To think we have lost sight of what teh correct weight for a child is

[sassysally]

All these parents have gone, outraged to the mostly national press because they don't think their child has an ounce of fat on them, and the newspapers have published them,but to me are all clearly too heavy

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Oh Ivykat, agree about the calories.

All calories are not equal.

I thought the impact of diet fizzy drinks was well documented as is the non-diet kind obviously.

Sirzy go and Google YouTube sugar the bitter truth or just Neil barnard and he explains in depth how fizzy pop has increased human size and why eating an orange is different from drinking oj

Yes bigboobie, son't fuzzy drinks make you fat, including the diet drinks ( as the sweet flavour tricks the brain into thinking a load of calories is coming, only it isn't, so you start craving carbs?)

People also used to have 'elevenses' which was a mid morning snack, normally a couple of biscuits with a drink. Some children would be given a snack after school (egbread and butter with jam or condensed milk .People definitely had snacks, though they weren't so aggressively marketed as such by the food industry.

Of course taking an apple off a tree is not the same as eating a bag of crisp but my point was that it hasn't been the case that people never used to eat between meals because they did.

What has changed over the last 60 or 70 years is what is consumed and that has depended on availability, cost and income.

I agree with the idea of letting appetite regulate what you eat, rather than rigidly sticking to 3 meals a day which may or may not coincide with when you are hungry. If you don't eat when you are hungry and instead wait for your meals chances are you will eat a lot more because you will be starving. The challenge is making sure that people don't eat empty calories between set meals but eat something nutritious and healthy and then adjust their main meals accordingly.

I didn't say people didn't eat at time between meals

What I am saying is that from the 1970s snacking as a culture has become large and with that increase people have become larger and snacking is a problem overall to the nations health, because it increases calory intake far in excess of what people realise.

If sales have increased during a ressesion and downturn then this isn't about income

TBF you said it started in the late 70's. It didn't, it was a very gradual thing.

And yes income has something to do with it as have cost and availability. It is all part of a complex situation. I would disagree that a fall income necessarily means a fall in snack foods. In some cases a packet of crisps will be substituted for a proper meal because it is cheaper. Food is also an inelastic commodity - it is one of the last things to be dropped if incomes are squeezed and some people don't make good choices when faced with a restricted income. You don't need much imagination to see that some may get to the point where it is either a bowl of broccoli or a bar of chocolate so, when everything else in their life is pretty crappy, they'll have the chocolate because it is the one treat they can still have, they don't have to cook it and it is easily available.

Part of the problem with a 'your child is fat' letter is that it is trying to point out an obvious fact without addressing the very complex situation where habit, income, cost, availability, exercise, education etc etc, have a part to play. A letter is pretty useless at helping parents deal with their individual situation and it seems, doesn't even convince people that there is a problem in the first place.

I don't know what the solution is btw. I don't think that there is just one way of sorting this out. I do think the usefulness of the letters is limited, especially when there are so many examples of people who think that is just plain wrong.

Bb do you have any type of evidence to back up your claims or is this just your opinion?

People used to eat enormous amounts of food, but most of it was not refined or processed.

Healthy diets the 1910 way

What sort of evidence are you after? Incomes are dropping (see news reports for the last 5 yrs) snack consumption is not going down, you said so yourself. People are getting fatter - again a well known fact. Everybody knows food is an inelastic commodity don't they? Basic economic theory. You buy food no matter what your income and as your income goes down so the proportion of your income spent on food goes up.

Proof that a letter isn't the answer - I refer you back to the rest of this thread. People don't take any notice of them. People who hide their head in the sand won't suddenly go 'by jove, you know I hadn't notice my child was fat! Thanks for pointing it out.' People who have noticed either don't care, don't know what to do about it and are none the wiser after a letter or are already doing something about it and don't need a statement of the bleeding obvious.

It is my opinion yes, but then so is your point about snacking only starting in the late 1970's surely? Why then - it sounds totally arbitrary? Do you have evidence?

Personally I think snacking is less of an issue than what people are eating in general and the amount of exercise they do but I think this is very very complex issue that won't be solved by letters and for which there is no one answer.

Bb yes I gave evidence earlier in this thread

You disagreed with me about income going down and snack food consumption going up, not quite sure what you mean when you said you disagred? Apart from you think people are swapping meals for chocolate but you don't give evidence for this just tell me its not difficult to come to this conclusion - thus really why I am asking do you have evidence or is this just your thoughts?

Sending someone a letter to confirm to them what they are overweight I would agree is not helpful. They probably already know they are fat and setting up help groups would be far better for people to attend.

Snacks are not the only problem, inactivity is also a large problem again with people thinking they are far more active than they are just as they can underestimate there calory intake by a thousand calories per day and wonder why they have gotten larger

I wouldn't suggest that people are swapping meals for chocolate but purchase of chocolate during economic hard times is part of the lipstick effect .

It's refined sugar that is the problem. Messes with metabolisms, but we love it. Whenever you limit it, as in the war, for example, people become healthier as they switch to fruit instead, which brings with it other nutritional benefits and is less addictive. I am pro the idea of a sugar tax.

I think that perception of sufficient exercise is out of whack now as well. I know so many parents who think that because their DS/DD does an hour of football or an hour of dance every week they are "active". Yes, they are active for that hour a week but children need an awful lot more than that in order for exercise to help control their weight and improve their fitness.

I recon that only one or two were considered overweight in my boys reception class years back, although some others were tall and slim. However surprisingly loads are massive now - fat and tall and well into pubity despite being only 10. They look like podgy teenagers. But then I hear about what they have for lunch and its utter crap, piles of it too.

I also do think there is faults with manufacturers...I watched a TV program about how much sugar was in white bread..I was shocked and swapped my DS to a diet of mostly wholemeal ...Baked beans have something like twice the sugar they used to have..

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/10716212/How-much-sugar-is-in-your-healthy-brown-and-wholemeal-bread.html. Wholemeal and brown shop brought bread can have more sugar than white, this is to disguise the taste, they even put sugar in cigarettes....

I have a bread machine and make wholemeal bread, there is no reason yo put more than an onze of sugar in an entire loaf

Thanks for sharing that Ivykaty.... I had no idea... which goes to show , I swapped my DS's diet think I was making a healthy change but it appears maybe not...

An oz? My bread maker recipes call for between 3/4 and 1 1/2 tsps

Glad I make my own now if there's that much in shop bought

Check the label. Our Hovis half-and-half doesn't have any, I think.

Sugar is part of the alchemy. It would have to be there in some form.

Sucrose fructose glucose etc under another name

I remember a thread on here about a woman who's SIL I think it was from somewhere in Europe came to stay and she posted about this woman's diet and couldn't understand why she was so slim.

SIL was eating things like chicken breast and salad with oil dressing etc and OP low fat Kellogg's shit in a box if I remember correctly. So many people just do not know what is healthy food.

Yes, I checked for -ose as well.

I thought you only needed sugar for fast-acting yeast? Paul Hollywood doesn't use any in his bread using fresh baker's yeast.

I'm upstairs now but will check label tomorrow because it'll bug me

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Google any E numbers as well as could be hidden there