22% of 4-5 year olds are overweight? How?!

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Can someone explain to me how we are living in a society of overweight 4 year olds? I'm not trying to be goady or holier than thou, I'm genuinely interested.

What is the cause of these fat 4-5 year olds??
Where is it all going wrong for these children who are now likely to be overweight or obese well in to adulthood.

FWIW I have a 4 year old. We have McDonald's takeaway regularly, sweet treats (danish, cinnamon bun, chocolate, biscuits, cake) daily. Lots of cheese and yogurt, healthy fats, jacket potatoes etc. And she's still on the 25th percentile and a string bean.

@RedToothBrush, kale is filling and looks pretty as a plant, and you can chop it into small pieces to put in your food. It's got vitamins A, C and K in it and minerals.
I don't think I'd fancy a pile of it on my plate but maybe I should try it I might like it

@PurpleDaisies, they are often listed on my local freebie pages, and you could always ask. I'd be willing to share any surplus, and it's easy to propagate some plants.

@MarmitesMyMate I think that a 4 yr old in age 12 clothes is abuse.

Ipad, screens screens screens. Constant snacking!
Most of my friends young children are overweight and my DPs 6 year old is. It is so worrying.
I am pregnant with my first. I nanny for 6 kids none of whom are overweight but they don’t snack a lot and are very active. I will do everything I can to prevent it in my own. I love walking/being outdoors and encourage my charges to be but to much screen as an option and I see parents giving up.

The figures are even higher by the time the children leave primary school in my area, something like 33%. There must be lots of factors contributing to this and I don’t think there are any straight forward solutions. Our local authority are offering free activities with healthy food during school holidays including swimming at council facilities which I know won’t solve the problem on its own but I do think is a good idea.

@MarmitesMyMate

Many factors

But a friend of mine who is obese herself and her dh. Feed their 4yo dc awful food.. 'because what's the point in cooking different healthier stuff for dc'

Breakfast 2 white toast Nutella , 1 choc chip brioche and a scotch pancake

Lunch 2 slice white bread sandwich. Choc fingers mini bag. Crisps. Penguin bar. Haribo and a pack of choc animals.

Dinner. Nuggets, chips. Pizza chips. Macdonalds. Fishcake chips. Hotdogs, kfc, kebab shop Daily!
Pudding. Cake and Ice cream. Choc bar

Snacks.
Kinder bars.
Crisps.
Breasticks.
Cakes

The poor dc is massively overweight. Wears age 12 clothes turned 4 in June
School nurse called to talk about it and the dm said well what do u expect were obese and there was a lockdown

That is really really sad and hard to read. That poor 4yo, she'll have issues for life now.

Sometimes I give my toddler a sausage roll and a fruit shoot in the buggy. Oops. Or a happy meal 🤷

Perfect weight, physically confident, in proportion, self regulates with food. I don't think you can judge from a snap shot

Kale lol 😂

For me it’s that I don’t want to waste money buying things the kids won’t eat.

I do a mixture of oven meals and home cooked meals. Across the week they have things like pizza, chicken curry with naan, spaghetti bolognese, meatballs and pasta, chicken dippers and chips, poached egg on toast. Breakfast is anything from fruit and cheese, toast, weetabix and fortnightly pancakes with fruit. They are allowed chocolate in the day but just once. I don’t allow sweets or fizzy drink. Pudding is a yogurt. For me that’s not a bad diet. It’s not brilliant. But it’s not terrible. I imagine it’s pretty standard.

I think sometimes two working parents puts a lot of pressure on time management. Easier to shove food in wherever it's coming from.
When me and dh worked ft out of home we found it very very difficult to keep anyone healthy. Often foods that could magically appear made a difficult lifestyle that tiny bit easier and we had a lot lot less time to prepare full fresh meals too especially before a small dc bedtime. Not saying it's impossible but was very difficult for us.

Lack of exercise

@silentnightchristmas it's a matter of priorities. DH and I have a very busy 2 x full time working adult household, but diet is not one of the things I'm willing to drop, nor is exercise. No parent should.

Children in front of screens instead of running around. Also children being driven everywhere.

I may get flamed, but I am going to say that one of the reasons is the British notion that children eat one kind of bland, beige food-nuggets, pizza, hot dogs, processed crap- and grownups eat another. In the rest of the world, both children and grownups eat the same kind of thing. Also the very odd idea that children don't like vegetables.

@CaliforniaDrumming

I may get flamed, but I am going to say that one of the reasons is the British notion that children eat one kind of bland, beige food-nuggets, pizza, hot dogs, processed crap- and grownups eat another. In the rest of the world, both children and grownups eat the same kind of thing. Also the very odd idea that children don't like vegetables.

I wasn’t aware of that supposed British notion. Isn’t the more common problem that parents are eating those terrible foods and feeding their children with them.

His no it’s definitely a British thing hence the whole children’s menu invariably full of crap. My Sil has One of those meal boxes all based around healthy plant eating. I said it must be mega expensive for them all and she said it was fine as the kids just ate from the freezer because they just liked nuggets and pizza.

@MimiDaisy11 that was certainly the case for us growing up. My mum and dad fed us the same beige, deep fried crap that they ate themselves. I remember tasting some mushrooms as a young kid once at a pub lunch and asking if we could buy some for a change. My dad said no as vegetables would just go off and it would be wasted.
My dad tried broccoli for the first time aged 67, at my house! I served it up thinking it was a pretty plain veg and he looked astonished and started quizzing me about the fancy food I had served up! 😲
As soon as we went to uni both my sister and I made it a priority to teach ourselves how to cook properly and try lots of fresh fruit and veg for the first time.

