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.

The traditional inuit diet also has lots of carbs in it, not as many as most of others of course, but it's certainly not carb free.

Despite fruit having relatively high sugar content, it is still preferable to chocolate or sweets. It is nutritional, high in fibre, and the sugar isn't readily availble in it as it is in processed food made with refined sugar. In addition it doen't have the fat:sugar ratio of processed biscuits and chocoale which becomes addictive. I don't ever dream about apples, but I think about chocolate

I think a big problem is that while companies like Coca Cola pay lip service to the idea that fizzy, sugary drinks should be an occasional treat (but apparently an essential part of Christmas ), their entire business model is based on people continuing to glug them down at every opportunity.

Fizzy drinks, awful invention! And as if Burger King/McDonald's isn't bad enough, you now get the 'go large' option thrown at you! Where the hell did that come from and why is it offered to kids buying a standard meal?

fredfred the traditional inuit diet is high in fat, not carbs. They eat about 20% carbs due to fermenting meat, which alters the composition.
The thing is, 'lowcarb advocates' often cite the inuit diet as proof of a low carb diet being healthier. It's just an example of how human beings can adapt over a period of time to an extremely restricted diet.

Coca Cola isn't the problem

It's the people who insist on drinking it/buying it for their kids regularly, rather than occasionally.

There will always be adverts, there will always be lots of choice.

This is where personal responsibility comes into play. It's too easy to blame companies/government/food industry/school dinners etc.

'Asians are usually really slim' The ones I know seem to have similar prevalence of weight problems to everyone else.

One of the reasons we're given conflicting nutritional advice is that research in this area is very difficult to interpret, partly because it's very difficult to design well in the first place, but also because results are misrepresented or exaggerated in the places where most people access information.

Unfortunately most people still don't understand how to evaluate medical research, and even doctors don't necessarily have a good understanding of statistics. Also, reports on nutritional research frequently exaggerate what the research is actually able to prove, and misunderstandings get repeated, especially when there are ideologies involved. This is why, for example, it's easy to find hundreds of sources discussing the link between obesity and diabetes, and (less scientifically reputable) sources claiming that obesity causes diabetes, but no Cochrane reports making any such claim of causation. The evidence simply isn't there because it would be extraordinarily difficult to design research that would demonstrate obesity as causative of diabetes.

On the other hand, there is plenty of reputable evidence to suggest that weight loss in obese patients with type 2 diabetes improves HbA1c results. So it's worthwhile for already-diagnosed obese diabetes patients to try to lose weight, even though we don't know whether diabetes caused the obesity or vice versa.

Apparently this is difficult to understand. However, approximately 60% of the population of the UK is overweight or obese, and approximately 6% of the population has diabetes. These 6% are not necessarily all overweight or obese (although a large majority may be). So in fact the vast majority of overweight and obese people are not diabetic. Even if we look at just the obese, that's approximately 25% of the population. Even if those 6% of diabetics were all clinically obese (which they're not), that's still three quarters of obese people who aren't diabetic.

When you look at it that way, it should be harder to argue the simplistic case that being overweight or obese causes diabetes.

But no one is arguing that being overweight or obese CAUSES diabetes. It does significantly increase the RISK of diabetes, although there are obviously other risk factors too.

Anecdotally, I can remember sitting in a diet-for-type-2-diabetes clinic in which my DH was the only person there with diabetes who was not overweight. It is hard not to conclude that there is some link.

*Coca Cola isn't the problem

It's the people who insist on drinking it/buying it for their kids regularly, rather than occasionally.*

Except coca cola would go out of business if it wasn't available all over the place and drunk in huge quantities.

Until the 1970's there wasn't lots of choice or availability. Far fewer people were over weight. They didn't have amazing will power. They just had to eat the food that was available.

People are fat because high calorie food tastes nice and it is cheap and easy to buy.

My point is any way of eating which is natural is fine - now that might be lots of beans and veg or it might be veg and fish or it might be lots of kidneys, liver, animal fat but the one thing all those have in common is it is healthy whole foods. Therefore anyone who is vegan or paleo or whatever - they are all on the same side - the right side, the healthy side and in the other corrner is the 60%+ and growing of people who are overweight and unhealthy and eat badly in the UK.

People are fat because high calorie food tastes nice and it is cheap and easy to buy

No. People are fat because they choose to consume it, in greater quantities than they should.

I and many people I know love many high calorie foods, but again it's about moderation.

No-one gets fat from watching adverts or walking down a supermarket isle.

Plenty of people get fat because they consume too much of these foods and exercise too little.

If more people took responsibility for what they put into their own bodies, instead of blaming the food industry for selling it, I'm sure it would in part lower obesity rates.

But no one is arguing that being overweight or obese CAUSES diabetes. It does significantly increase the RISK of diabetes, although there are obviously other risk factors too.

Lots of people argue that being overweight (or overeating, or eating too much sugar) causes diabetes. I think it's a form of victim-blaming or fat-shaming.

