If you're poor and you have boys, read this.

[user1477282676]

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/11/obesity-soar-boys-girls-poorer-homes-deprived-backgrounds-overweight-2020

I am sorry if that sounds offensive. But I am so, so angry about the state of things right now in terms of inequality in the UK (and the world!) and I have started another thread along the same lines...but this one is slightly different.

According to this article in the Guardian, obesity among boys from the most financially strapped families is going to be rising whilst obesity in wealthy children will fall.

How is this even a thing? We know what schools do in their attempts to "educate". They weigh, they police lunch boxes...but that doesn't fix anything it would seem!

I am so cross that children...and it would seem boys especially, are going to be suffering.

If my kids dad didn't pay maintenance we'd be in an awful position as I'd be completely reliant on benefits. These are the things that we would not be able to afford (I know because we were stony broke for half of last year!)

• basic decent quality meat
• swimming lessons/cubs/scouts etc
• school subsidised sports clubs
• equipment for sports activities e.g. uniform, trainers, football boots. Decent shoes/trainers suitable for long walks.
• we would have to cut down on fruit/nuts etc
• wouldn't be able to run car to get kids to activities (too far to walk/rural area)
• all the little things that I use as incentives to get them to move…wouldn't be there…the trip to the cafe to choose a cake/icecream after a really long walk etc (yes I know you shouldn't use food as a reward but they are skinny anyway!)

Basically it would be less quality food and less 'fun' stuff, and a lot of the fun stuff involves activities. And more of our time would be spent walking because we had to e.g. supermarket, bus stop to wait for yonks for bus to school, to get places for general life rather than for enjoyable activities. Which means that the elder ones would be less likely to do it, more likely to stay at home etc. Watching TV/playing a video game costs very little. Doing stuff costs a lot. E.g. I do running- a supposedly 'free' activity- but at times I've had to stop because my trainers have been shot and I haven't been able to afford new ones.

Half shell- we're poor. We don't have a tumble dryer, can't afford to run one. Ditto radiators, they're on bare minimum.

We are gaining weight because i have a small fridge, no freezer, and a crap oven. I have to shop everyday, which is expensive, and cooking is a nightmare. In my oven a baked potato takes two hours (no microwave). When the kids are starving chips from the chippy is quicker and easier.

I am educated, from a 'good' background (boarding school)

Ds dad left when I was pregnant and I was utterly broke, reliant on social housing and benefits. I was worried, stressed, scared and felt overwhelming guilt. Both our diets nose dived, because to source ingredients ans cook from scratch when I felt stretched so thinly already was just too much for me to do.

I went back to work when ds was 2, and I now have a good income, ds is privately educated and our diets are on the whole organic, healthy food. That said, whenever I am overwhelmed or stressed, our diet takes a nose dive again.

I think the link between mental health, poverty and diet is incredibly close.

For the record, ds loves fruit and veg and isn't keen on chips. That said, he has weird phases where if he was passed a fruit bowl he would say he didn't like pears / apples / whatever - because that week he didn't fancy them. Doesn't mean he doesn't know what they are, or isn't comfortable wth them, more that he's a fussy bugger who's tastes change by the millisecond

Poorer people have hard lives and are on the breadline, struggling to pay bills, sometimes living in very poor accommodation. Sometimes the only fun things they can afford are sweet treats, fried food etc.

Wealthier people can afford to go out to the cinema, eat out a couple of times a week, go to the zoo etc. etc.

So poorer people end up eating a lot of very calorific food because it's very often the only enjoyable treat they can regularly afford.

People always express astonishment that low income families experience obesity. They say that it's total rubbish that healthy diets are unaffordable for poor people. It's not, though.

When you're really poor, it's not just the food itself that you have to budget for. You probably don't have a well equipped kitchen. You probably don't have a stock of herbs and spices and so on. You probably don't have a car and have to transport your shopping home some other way, so the prospect of lugging bags of lentils and potatoes and vegetables and so on isn't a fun one. You probably pay for your electricity and gas via pre pay metres and have to be very careful about how much you use. You're tired and stressed and unhappy (poverty is exhausting, anxiety inducing and miserable). Given the choice between 4 99p microwavable ready meals that will take 3 minutes each to cook and give you the instant reward that comes from a fat/ calorie/ sugar/ salt loaded meal, or spending hours cooking something very healthy from scratch (probably requiring equipment and flavourings you don't have and lots of time in an oven or on a hob), what the hell do you expect people to pick?

Sorry my comment was worded poorly , i felt that comment was daily maily, i.e the suggestion that all poor children have inadequate or no warm clothing,

yes kids can 'play out' and we are fortunate that they do round our way, in summer nearly all day. But it doesn't stop them being obese judging by the appearance of some of them. Maybe that just isn't enough.

I also think this is to do with the more limited sports activities available at state schools (especially now they are cash strapped) and the extra cost to parents of things like D of E, after school sports clubs and away days.

What did you do at the weekend?
DS went swimming and we went for a long walk in the country.

Swimming is expensive.
Access to safe outdoor environments is easier if you live in a safe, quiet place.

The health of the poorer in society has always been worse than rich people.

It's far more than diet.

They quite obviously dont play out in the way previous generations did, my generation was probably the last and im not yet 30.

We all know the facts about food and poverty.

But why just the boys!?

I don't think it's all down to sexism....as in girls being taught to watch their figures. There must be more to it than that.

George Orwell:

"And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips!"

The price of chips has changed, and cheap high-calorie foods make the poor more likely to be obese than underfed - but aside from that, it still holds true.

