To withdraw DD from being weighed at school?

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DH thinks I am making a big fuss about nothing.

I refused consent for DD to be weighed at school as I don't think its neccesary. I didn't make a fuss, just ticked the box saying that I did not give consent.

they do send mixed messages,last week my son went to a film evening at the school,they gave them a choice of a hot dog,a cheese roll and crisps or popcorn and chocolate or sweets,plus there was a tuck shop you could pay extra for.Im not saying it should of been spirulina smoothies or anythung but i dont see the need for such a crap fest.

I agree with banana not peeling, and notice none of the people defending the scheme have responded to my post about how I was sent a letter saying DD was overweight even though she wasn't according to the measurements they had taken, and that I was told this 'rounding up' to the next centile marker is routine.

Since this thread started I have looked at the official recording charts and it is true that very few centile lines are on the chart. If that is what they are doing, them it totally inaccurate and they have invented an obesity epidemic.

And ethnic groups with different forms of physical development being measured against a chart based overwhelmingly on data from white kids and then being told they have higher levels of obesity than white people is just racism and entirely unscientific.

If they actually cared about the health of the individual child (rather than capturing a general trend for government purposes) each child would have a doctor's appointment where their BMI was accurately worked out, with ethnicity, puberty and so on taken into account and doctors would ask about diet and the individual child.

This scheme is nothing like taking your baby to the health visitor, where the health visitor discusses the individual baby and gives tailored advice.

But I'm sure it keeps people giving inaccurate and spurious health advice in employment on useless schemes that almost entirely fail to engage the client group.

they have invented an obesity epidemic.

I think you just need to look down your average high street to know that's not true!

Nobody knows why people are getting bigger. Even animals are getting bigger.
Everyone getting bigger has coincided with the fat-paranoia of the 80s onwards. I would like to blame that, as I have found low fat eating to be utterly disastrous for me, but I think there are many issues at play here.

I think people live so differently now in so many ways it is impossible to know what is causing what.
there is an element of - for the first time ever poor people have routinely had enough to eat. All food is relatively cheap, carbs cheap as (ha ha ha ha) chips. It used to be the case that people who were struggling were hungry all the time. Now, no matter else they can't manage, it is very likely that the whole family manages to get something to eat every day. I think that is a good thing, but what it does mean is that averages will change because averages used to encompass a class of people who just never had enough to eat.
Also I think there is a snobbish element in this. I think that snooty people object to fat poor people on aesthetic grounds. they think poor people should be thin and tiny like the old days. not take up too much space. not get above themselves.

There is nothing invented about the epidemic!

what do you consider to be the wrong sort of food flick? It's not unanimous.

Yanbu - I won't give consent either - what a load of rubbish, my dcs are skinny - what would I be told - to feed them more? They eat a healthy diet and are never ill. A friend's dd is over weight she knows this - what will they tell her that she doesn't know already? I don't believe that parents are unaware of have a chubby child, maybe some don't know but really you don't need to weigh a child to see they are fatter than they should be ..and haven't we heard all the advice on losing weight and healthy eating before.

What evidence do they have that weighing kids improves their health?

Part of the problem is nobody seems to know what exactly we should be eating. I have been losing weight for the last 6 months and have been amazed the amount of contradictory information out there about what exactly constitutes a healthy diet.

I think most parents do try to do their best but there is a lot of confusing, and often false messages out there which doesn't help. I think the diet industry has a lot to answer for in that sense too - I was looking at a packet of weight watchers cakes the other day and the sugar content of them was awful for something that you many would assume was going to be a healthy choice.

Nestle recently had an ad campaign which was basically trying to persuade parents that their cereals were a healthy breakfast choice for children - if you look at the boxes then most of their cereals are far from healthy.

I do think the food industry needs to be much tighter regulated with regards to how products can be advertised. The traffic light system on foods is a good start but I still think more could be done.

I also think schools really do need to go back to basics with their cookery lessons and attempt to ensure that children leave school able to cook a range of good basic meals on a budget. In a sense we need to go right back to basics and start encouraging a much healthier attitude towards food together with equipping people with the knowledge to make better choices for them and their family (if they so wish of course)

That said, part of that healthy attitude towards food is understanding that there is no such thing as a 'bad' food, just ones which should be eaten in moderation as part of an overall diet.

I teach my kids to cook food, the school teach the kids to bake biscuits and cakes. I won't let them eat processed cereals for breakfast - IMO that's not food it's junk.... belongs in the same category as sweets and biscuits, fine occasionally but not a substitute for real food.

"the diet industry has a lot to answer for in that sense too -"

Definitely.
It almost doesn't matter what is in a food, it can't be good that people are being pushed to eat all the time.
Some children could eat chips 5 times a week (judging by my friends in the 70s) and be almost painfully skinny. but maybe they didn't eat between meals. Maybe cereal bars, packaged dairy things like tube yoghurts and cheese strings, etc didn't exist.
On the other hand, nobody seemed remotely scared of biscuits. They were around.
But things weren't pushed in the way they are now. There is an enormous industry trying to make every second a snack-portunity.

