To not be surprised our kids are so fat

[Babycham1979]

When they're fed utter crap like this;

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-2957301/What-school-lunches-look-like-world.html

No wonder obesity rates are so high,mand no wonder so many British children are incredibly picky when they're fed processed shite as is evident in these pictures. Imagine some of the pickiest UK children being handed a bowl of miso soup, or prawns, or plantain?!

Is the issue budgetary, or culture? Either way, we're failing our children.

Our school (primary) is very healthy and cooked fresh. They offer jacket potatoes salad or sandwich alternatives to the hot dinner and fresh fruit salad is always on offer for pudding.

The foods children are fed as school dinners are on the whole foods we know that children will eat. For most it is probably reflective of the types of food they are fed at home.

I do think things are much better now though and although the meals aren't perfect by any means compared to what was being served even 5 years ago things have come a long way.

How much is spent on meals per child in the other countries?

When biscuits are still cheaper than fruit...
But ultimately it's giving kids junk to save time/because it's a faff for some parents to bother feeding nutritious food. I don't believe it for a second that it's because parents can't cook. I just think they cba

It's sad

There's always been a few fat kids.

The doctor on that Michael Mosely programme made the best point - she said she didn't know why we weren't all obese
and that willpower levels were incredibly high given how much we are surrounded by food perfectly targeted to put on weight.

A lot of very cheap food is a perfect combination of sugar and fat to feed our addiction.

We should all be utterly enormous given how cheap this food is - look at Poundland - 6 bags of crisps for a pound, 5 chocolate bars.

Who wouldn't buy their children that if they had any budgetary considerations.

I bought grasped for £1.89 the other day - I could have had 12 bags of crisps for that. Now I don't think like that, but only because my food budget is large enough not to have to.

And money is just one consideration. Look at the availability of this super cheap sugar. It's everywhere unless you live in a cave.

Firstly, I don't feel its school lunches that are mainly responsible - the main thing that I can tell has changed that has the most impact is the increase of eating between meals that has become more common in the last few decades. People never used to have the money to eat between meals, yet they weren't having bowls of miso soup when they did eat either.

There have been some changes in average physical activity but I believe what you put in your mouth has the biggest impact overall.

But to answer your question, its cultural, and then budgetary, because those foods would be cheaper to obtain if they were more prevalent in our culture.

I think we've got an obesity crisis because:

1. We spoon mushed-up everything into babies at the earliest opportunity.
2. We teach children not to listen to their hunger/fullness and make a big fuss about eating 'everything'
3. Portion sizes
4. Some children don't play outside much anymore

School dinners were always inedible, since the beginning of time. Parents don't have time to cook from scratch. I think this country's obsession with food is an unhealthy one.

grapes

Oh this drives me nuts, the bloody packed lunch police, my kids eat everything, fruit, veg, meat, fish , sweets, crisps fizzy pop , the lot and neither are an ounce over weight, on the skinny side if anything, they just eat what they are given, no complaints, but they do eat proper home made food an none of them would want to eat fast food because they are used to proper food, however I was pulled in the the headmistress once for giving kids jam sandwiches in their packed lunch , so what they are my kids il feed them how I see fit, and told her to concentrate on the kids who really had weight problems, this one rule for all is ridiculous, currently my 11 year old is having mini eggs for breakfast!!

I think it's more to do with the fact that parents now think their children can't go longer than 2 hours without having a snack. We didn't snack as children, and it was really, really rare that my 2 (18&20) got a snack between meals. Now kids can't even survive a trip round Tesco's without eating half a French stick!

Just to back up my point about exercise - to lose a pound of fat through exercise, you have to run more than one marathon in terms of miles.

To lose a pound of fat takes one week if creating a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day.

Some children eating cakes and crisps and sweets will be eating 500 calories a day in snacks alone.

Cut out snacking in between meals and that pound is gone in one week.

Simpler than running 30 miles, and more easy to achieve.

What's with the generalization? My kids aren't fat. I don't know any who are.

And fwiw, I think melon and sweetcorn are excellent choices of fresh veg.

I think that cultural and budgetary issues can be an issue but strongly believe that food manufacturers are misleading the general public. The information on products is printed so small and the information is very hard for an ordinary person like me to decipher.

A woman I worked with went to Sainsburys recently and bought a cold pasta salad for her lunch. I think it was low fat but can't remember. We worked out that there was 9 teaspoons of sugar in it and it was tiny. A 2 litre bottle of coke contains 53 teaspoons of sugar.

