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

[changing221]

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.

@whenwillthemadnessend

It's obvious isn't it

Lock down. Kids can't walk to school. Can't run around and play

Mins working from home freight t o juggle life Quick food etc

And I can't blame them.

Hopefully as thing normalise it will get back to the old figures.

And also healthy food is time consuming and expensive

And please dont lecture me on a chicken can last a week and lentils etc.

No one in real
Life has time for that.

Lockdown didn’t mean imprisonment. We could still go out for walks/runs etc. Why were these DC not going out to burn off their energy?

And not all healthy food is time consuming and expensive, that’s just an excuse. A jacket potato with beans or tuna? Spaghetti Bol? Chilli? They take no time and you can put a load of veg in with them.
No can’t be bothered bung some pizza or nuggets in the oven with no veg whatsoever hmm]

More PE can’t compensate for a bad diet.

Another thing, on top of what everyone has already said, is that parents refuse to believe their child is overweight. You see all these news stories about it, following parents receiving the NCMP results letter, saying 'my child isn't overweight but the nhs told me they are' etc etc.

I can't remember the exact figure off the top of my head but a very high percentage of the children who are overweight in reception will be overweight in year six and about a quarter of those will move into the obese category.

Lockdown has increased it slightly but not by much, it's been an issue for years.

We tell these parents their child is overweight but there's no funding to offer them support.

Upping pe lessons won't expend the excess calories that these children are consuming, although it definitely plays a part in a healthy lifestyle.

It’s the ‘tall toddlers’ that are turning into fat 4-5 year olds. Obesity causes height to be front loaded but parents, even short ones, always think they’re goint to have a six footer and so don’t do anything until the obesity shows itself by way of waistline.

@Somuchgoo

Genetics can play a part. I have two children. One hovers between the 50-80th centile and had done since birth (usually 50th but goes through a fatter phase just before growth spurts). The other is on the 3rd centile. The smaller one eats the same amount at meals, and more treats then the larger one.

But can genetics make such a difference within a population over so few years?

This is something that has been a huge focus in ey childcare. We model healthy eating, provide portion guides, but no parent wants to listen when we warn them that a 90 percentile toddler of average sized parents may need their parents to keep a closer eye on portions.

A jacket potato with beans or tuna? Spaghetti Bol? Chilli? They take no time and you can put a load of veg in with them

Jacket and beans is easy.

I’m not sure how long your spag bill/chilli takes. I’m a confident cook but you can’t realistically make either of those in “no time at all”, especially if you’re adding lots of veg.

Looking at the data, it increases to 34% for those aged 10-11

@Augo

It's the same problem as for adults really, a lack of knowledge re portion size for small children. Lack of movement and we've become quite snack obsessed as a nation and as PP said, the ultra processed food rammed with all the crap stuff.

This

I have seen young children walking around supermarkets with an adult and the children are eating from Pringles tubes. The children each having a medium size tube. I'd guess the children to be younger than about 8 yrs old

It is not only what they are eating but also the portion size.

Where I live many of small children are noticeably overweight

At my sons school one of the mums (a hcp) was going crazy about the weighing of kids in reception and year 6. I'm happy for my child's statistics to be used and think it's a useful check. The children aren't weighed in front of each other and are not told their weight. Her daughter is overweight.

Can't the parents say no. Or just not buy it?

The parents buy it for themselves as well as their children. See my comment about these companies spending a fortune researching the perfect combination of crap to put into their food products to get people coming back for more.

It is an addiction. It is as simple as that.

Some people are not as easily sacked into the cycle of buying shit food for a quick pleasure buzz, but a lot of people are.

It's easy to say "just don't buy it/eat it" but its very ignorant.

These food companies need to be held to account and controlled.

@PurpleDaisies

A jacket potato with beans or tuna? Spaghetti Bol? Chilli? They take no time and you can put a load of veg in with them

Jacket and beans is easy.

I’m not sure how long your spag bill/chilli takes. I’m a confident cook but you can’t realistically make either of those in “no time at all”, especially if you’re adding lots of veg.

I make my veg chillis in a £10 pressure cooker. Done in 10-15 mins if you use frozen and tinned veg.

I think it's a lot less about food than we think, and more about exercise and an active lifestyle.

The overweight kids I know don't have great diets (mars bar for breakfast on the way to school, stuff like that) but they also are very inactive. Their parents say "they are really active" because they go to a sports club once a week but almost all of them are driven to school, don't walk anywhere, and spend the majority of their free time sat in front of a screen with a bag of crisps or whatever.

There is definitely also a genetic component.

@KirstenBlest

What’s a medium sized Pringles tube? They only come in the full long tube or those snack sized ones you sometimes see near the single packets of crisps and you get on planes.

