend has spent her whole life overweight and it has made her miserable and has negatively impacted her health, if something could have been done when she was a child it could have changed her life.

@Choochoose

Also important to note that it picks up on children who are underweight, it can be really important.

^ Very important point. Free schools meals in EYFS and KS1 were introduced by the coalition Government partly as a response to a very tragic case of a child becoming malnourished and dying.

Obesity isn’t just a food poverty issue, plenty of affluent families are affected. In fact a couple I know who have chubby toddlers feed them a very varied diet but just too much and often use food as a pacifier. In their case the parents are affluent, over eat themselves, have a sweet tooth and are feeding their children in the same way. Being contacted by health professionals might be a wake up call to them.

It’s not just that takeaway and junk food is cheaper it’s about its growing availability. People in years past managed to eat cheaply and healthily shopping at markets etc (and many still do).

The same old crap, this idea is designed to appeal to a group of core Tory voters

Health monitoring in schools was traditionally more a left wing pursuit after the war, when the NHS was created. Though there was cross party agreement on it as well.

When I was at school, a long time ago and in the north of England, childrens health was very closely monitored. It was taken extremely seriously. We were regularly weighed and height taken (this was to check for malnutrition, childhood obesity was very rare). Eye tests, hearing tests, regular checks for lice, every 6 weeks I think. We were given vitamins and school dinners were cheap but healthy, cooked on the school premises and every child ate them. Packed lunches were unheard of. Regualr dental checks. Strict hygiene rules on hand washing, before eating and after playtime, and nail brushes had to be used (to prevent worms). Vaccination programmes were done in schools as well, TB and Rubella for example. I'm not sure how much this has changed but I suspect quite a lot

Child obesity is a serious health risk. I dont see a problem with monitoring it, or any of the other health monitoring I mention above in schools back then and I'm not sure why parents would object to it

I don't feed my kids expensive healthy food but they aren't overweight. We have fish fingers and chips, pizza etc for dinner sometimes but the portions are sensible for their ages and served with veg. We also have homemade meals like spaghetti bolognese made with passata and added veg (not jar sauce), meat or fish with potatoes/rice and veg, stir fry. We have crisps/biscuits/chocolate in the house for snacks but they mostly have fruit, cheese or cherry tomatoes/cucumber for snacks and only have the high calorie snacks occasionally. It's about balance.

We don't pay out for clubs or expensive activities for exercise. We walk as much as possible, to the shops, park, school. We just walk loads. We turn the TV off and tell them to play in the garden. We do active things with them like play football or have races.

It isn't difficult or expensive. One thing that we do have is time as I only work part time but I know plenty of parents who both work full time and their kids are not overweight.

There are just too many excuses and people want to blame the government or "puppy fat". Parents should prioritise their children's health, which includes being a healthy weight. I feel so sad when I see obese children as it is completely out of their control but setting them up for a multitude of problems in life. But parents are either blind to it or don't care. Someone I know has a 7yo that has been overweight since toddler hood but apparently it is always "puppy fat" that will go when the child has a growth spurt. The child has had many growth spurts and has never been a healthy weight, but still "it's just puppy fat"

...and girls were taught Home Economics, including how to cook simple cheap healthy meals. This was from a very early age as well.

I don't think it's a new thing at all - I remember being weight at junior school and I am 55 now. If you don't want your child weight just write to the school and tell them you don't give your consent. I did this for one of mine who was worried as he was so skinny. The school did raise it and say the figures would be skewed if not everyone participated so which I replied that they were their figures so not my problem.

My youngest hasn't put on lockdown weight middle one has but he is hypermobile and the only exercise that doesnt "hurt him" is the pool that is closed

There will be children who have lost weight in lockdown too how will anyone know unless you weighed them before 🤷‍♀️