Chicken nuggets

@MimiDaisy11 I agree the more common problem is that the whole family eats terrible food, but that has been covered upthread? I find the whole children's menu thing strange.

Well my kids should be huge according to most of you
I am obese , i live in a deprived area my kids eat sweets, biscuits etc and i rarely say no to them eating
Ds1 is 18 now and borderline being underweight always has been , ds2 is perfect weight and again always has been( hes my bigger eater and healthier)
My kids do a lot of exercise though they have always played team sports , walk to school / college into town when they go out etc and we walked a lot when little as dh had the car for work.
My kids will turn down chocolate quite often when offered as they haven't been majorly restricted.
Yes im obese but i eat a lot less than my friends and i don't have any health conditions yet. I try and be active but wether I am or not or eat more or less I seem to get to a certain weight and stay thereabouts.
Bmi are quite old and don't always take muscle etc into account
And people who say im same weight but was a 12 now a 8 that can also be how you carry weight
2 people can be the same height weight but a different clothes size
People are generally less active these days , as kids we played out at every oppurtunity

@CaliforniaDrumming

I may get flamed, but I am going to say that one of the reasons is the British notion that children eat one kind of bland, beige food-nuggets, pizza, hot dogs, processed crap- and grownups eat another. In the rest of the world, both children and grownups eat the same kind of thing. Also the very odd idea that children don't like vegetables.

I do think this is part of it - we used to go out for meals a lot and whilst I didn't mind random adults saying things like 'Aren't you well behaved?' or things that made me feel really smug, I hated it when somebody would come up and say 'Ewwwwww! Yucky Broccoli!' or 'Wouldn't you rather have an ice cream?' when they were picking a dessert (usually a fruit cheesecake). They liked what they had and I was happy to pay £5.50 for a meal rather than £3.50 in the knowledge that they'd actually eat it.

God knows what those people would have made of the pair of them rinsing me for cash anywhere that sold Japanese food. Or their love of yellow (Turmeric) rice, prawns, ham, cod and smoked Haddock all cooked together.

The little one was a bugger at the supermarket counters as well - she could tell the difference between standard and sockeye salmon, which she called 'Bear Salmon', meaning the Salmon you saw films of bears catching and eating.

They still got fruit shoots, Miss Masterchef would have a Gregg's sausage roll somedays and insist upon prawns and baguette on others - and I never did get them to eat sweet potato, peppers or bananas (although Curried Goat and fried plantain went down easily enough) - but seriously? Beige food is not synonymous with 'Kids' Food'.

I was born in 70/80's and me and friends and everyone i knew ate snacks
If you had school dinners 2nds was a thing and puddings , those that had lunch had sandwich , crisp , fruit , carton drink and maybe biscuit
Also local corner shop was full of kids at weekends getting penny sweets , bottles of pop, 5 p space raiders etc
But we were always out

Different familes will have different combinations of factors
Time, money, sedentary lifestyle, SNs, portion size, emotional/ comfort/ treats, snacks, food choice/ processing, family culture, playing patterns...
Genes would be one of the most stable influences.

It is hard to see the thresholds of when children become overweight and obese.
I've got lean children (decent genes, active and middling diet, nothing to blog about) and people think they're thin. They're not; just slim and active. They don't flag up on the yR/y6 checks and when they've been checked during for appointments for other reasons they've been fine. Car seats have been a pain when they're too long to fit but too light to move up, and they grow out of the length of clothes long before they fill them out. I've had people think mine are underweight then moan that their "solid", "well-built" child has had the letter for being overweight. The trouble is being at the upper end of healthy or into overweight and beyond is much more common than being at the low end of healthy so it looks more normal.

Children grow like concertinas, filling out then stretching, but so, so many times the heavier children I've known gradually fill out more and look less stretched over time as they grow and it takes years to become apparent that they're not stretching out and they are visibly becoming overweight. They get their big growth spurts and then the growing peters out and the calories go to weight rather than height and it's not immediately obvious when that happens.

The other issue is when children reach towards adult heights.
There's a significant physical difference between a 5ft 2 adult and a 5ft 2 12 year old. Their hormones are different. Their muscle mass are different. Adults tend to gradually gain weight over the years and for a child to prematurely mimic that on an adult's BMI chart is a long term issue if current habits are maintained. Children's charts are graded for age to take into account their stage of development.

There's so much emotion embroilled in the whole issue which doesn't help. If a child needs something like asthma medication reviewing, parents just do it. General health & lifestyle needs to be treated more pragmatically.

These posts always turn into the pat myself in the back brigade because ky kids eat all the vegetables and tofu and salmon etc
I have a child ( now adult ) who eats mostly beige food , we went to nutritionists the lot, he just throws up if he eats certain foods , textures etc
And believe you me he would starve rather than eat certain things, we tried it all
As it happens he is close to being underweight as whist he eats crAp food , he doesn't eat large quantities so calorie wise is prob less than someone who has a healthier diet , he is also very active . Buy because he eats mainly beige food people have always looked at us as the fault , my sil would brag how her son ate everything ( he hAs a weight problem)
I don't think its as simple as to say its one thing and one thing only , I think it is many things and will be different things for all
I prob eat around 1200 calories most days , but I don't loose weight where as many would .

Children are too sedentary. From 4 in the UK they start having formal learning and carpet time when they should be constantly active. By year 1 they are sitting down for most of the day. It is an insane way to treat growing children and it just gets worse as they get older. Then they come home and sadly many will be sedentary from then until bedtime.

As someone said. Kids of previous generations played outside for hours. We have sadly ruined childhood by letting cars take over residential areas and allowing children to lose the freedom to play out on their own doorsteps.. video games and TV have made it worse and school focuses only on formal learning