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.

Gaining muscle increases you BMR as you need calories to maintain these muscles, this is why body builders have so much protein to try to balance the calories in and out and to stop the body cannibalising muscle. No amount of exercise will stop obesity if you constantly go above your BMR. With children it is the basic principle of energy in and energy out, a child should not need a biscuit after a mile walk. One of the most damaging things with children is emotional eating and using food as a reward for good and bad and that can be evident if the parents also suffer from the same habits.
As a child my rewards were records from woolworths, in fact I would never think about buying a burger or getting the bus when it could buy me a single.

What is the cause? They eat too much (and the wrong foods).

IceBeing
Doing more exercise doesn't solve the problem.

Eating less doesn't solve the problem.

In that case, how do people ever manage to reduce their weight?

As for your point about exercising not solving the problem, you are contradicting information in the link you posted about those with the variant obesity gene and faulty ghrelin levels. In the article, exercise is suggested as a means to help combat the genetic issue you raised:

...we know that ghrelin (and therefore hunger) can be reduced by exercise like running and cycling, or by eating a high-protein diet.

www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0713/15072013-How-obesity-gene-triggers-weight-gain-Batterham

In my opinion obesity is high because food is relaltively cheap and readily available. Never before in history has so much food been affordable or so convenient to buy, cook and eat. Even on a low income it is perfectly possible to be able to afford far more food than is needed. Combine this with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and it's a disaster!

lol at walking a mile making you feel hungry...theres no hope if that's the case.

I ran 16 miles on sunday and couldn't eat much for the rest of the day.....my garmin said I'd used 1847 calories,and I already had about 1500 of my everyday calories to use. no way could I. I always feel THIRSTY after exercise,and did as a child after playing out. its often said thirst is mistaken as hunger.

and exercise WILL help with weightloss. it raises metabolism meaning you burn calories faster for hours afterwards,as well as using stored glycogen as energy. what you replace that with.....well,its personal choice

my boys will do parkrun with me tomorrow and get a bottle of water afterwards. that's it. til we get lunch later on. they will be ready for that lunch and wont care what it is......they will eat it because they are hungry,properly hungry,not just a bit peckish. so this is my opportunity to serve new foods/foods they might not be keen on. they will just eat it and enjoy it.

its 3 miles tho....according to this thread/other parents, 3 miles and no snacks equates to child abuse!

As for genetics. Yes, we are all differently programmed and have different body types, some may be naturally heavier than others, but only to a certain degree. Nobody's genetic make-up causes them to be naturally obese! (genuine medical conditions excepted)

I agree with people saying that thirst is often mistaken for hunger. I drink about 6-7 pints of water.

Actually, having just googled 'How to control ghrelin levels', the majority of research points towards exercise.

really? ghrelin levels can be controlled by exercise? that's not going to be a popular solution then!

would explain why my marathon training is leaving me with no appetite.

Has anyone here said 3 miles is tantamount to child abuse, 26point2?

I've said my daughter struggles to walk several miles, or to run at all, because her joint problem makes it painful. Pushing her to do it regardless -- yes, I suppose that might verge on child abuse. Allowing her to loll around doing nothing would also be really bad for her.

So we trundle slowly round short, flat walks, burning off bugger all, I should think, and working up a nice outdoor appetite all the same.

yeah as I said up thread... OTHER PARENTS are waiting at the finishing line with food ...food to be consumed fully,at once,in case the poor darlings expire. then on THIS thread its apparently normal for some people to walk a mile and be immediately hungry again. its all very worrying. disibilities excepted. obviously

Ultimately it is the parent/s responsibility to ensure their children eat healthily. However, junk food advertising targeted at children, parent/s who have little knowledge of cooking fresh food and those who are depressed and struggling are all factors in the increasing obesity of children.

26 good luck with the marathon...

Heard this being discussed on Radio 4 yesterday ...extract from transcript below....

Porter
So let’s be clear about the marathon runners. They’re already doing far more than they need to do from a health benefit, is there a level at which, in terms of a weekly training schedule, that you might worry about people from a heart point of view in terms of them doing too much?

Sharma
Again the studies suggest now that clearly that some people who exercise very hard may run into trouble later on, they develop atrial-fibrillation later on, they develop scarring in the heart and even excessive furring up of the blood vessels.

Hope link works...
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052j57z

But at least you don't feel hungry....

(And actually agree with the no snacks, controlling diet...and some exercise...but seeing as DP and an old work colleague (both used to be regularly runners) have both needed knee operations - I think exercise is like food - everything in moderation...)

Yeah, lots of conflicting advise out there. Thankfully most of us are able to be sensible! And most of the 3,500 doing vlm alone will be absolutely fine, lol can you imagine how many marathons worldwide would be stopped if people scare Mongered over all these 'studies'!?? Thank heavens for common sense!

Exercise doesn't have to take the form of marathon running. Of course that is an extreme that only a few people want to commit to.
But how many people even do the recommended minimum level of exercise per day? 10,000 steps (4-5 miles) walking per day.
Here are the recommended levels of physical activity for children www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/physical-activity-guidelines-for-young-people.aspx
At least 60 minutes of physical activity per day.