But even if we're talking about risk, we could just as easily suggest that being overweight might be an indication that someone already has diabetes. In other words, being diabetic might increase the risk of being overweight. It's just as reasonable a conclusion from the evidence we have. Weight gain is usually observed before symptoms of diabetes, but we still don't know which comes first; we only know what we observe first.

Anecdotally, I can remember sitting in a diet-for-type-2-diabetes clinic in which my DH was the only person there with diabetes who was not overweight. It is hard not to conclude that there is some link.

Agreed. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing, especially when the evidence is anecdotal.

The next step is to ask what kind of link (if any) there might be. So you have observed that many people with diabetes are overweight. Your husband is not overweight. Therefore some people with diabetes are not overweight, but the majority are. Meanwhile, the vast majority of overweight people are not diabetic (which you don't initially observe, because those people are not at the diabetes clinic, but you can look up the statistics). If you think there may be a causal link, you might reasonably conclude that diabetes often causes weight gain, rather than the other way around.

For the record, I'd be perfectly happy to accept that weight gain causes diabetes, if anyone ever comes up with evidence that would satisfy the Cochrane reviewers... Until then, I think it's important to challenge the assumptions that seem to inform some of the fat-shaming I've seen...

25% of population is obese sorcha?

1in 4 children is now overweight or obese before they start school in west of scotland

"but no Cochrane reports making any such claim of causation."

Because that's not what Cochrane reports do. They don't assess risk factors and they aren't epidemiological.

"The main purpose of The Cochrane Collaboration is to develop systematic reviews of the strongest evidence available about healthcare interventions." So they tell us which treatments work best on existing problems. Based on a rigorous methodology that summarises all evidence to date. They don't have the main purpose of reviewing evidence to decide what risk factors to worry about.

This Cochrane review has no trouble taking it as given that obesity is a risk factor for T2 diabetes.

A meta-analysis & systematic review linking obesity with dementia.

If more people took responsibility for what they put into their own bodies, instead of blaming the food industry for selling it, I'm sure it would in part lower obesity rates.

That might make sense at a personal level. I have never heard anybody blame their own weight problems on the food industry but perhaps some people do.

At a public health level it is useless.

Tons of people particularly on MN blame the food industry and keep going on about 'The men who made us fat' and suchlike. I assume because while they're doing that, they don't have to take personal responsibility.

At a public health level, it would make a massive difference if people took responsibility for their own food intake and exercise.

Bumblymummy 'For the person who mentioned that her daughter has joint problems and therefore struggles to walk fast/run for exercise. Could she not cycle/swim instead? Less impact on joints.'

Thanks -- yes, she does swim, but only once, maybe twice, a week because of distance to the pool. She isn't the world's steadiest cyclist either.

No-one gets fat from watching adverts or walking down a supermarket isle.

that's clearly not the cause of any particular person being overweight.

but it is the explanation of why nearly half of us are obese. I think we need to distinguish between individual responsibility and choices, on the one hand, and massive changes to the availability of different foods.

It's quite sad really. Most of the countries pictured in that article are poorer or significantly poorer than we are, yet eat better. I think it's actually quite complicated. Comparing india and italy, with their long tradition of eating lots of veggies, to britain is probably not going to work out for us. Part of it is the food culture. Food is obviously improving in this country, we just have a long way to go.

At a public health level, it would make a massive difference if people took responsibility for their own food intake and exercise.

is that really the answer? Are people in italy more responsible and do they get more exercise?

They eat better but I'll bet my last penny they also eat far less in those poorer countries.

We're not far off America with the super size everything and takeaways/coffee shops taking up huge parts of our city centres.

Even if we ate rubbish for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as long as we recognise what a portion should look like, stopped snacking between meals and took enough exercise, I'd say the likelihood of us becoming obese would be minimal.

Ok we wouldn't feel too great, but still I'm sure we'd all be slimmer.

This is why I think it's too simple to blame the food industry rather than over consumption by individuals.

Regarding coca cola causing obesity, it is believed to be a major factor in rising obesity rates in Mexico (actually the worlds 'fattest' country), due to aggressive marketing and widespread availlability.
In fact ,obesity rates rise round the world when westernised diets become increasingly popular.
Of course individual responsibility needs to be encouraged but the food industry does play a role.

Obesity is a problem everywhere - and it is a growing fastest in poorer countries.

It makes as much sense to make the obesity problem purely an issue of personal moral strength and self discipline as it does to say it doesn't matter if people drink or smoke too much because it is their personal choice and we have a free market.

Obesity, smoking and alcohol and drug abuse have consequences for us all, whether directly or not. If, for example, you can reduce consumption of sugary drinks by children by regulating what can be sold in schools, we all benefit.

Exactly merrymouse. The government has taken steps to regulate the tobacco industry, while at the same time encouraging individuals to give up. Smoking rates have dropped by half, so obviously a 2 way approach does work.