I have always worried about my weight and I am perhaps a bit more attuned to this but when I had children I was astonished at the alacrity with which the apparently intelligent (but naturally slim, so less cynical perhaps) women who had children with me, grabbed all that packaged stuff which starts being marketed the second your baby is 4 months. No salt, only natural sugars (whatever that means) nut free, blah blah blah, hordes of women with Orla Keily bags rustling with packaged saltless junk carbs.... everyone, nearly everyone, seems to go for it.
People stuff carbs into small children in church now! I was astonished when I saw this.

Anyway I think that excessive focusing on food (even in the name of health) = selling food = pushing more eating, pushing at times when our forebears wouldn't have considered it. Relative to this I don't see fatty bacon (for dinner or breakfast) as a problem (for instance - apart from anything else, someone has to cook it, so it is a considered occasion of eating, not a lazy habit) - so the kneejerk push to low-fat really bothers me

Also, don't forget everyone used to smoke. Do we want to use that as an appetite suppressant? No one talks about that when they talk about trends and statistics

If I were to start again with a career I would be tempted to be a nutritionist because there is so much ignorance on the subject and so much rubbish spouted.

Good post you'retoastmildred

Mainly by nutrnitironists satin

Maybe you should start again. Some good sense on the issue is long overdue.

Nobody knows why people are getting bigger.

When I get bigger, it directly correlates with increased consumption of cake, chocolate and crisps. Maybe I should write a book.

I bought some new dinner plates this week, they were way bigger than my previous set, which in turn were bigger than my last lot. I'm going to end up eating off a side plate at this rate.

Good point yourtoast. It seems to be that from a young age we are teaching children they constantly need to be eating, regular snacks and then 3 full size meals (rather than just a little and often approach), feeding children in an attempt to entertain/keep them quiet. Generally done with the best of intentions and often with food sold as 'healthy' but really when you think about it it does start the bad eating habits from a young age.

flick fat is good, especially for children - children shouldn't have a low fat diet.

SNACKING was invented in the early 1970s by the American and European food manufacturers to sell more product
We do not need snacks.
They are bad for us.

Most countries in the world do not "snack"
in fact if you map the countries with 'snacking' and the ones with obesity crises, the correlation is clear.

Once people ( re )realise that they should eat no more than three times a day and have good breaks between eating, the average waistband will stop rising.

The fact that the "diet industry" sells snack food just shows how cynically they exploit people to keep them feeling overweight and keep them paying to go to meetings and paying to buy branded products.

The stuff that is sold to kids nowadays
read the side of the packet before you buy .....

YANBU
Being weighed was very horrid for me at school.

i am astounded at the amount of people who just allow this kind of parenting by proxy through schools becuase they 'don't see the harm in it'

it is utter bullshit that should be shelved along with lunchbox monitors.

If the gov - any gov gave a rats tiny shit about children they would invest in parents and parenting, not these bullshit interventions

what with sponsorship for schools in the pipeline " Reading sponsored by Haribo" yes now go weigh yourself.

bullshit

Excellent post from you'retoastmildred. I didn't grow up in the snacking culture and find it very strange. My mother would have been astounded if I'd grazed through the fridge.

"If statistics show that a child who is found to be overweight at reception age is more likely to be obese in year 6, how has being weighed in reception helped them?

Doesn't that indicate that the scheme isn't working particularly well?

Have numbers of overweight children in Y6 decreased since the scheme started?"

You have misunderstood what the programme is. It is a screening programme. The aim is to generate information on the prevalence of childhood obesity which helps policy makers and commissioners plan future public health interventions.

Being weighed at reception and identified as overweight suggests that if that child receives some form of early intervention such as lifestyle and physical activity information (and putting it into practice) then the likelihood is that the child may not be obese in year 6 and therefore will not be an obese adult. But just being weighed twice in their school career is not going to influence their weight. However if parents opt in and allow their child to be weighed, any concerns about their weight can be addressed early through sensible, healthy lifestyle choices.

You might benefit from reading about the programme if you don't understand why it is being carried out:

www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/child_obesity

I'm glad these sort of threads crop up now and then because they reassure me that I'm doing the right thing re feeding my children. Mine have all been weighed at school and (although very tall) have all been right in the middle of the weight they should be for hight.

When at pre-school though I did worry that I was feeding them too little seeing how much just about all of the other children had in their lunch boxes. It was more than enough to feed a grown adult! They are all at primary school now, still with small lunches in comparison, they never eat it all, and have never complained of being hungry at school. They have asked/complained, why I don't but loads more (crap) in there though. Oh, and they get apple juice in the morning, milk at bedtime water the rest of the time.

When they go for tea at other people's houses, again I worry that their meals are too small at home when I see how much other children are fed. They eat their meals from a side plate (I think is plenty) not an adult dinner plate, have one sausage instead of three etc.

As I said I think I feed my children plenty but it's definitely less than everybody else I know. And I do let them snack, have puddings and eat some crap. I never force feed them though, if they don't like what's on offer they don't have to eat it.

I'm really not surprised obesity is a problem, to me, it looks like we seem to be feeding our children loads.