To be shocked at how many overweight kids there are here?

[glasgowsfinest]

Have got my fireproof hat in place, here goes...! I'm currently at a Butlin's-type holiday park on the south coast. As you can imagine, it's jammed full of kids of all ages. I'm genuinely shocked at how many of them, from pre-schoolers to older teens, are significantly overweight. I don't think puppy fat can be used as an excuse for all of them. Thinking back to my childhood, overweight kids were the exception, not the rule, but now it seems the opposite. I have two children who by no means have a perfect diet, and eat more chocolate and watch more TV than I thought I'd allow, but they're active too and don't seen to have any fat on them at all! Maybe they're just "lucky", I don't know. But the sheer numbers of chunky kids made me feel quite sad.

I dont think this change for life stuff schools and most kids places these days seek to promote helps either.

There is nothing wrong with full fat yogurt or milk. Instead suggested swaps are to much more highly processed fat free sweetener laden alternatives. Have you seen the size of the muller light pots. Kids are basically eating several times the amount of stuff because it's not filling them up the way the full fat version would.

Our school bans nuts they think they are being helpful by suggesting "safe cereal bar alternatives" by that read Kellogg cereal bars and fruit winders.pure sugar and air and a complete waste of the calories.

There was tht journalist who did a tv documentary on diet food where she loved off all the low fat reduced sugar versions of her regular diet. She basically couldn't stop eating as she was so hungry all the time felt like crap and actually gained weight.

When we get threads from people who's kids are having the likes of pasta salads or lumps of cheese and a small homemade muffin removed from their kids lunch as they are "unhealthy" whilst the school dinner kids get cakes the size of ceiling tiles on a daily basis...

So much nonsense.

I live in one of the most affluent areas of the Uk.

An overnight child sticks out like a sore thumb. Large outstanding primary school of over 500 children with very high earning parents - I reckon I've seen a handful at most of slightly overweight children.

Overnight should read overweight!

Sure Nutty, that's roughly how I'd prepare mine (I learned from a fella from Kerala!) - I was just responding to the question re: my cupboard of herbs and spices. Which I do have, incidentally, but I use only about 5 and they are worryingly cheap, like a lentil bag size of paprika or chilli for £1, I wonder what corner they're cutting but that's another topic.

**Today 08:17 schoolgaterebel

I agree, I cannot understand why educated, intelligent and loving parents who are doing their very best in all other aspects of parenting overfeed their children to the point that they are overweight.

Once it is a problem it is very hard to turn it around.**

But this is happening!

Not many educated intelligent parents out there with very overweight children.

Loving, yes. But not many intelligent and educated parents are going to overfeed their children to the point of being overweight.

Portions are definitely much larger than ever before and there is constant snacking. I see local school kids in the Tesco after school buying bags of donuts and cakes with bottles of coke to eat before they go home. I've seen similar in the mornings before they even get to school. That just can't be healthy.

When I was a kid on the 70s people were definitely more on the skinny side. Every class would have a couple of larger kids but that would be very much the minority of children.

I take ds swimming a few times a week (it's actually free for kids around here) and see some children with huge weight problems - from older toddlers to teenagers. Morbidly obese ten year olds - I'm glad that they are doing exercise but the vending machines have mostly junk snack foods or stupidly expensive 'health' snacks.

And don't get me started on the price of fruit in cafes, museums and when sold singly in supermarkets. I've seen 90p for a single banana. You could buy a bag of donuts for £1, 4 scones for 90p. Of course people would be tempted to buy the sweet stuff over a measly banana!

Sorry I meant to say "this is NOT happening!"

@Holidayhooray - All of the rich kids I've met are chubby- Asian/Middle Eastern/African born families usually encourage kids to be chubby when they're younger, no matter how rich/poor they are. Then after 10-12 encourage them to be slim. Things are changing slowly but not to the extent where you never see an overweight kid from a rich family - most of the rich kids I know are fat.

@TipTopTipTopClop - don't worry about the price. Generally masalas are cheaper here as most are processed and ground in the UK using Indian ingrediants before being sent on to the USA and Australia. In fact around 70-80 percent of spices available outside of India are milled from Leicester or London.

Not many educated intelligent parents out there with very overweight children.

I beg to different, as have other posters on this thread.

We have a huge kids food industry here though.

Mnetters have been known to admit to entire draws in their freezer dedicated to orange crap for visiting children

Other countries don't have so much if this the kids are fright up eating the adults food and as you say an Asian mother would boil lentils etc

But when everything around you tries to convince you that unless it's battered fried and in the shape of a smiley kids won't eat it who's going to risk buying lentils.

How many threads have we had where people are apparently unreasonable for not buying the exact same brand if pizza a kid eats and how expecting them to eat a home made one is going to far?

Or how despite being told they eat macaroni and cheese or spaghetti bolognaise the kid won't touch it...

In my day we'd eat what we were given or go hungry. Now we invite kids over and don't expect them to eat anything

Maybe body shape has something to do with this - we have a lot of ME families around here for the summer and the kids are definitely heavier.

Not sure if that's a combination of heavy food in large portions, eating late (Edgware road at 10pm still had kids running about), not so much exercise (hover boards, mini jeeps, wheelies) and sweet tooth (coca cola is even produced sweeter in the ME for local tastes).