School meals only account for one meal a day, they are not much of a problem even if they sometimes have odd combinations. My kids were amused and baffled by a vegetable curry being served with mashed potatoes, baked beans, cabbage and sweetcorn. To be fair the other option was pork chops and there are only a handful of vegetarian children in a school of 30 kids, so no harm they still enjoyed it.

We are vegan at home, our school can't cater for vegans which is fine. We have many allergy considerations at school so I don't dare send a packed lunch as we use a lot of nuts at home and I'm worried about cross contamination.

I think obesity is linked to too many thinks to have a sole cause for each person. Genetics, excercises, understanding of ingredients, portion size. After becoming very ill a few years ago I taught myself about food, ingredients, nutrition, labelling the whole shebang. I became vegan, I've been coeliac since I was 16 so I've never really eaten a lot of bread or cake. I think right now we are very healthy and we all feel good for it, my husband is vegan, pescetarian at work and the kids are vegetarian. We eat so much Indian, Thai, Greek and African dishes as they veganise very easily. We also walk everywhere as I don't drive.

I think education is key I love Michael Pollans advice he advocates eating products with as few ingredients as possible and food great grandmas would recognise and Michael Moseley who advices we move more especially before we eat. Easy simple advice.

Main thing is though not to blame people, some folk just need a bit of help.

There's one other thing, for which I always get flamed on here

Humans are getting taller very fast, particularly in Northern Europe. Children grow in different ways - and puppy fat is a thing. I've known several kids, now tall & strapping twenty-somethings, who were obese during their school years. Some people just grow 'out' before growing 'up'. It's always been so. My suspicion is that some of these people, if put on a reducing diet while growing, will end up shorter & smaller than their biology intended.

Few parents would want to literally restrict their children's growth through inadequate feeding. Trouble is, I don't know how you differentiate the 'growing randomly' child from the plain lardy. I bet some do know how, though, with experienced eyes.

My children will be going to the local private school soon. They serve one homemade meal (cottage pie, curry) etc which have actually won awards and were heavily praised during the last inspection. They do have a proper pudding some days and fruit other days. There is no choice. It's amazing how fussy the children are when they start the school and how they eat everything on their plate when they leave. Sports are also heavily pushed with longer school days as every child is expected to take part in an after school club (and some must be sporty). I can think of 1 child in that school who is obese and she is seriously obese so possibly has other issues. i do realise that there are probably social-economic issues at play here as well but I do think that this system does instill good habits.

I think it's the culture in this country for " kids food" that needs to be highlighted.

At home I try to cook from scratch with a few treats, and school dinners seem ok to me but when you are out, unless you take packed lunches you get high sugar low nutrient stuff sold to you as healthy kids food

For example I took my kids to morrisons cafe the Kids lunchbox comprised the following:

White bread ham sandwich
Packet of chocolate animals
Apple juice
Yoghurt
Apple grape bag

When we got home I used Mfp to calculate the sugar content. It was over 100g. Over 20g in the juice alone.

These threads are always the same. Slim and active posters with slim and active childlen talk in the third person about...those fat people. They know everything about them and their lives.
The thread could be interesting if people with weight issues posted.
It is a bit like the threads about the poor, when posters type from their comfortable and warm houses and have plenty of clever solutions.

And it is funny that so many clever posters believed the DM.
Like the Brazilian mum who doesnt recognize the brazilian school meal, ditto here i don't recognize the Spanish meal either!

I think many of our children are stressed, and that they're using food as a coping mechanism. The easy availability of high calorie food makes the effects of this worse than it would have been a generation ago, and maybe more of them are more stressed than their parents/grandparents were as children? They have less physical freedom, more schools stress, their parents are (more? as?) likely to be under financial stress wrt housing costs and costs of living.

The meals at the school i work in are nutritious and balanced meals. Chicken and veg pie with 2 veg and potatoes. Shepherds pie and veg, pasta and salad or jacket potatoes. Chips only served once a week. Always fruit on offer or yoghurt swell as puddings with custard.

Skinny I agree - when DD1 was small I used to just try and give her small portions of adult food..avoid the everything with chips that was standard children's menu fare... (they do seem to have got slightly better though in the last 10 yrs or so -slightly more choice and I have given up to an extent altogether now with DD2 - but then we don't eat at places like that very often)
Anyway the problem I found that if you asked for a small adult dish (not something that would be difficult/wasteful to do -like half a steak - just say a smaller portion of pasta/salad) they kept pushing me toward the children's menu ...
I once asked in an independent pub restaurant for a small roast beef dinner (when she was 2) - they did it (one roast potato, 3 carrot slices etc, small slice of beef ) but said they 'had' to charge adult price (£10 a head) ...I've never been back...
And an independent cafe I asked for a jacket potato for her - just to give her half (at least someone else could eat the other half ...otherwise it would end up in the bin) but I'd happily pay for a full one and they refused... ...she ended up with the whole jacket which she ate a tiny amount of...

Are those primary aged children captain? What about secondary.... Anyone know the menu at secondary these days?

When my older dc were at upper school, 3 tier system here, it was a canteen which offered either baguettes or pasta pots.