I am actually susprised that we are not all bigger! I saw a woman from the WHO on the telly recently who said the UK and Ireland were fast becoming the fattest nations in Europe and if it continued consideration would have to be given to introducing a sugar tax.

I consider myself reasonably healthy and generally cook from scratch and yet it took my sister to tell me that 4 grams of sugar equals one teaspoon of sugar. She told me this a few years ago was in my early 40's and honestly would have considered myself interested and educated in food. Obviously not!!!

I think that the British school lunch in the article is fine! Jack pot with baked beans, frankfurter & corn on cob followed by melon and the stupid DM says there's no fresh veg! Jack pot on its own is a good source of vit B & C and fibre.

That's what I was trying badly to say MrsGosling.

Go into any tesco express/corner shop near a school before 8.30 or after 3.15

FULL of kids buying family sized chocolate bars, bottles of coke, energy drinks, crisps, multipacks of biscuits.

This obsession with clearing your plate

Kids not playing out anymore for any decent length of time

Lazy, over fed kids is why we have a obesity crisis

My son will never be overweight on the half a tiny jacket potato they serve for lunch at his school!

My friend was training for the London Marathon around the time that the office was filled with people's leftover celebrations and quality street etc from Christmas (this was years ago btw)

We worked out how many Weight Watchers points her marathon burned up (because that was the programme she was on at the time), and then how many Celebrations she could eat with those extra points.

The amount was 54. So for running a marathon, she could eat 54 celebrations.

Imagine that 10-14 days around Christmas, when the Celebrations are out...its easy to have 4 or 5 of them a day when they are just sitting there and you have a nice coffee on the go.

So in that time, what with all the other increased food and booze consumed at Christmas, how many people are also eating a whole London Marathon run worth of chocolate as well? They aren't even that nice!

I have one fat kid and one very skinny kid - they are twins. They eat the same meals as each other every day. Some of it must be down to genetics.

I think the problem now is we are able to choose our own food. So wandering round tescos express you will get kids buying huge bars of chocolate whereas when I were a lass (I feel I'm channelling the 4 yorkshiremen here) we had to ask for our sweets. Up to the counter 10p worth of black jacks and a quarter of kola cubes or sherbert pips. Now there is no interaction and no shame in buying armfuls of junk.

Very interesting pictures. I'm not sure how much you can take from it though.

We all know there's a huge range in school dinners across the UK so it's reasonable to assume the same is true for other countries too. For example, that Brazilian school dinner plate must be from a very nice private school. I've spent a lot of time working in various places around Brazil and a more typical school lunch for those at the very large poor end of the population would be rice and beans with maybe a few bits of gristly, fatty meat and, if you're very lucky, a half rotten piece of fruit. That's if they even have lunch as most state school have a morning session for half the pupils, send them home and receive the afternoon pupils after lunch.

US and UK are obviously among the fattest countries in the world - but so are Spain, France and Greece which were featured among the healthier plates.

The French plate at the bottom had a large portion of rice, white bread AND a doughnut - all for one child's meal. That's a lot of carbohydrate. I know lunch is their main meal but I wouldn't be holding it up as some kind of lofty ideal.

I saw those pictures and thought "I want to live in Brazil" that meal looks deeeeeelish.

The obesity problem is not being fuelled by baked potato and melon, but by the fact that crisps and mars bars are seen as "a snack" when they contain more calories and a heck of a lot more crap than the baked potato.

Those comparing calorie intake with outgoing forget you use up calories simply by being awake.

The marathon runner will be training daily. My friend is currently marathon training and updates Facebook with photos of her post run meals and its massive amounts of food

There is way too much unhealthy food about and way too many parents giving their kids crisps and chocolate every single day of the week and then giving them chips/breaded chicken/burgers for dinner. Too much focus on convenience and not enough on what is actually a healthy meal.

There also seems to be an obsession with giving kids sweet sugary nonsense from the earliest age possible and if you object to this you are being 'mean' to your child or they're 'missing out'. It comes up all the time on threads on MN. "YABU not to give your 1yo chocolate/ice cream/crisps they will grow up with an eating disorder!"

Thefairycaravan, I couldn't agree more! The amount of times I hear other parents pleading, 'oh, but s/he's hungry!'. So what? Moderate feelings of hunger are a perfectly bodily function; it doesn't mean you're about to die, just wait until the next meal.

So many people's response seems to be to instantly feed their offspring the nearest snack that's to hand. What's wrong with waiting? Doesn't that teach numerous valuable lessons?