Because they are sturdy, big boned, rugby player build etc etc. We can not use the word FAT!

I make my veg chillis in a £10 pressure cooker. Done in 10-15 mins if you use frozen and tinned veg
Excellent. We send out time poor, cash poor, energy poor, equipment poor non cooks out to buy pressure cookers. Why didn’t I think of that?

@PurpleDaisies

More PE can’t compensate for a bad diet.

Exactly. Exercise burns off surprisingly little calories.

@Ozanj

It’s the ‘tall toddlers’ that are turning into fat 4-5 year olds. Obesity causes height to be front loaded but parents, even short ones, always think they’re goint to have a six footer and so don’t do anything until the obesity shows itself by way of waistline.

That's interesting! I have a tall toddler but we are both really tall so maybe ours actually just will be?

A lot is down to portion size. The overweight kids I know have all been fed adult portion sizes since they were toddlers. Then add on too much junk food etc.

Sugar and snacks.

So, so many examples.

When I was a child a Victoria sandwich would have jam only, now it has jam and butter cream.

I got out of school, having eaten barely anything of the school dinner as it was disgusting and walked home. Now children need a snack as they are hungry after school, and are driven home.

When I visit families at home, the automatic response to make kids behave is often to give them sugary snacks to keep them quiet. Not every home but many.

And as others have said, a complete reset of what a normal child should like. If you watch this 1970s rail safety video, apart from it being traumatizing and a completely bizarre thing to show to children (how things have changed!) what strikes you is that most of the children look really really thin. But they aren't thin, they are what children are actually supposed to look like, we have just completely forgotten.

A lot of parents today with a child that size would think they needed feeding up.

I regularly see kids in buggies (so under 4s) in buggies snacking or on tablets. They are driven everywhere and walk less. Lockdown has contributed to the rise in obesity too. You can't exercise if you have no garden and with kids at home rather than playing at nursery then they end up exercising less. One of my older kids gained quite a bit of weight when schools were shut and it was exercising less and eating more because they were at home.

@PurpleDaisies

"I’m not sure how long your spag bill/chilli takes. I’m a confident cook but you can’t realistically make either of those in “no time at all”, especially if you’re adding lots of veg."

But the point is that if you have children you need to be cooking from scratch often enough that you too are a confident cook. I know some families have real poverty issues and can't afford the gas but that is not the excuse for many families you see waddling in the supermarket with the trolley piled high with ready meals and other junk.

If you cook often enough it can be quick. I made a lasagne from scratch in 15 minutes the other day (plus oven time) and I hate cooking. I left it in the oven whilst I took the kids swimming and it was ready when we got home.

@Thatldo

I believe the main problem is, mums and dads dont know anymore how to cook.As far as I am aware,cooking lessons for kids have long been abolished.I volunteered for the foodbank and it was evident,with more knowledge of nutrition and how to cook a healthy meal on low budget, there would be less food poverty.the middle class kids get ferried everywhere and dont exercise enough.

Surely, volunteering for a food bank, you'd know it's not that simple? The majority of food bank donations are tinned or longer-lasting food, not fresh healthy foods or even fridge items.

@Bathmat1

Ultra processed food. Your body burns fewer calories of it. So you'll get fat if you eat the same number of calories in highly processed chicken nuggets rather than plain chicken breast.

This is a load of rubbish a calorie is a calorie, your body doesn't know if it's from a good or bad source.

What happens here is that people eat way more of the ultra processed food because it tastes better. To eat the same amount of calories in the ultra processed chicken as you get in a chicken breast portion would drastically reduce the portion size of the processed stuff. People eat with their eyes and like to see a decent amount of food on their plate meaning that a decent portion of highly processed chicken has massively more calories than a plain chicken breast.

People have lost sight of what food portions should be like for both kids and adults.

I agree with most of the reasons here, mainly that it is ultra processed junk that you can eat beyond your calorie requirements without even thinking about it because it is so nutritionally defunct - it never gets you satisfied.

My teen ds is really into nutrition. So he eats no junk food at all. He eats liver, heart and kidney, and lots of meat. He eats at least 6 eggs a day, he drinks raw milk, he eats oranges and pineapple and raw honey for carbohydrates. You couldn't get him to eat processed vegetable oil for love nor money.

He looks like a different species to most his age. Clear skin, sparkling eyes, very lean.

But it means he literally can't eat at college. It is all junk that is available - there is nothing he would class as being nutritious there. It's fine though, don't worry, he's usually had half a dozen eggs for breakfast with bacon, he won't starve, and he's home by 3.30/4 and can have something then - the point is that it is very very difficult to eat healthily, almost impossible, in our schools, colleges and don't get me started about the crap they dare serve up to actual ill people in hospital!