Nuttynoo what if someone can't cook? They have never used a fresh onion, think a chilli is horrible (very hot and small) and lentils are some exotic thing that people are unsure of? (Small hard things that go mushy quickly.) And let's face it, a tin of tomatoes is very bland... Plus the effort of mixing these ingredients into a delicious meal?
Who is teaching young people how to cook? And why cook a proper meal if you can put some chips into the oven instead? It's certainly easier!

I think children and young people get larger as they get older (secondary school teacher here and I see it with my own eyes) which might explain why some people don't see overweight children in primary schools. I can only think of one obviously overweight child in my ds's primary.

With my older dd, I found the difficult time was when she went to secondary school and was in charge of her own food choices during the day which involved a plate of chips or pizza followed by a doughnut. She wanted more than the recommended £3 per day so she could buy snacks at break time too, just like all the other children. It was hard to say no.

I often see ex-pupils in their late teens and twenties who have put on a lot of weight since leaving school.

YouTube! Just search for 'easy pie recipe' and there you go. There are so many cookery shows on to these days too. And as for the fear of the lentil - isn't curry the favourite food in the UK? Pizza is also 'funny foreign food' but bloody easy to make.

Nuttynoo

Very affluent part of kent here.
Average earning in this particularly area is £78k - year. Amongst my children's peers, it's more like £120k.

99.99% white.

Practically no overwegith children whatsoever. Perhaps a couple slightly overweight.

Two miles away, deprived away. High rate of unemployment. Also 99.99% white. Overweight chilsren dominate.

It would probably also be helpful if school "food tech" lessons went right back to basics and equipped young people with the skills to cook basic, nutritious meals and with the skills needed to budget and things to make it more possible.

It is so easy to end up in a vicious cycle from one generation to the next so we need to provide young people with the skills to allow them to break that cycle.

I was in my local supermarket yesterday, saw a boy of around 12 with his parents. All three of them were morbidly obese. The child was wearing a tshirt with the slogan "I beat anorexia" and a picture of a slice of pizza. While it's viewed as a joke, and obesity as a health issue can't be properly tackled for fear of upsetting someone over their appearance I don't think anything will change.

YANBU it's something I notice whenever I return to the UK and it's also starting to be more and more obvious where I live too (Finland) not so much the very obese children and not so much in very young children but I've definitely noticed an increase in overweight children. The thing is this problem definitely can be tackled, it has been over here before, but it requires a multi-disciplinary effort and for parents to be on board www.who.int/features/2015/finland-health-in-all-policies/en/

Measures that help include all children eating school dinner (so packed lunches banned) but the school dinner has to be healthy - no puddings! Typical school dinner for DD is baked fish and potatoes with a choice of vegetables or salad. Limiting time spent sitting down so lessons are 45 minutes long and then there's 15 minutes outside breaktime and more recently there's a move towards standing desks in classrooms.
Encouraging walking or biking to school.

Children under 8 years old need at least three hours of exercise a day (exercise that makes them sweaty and a bit breathless do properly running about) - how many of us can honestly say our children got that every day?

You know why so many kids are overweight?
Throwing food at them keeps them quiet, it's a form of lazy parenting. They're complaining - give them so food. Food becomes an activity rather than fuel.

I'm shocked at DDs friends - there are no set meal times, they graze and then at 3pm their parents will go, let's get a McDonalds (lazy).
12 noon we eat - regular planned meals reduces the need for snacking.

I know DDs friend will have several McDonalds a week because her mum can't be bothered to cook for her - she's very overweight. Ironically the friend was ANYTHING so would eat healthy choices if given to her, her mum can't be arsed though..... (she's on a diet so does make healthy stuff for herself, I think she's a classic narcissist though)

Yy sirzy

The amount if threads where home ec consists of throwing packets together....

A basic white sauce wouldn't be hard to teach and would provide a basis for a few dishes.

@Holidayhooray - very affluent part of buckinghamshire, 99.9 percent non-white, average incomes over 100k, most if not all the kids under 10 I've seen are overweight. I come from another 99.9 percent non-white area not affluent, average incomes below 20k, and again most kids under 10 were overweight. After 10, kids in both areas tended to slim down.

@Ylvamoon - Asian/Indian/African kids don't generally learn how to cook either. The difference is that after marriage women (and in some cases men) are expected to learn. Also it doesn't take a lot of effort or skill to pressure cook dahl or a lentil curry (pressure cookers are the cooking implement of choice for many Indians), or whip out 6 home made rotis. I usually have a full Indian meal everyday with batch cooked curry, batch cooked dahl, rice, and rotis for 4 people in under 30mins (usually under 20mins) which is far quicker than any processed meal. I think people have to know there are alternatives out there.

Nutty
I grew up on bucks
I would be fascinated to know of a very affluent area in bucks where it is 99.9% non white.

Or indeed any part of bucks where it is 99.9% non white. Affluent or otherwise

Free school meals for children in low income familys and teach parents about good balanced diets and how to shop savvy. I teach life skills to young adults under 30 from poor areas. It breaks my heart how little social services offer.