Cancelly yes and it's wrong that a large bar of chocolate is a pound whilst an ordinary single serve bar is 70p or about that. Of course many people will buy a big one.

I live just off a main road where the pupils from five local secondary schools congregate to catch busses. The local news agents and small supermarkets do a booming trade in junk food and fizzy drinks from these teens. From my observations it's almost exclusively the boys who are boarding their bus clutching a giant can of energy drink, a large packet of jelly sweets and a pasty (for example). I don't know if it's fear of gaining weight, not being as hungry as boys or not wanting to be seen pigging out in public which stops the girls from following suit but the boys just seem to be consuming an awful lot of crap food.

I must add that this isn't by any means a deprived area, and few of the boys I see with food are visibly overweight. However I can see how if boys are spending their own money on crap, then getting more crap food at home without doing much exercise the weight would pile on.

An important think to remember is that it's not just meals. I have experience of this. When you have no money and you're feeling miserable, what is a cheap, easily accessible way to treat your children and make life a little happier for a short time? If you're poor you can't treat you and kids to an expensive trip out or toy, so you go for £1 sweets and junk food.

Yes but why just boys Sordid?

Assuming you can cook a baked potato in the microwave assumes you have one (see really's post above).
The cheapest food in pence per calories is biscuits. Salad is the most expensive. Children need to not be hungry i.e. they need to take in enough calories to be full.

Someone who knows how to make a lentil casserole and walk everywhere can be just as poor as someone who eats chips daily

But these both take time and energy - if you work long hours, particularly if that is a manual role, then the chances are you will have neither the time nor the inclination to walk everywhere or cook a meal that requires shopping for and preparing fresh ingredients rather than digging something out of the freezer. It's possible to eat well on a small budget, but with that small budget often comes a lot of other restrictions as well.

I wish this thread would steer back to the mai point. That it's BOYS who are most at risk from obesity in the next 5 years. BOYS. From lower socio economic backgrounds.

Boys. Why?

Halfshell
'They miss out on warm dry clothes and homes' hmm have the poor collectively forgotten how to use the washing line, radiator or tumble dryer....hmm yes on topic, i think the cheaper to buy shit in bulk culture has to change.

If people can't afford to put the heating on (and plenty can't), they certainly can't afford to run a tumble dryer.

I lived on a council estate for a long time, in a deprived area with many families who had been out of work for generations. By which I mean that the children in the family had not experienced a parent or a grandparent being in work, ever.

All it takes is for one generation to not cook, and to buy cheap junk food. That's all you need for their children to grow up thinking that's how things are done, and that cooking is expensive, difficult, and not for the likes of us. So they look for the cheapest stuff that they know how to cook, which is usually a big bag of chips for £1. Or a Tesco value ready meal for £1. When I first met my late husband, his go-to meal for him and his DS was a tin of value chicken soup (30p) plus an entire white loaf (25p) between the two of them. That was their main meal. That was what they could afford, and that he felt confident making.

Every time I see people saying "They could just learn to cook, it's cheaper to make meals from scratch" I feel like banging my head on the wall, because there is no understanding there of the real issues.

Some families keep their boys in because they perceive playing out as unsafe (as indeed it is in some areas). Some of these will have e.g. older primary school children letting themselves in under pain of not going out - so they do not get any exercise playing after school - as parents are working longer than school hours.

Many families will also expect that girls do the shopping (walking to the shops) or the housework, not the boys.

So if siblings come home from school on their own, and neither sex is playing out, but the girls are walking extra distances to the shops and cleaning the house, the girls are getting more exercise.

Not sure why boys in particular, but I think some of it is that it is more 'acceptable' to be large. Large can mean muscles and strength. Boys can look like rugby players when actually they can't even run across the playground.

So poorer people end up eating a lot of very calorific food because it's very often the only enjoyable treat they can regularly afford

This has to be a lot of it, because a lot of the other reasons mentioned by alltouchedout don't really stack up.

The number of people who are obese probably far outweighs the number of people with little money and no transport who only have access to takeaways and convenience stores.

Herbs and spices aren't really expensive. One or two days of egg or beans on toast instead of a takeaway will free up enough money to buy a basic starter set as long as you don't buy schwartz jars and get own brand or the cheap Asian branded packs.

Egg or beans on toast is healthy, filling, cheap, doesn't take much in the way of equipment, fuel or cooking skill. Cheap healthy cooking doesn't have to take hours or loads of fuel, skill or ingredients. If I was tired and hungry and wanted something quick, I would have something like this. You can get it all from any shop for a lot less than a takeaway.

I can't imagine 99p ready meals being particularly nice or make people fat either - they're tiny and don't usually have that many calories for a main meal.

I'm not sure I understand the takeways and fizzy pop argument either. To me on a decent income, it seems quite an expensive way to eat. But yet people with no money are saying they eat like this because it's all they can afford .

It's because carbs fill you up and are cheap. And because if you fry them they are tasty.

And because it is cheaper to get a chicken McFilth Burger for your kids than cook a dinner (and because a lot of people can't afford fuel, let alone ingredients, and the very poor are often in B&B's and can't cook even if they wanted to,)

Astoria I was in the Co-op earlier.
(my only food shop for 14 miles...)
A pack of value choc chip cookie biscuits was 28p
A bag of pears was £1.75
Apples were £3.25 for 6 (pink lady, only ones they had)
For £5 you can get a frozen 'meal deal'
lasagne, chips, garlic bread, icecream (oh and a tiny bag of frozen peas)

So, I can buy a bag of apples and pears, OR a meal deal that I can stretch to two nights. plus some biccies for 'pudding'.

you can see why, surely?