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.

When I was at senior school the meals were changed, no longer meat and two veg but a Choice was brought in. pizza, chips, salad or meat and two veg. what are the teenagers going to chose?

less and less children walk to and from school, who has time when you are zooming off somewhere, be it work
if i met my dc from school i didnt meet them with sweets.
I was always very careful

my dc are not overweight, we never had fizzy drinks - well hardly -- dc went through a stage of buying herself large crisp packets and energy drinks at aged 12, luckily she grew out of that. However she might not have grown out of that.
we could never afford take aways - still can't -

a lot of overweight is due to greed, as well as hidden sugars, lack of activity

But Cabin you can't teach the parents by force.

I don't know a single person who doesn't have access to the internet, no matter what their income.

So literally millions of recipes and step by step tutorials are at their fingertips, if they actually want to learn.

They don't even have to leave their house to do it.

There aren't many overweight kids at my dcs primary school but there are a lot at the secondary school.
Ds also started putting on weight.

he had asked for money to buy food at school. When I checked what he was eating, he'd been buying chocolate croissants, chicken and chips, baguettes and fizzy drinks.

He's very active and eats healthy food happily but given free reign, he chose the carb and sugar laden junk and ended up with clothes becoming too tight around the middle.

He was unhappy with his weight gain so switched to packed lunches which seems to have helped him go back down.

All this talk of how "I could live on a boiled onion and one lentil for a week" is making me think of George Orwell.

During the Great Depression as he lived with the poverty stricken Northern poor, he said how nothing could be more miserable than living on what the poor assistance would actually pay for.

It was something like 3 onions, a bag of rice and a couple of spuds per man per week.

He spoke of all the well-meaning but ignorant middle classes who offered to teach the poor how to cook food that was cheap and nutritious...and went on to say how a bag of chips and a cup of tea made the poor's life a TINY bit less miserable for ten minutes.

The issue is not how the poorer among us should cook more healthily/buy lentils but rather how everyone should have enough money to buy real food.

That means a decent minimum wage and jobs with proper hours.

It breaks my heart how little social services offer

Why?

Learning difficulties aside, the fact that you are a low income family is No excuse whatsoever for not knowing about healthy food. It's bloody EVERYWHERE.

Plus, it's cheap. Upthread I said, 1kg bag of carrots 90p, bag of apples £1. And these items are not tucked away. You walk in to a supermarket, and there it is. Right in front of you.

LiveLife is that what they sell in the school canteen?

Having snacks is a major factor IMO. When I was a kid (70s/80s), I had sweets once a week. Didn't have crisps more than twice a week. It was the norm where I grew up. This wasn't due to lack of money, far from it. Just had normal, average parents that knew the basics about nutrition. The obesity crisis is nothing to do with money. That is a massive scapegoat.

I guess takeaways including fish and chips cheer people up, its a weekly treat, but calorie laden

MrsOverTheRoad - yes all that is available at morning break and lunchtime. I'm not sure what else is available though.
It's no wonder that there are a lot of overweight kids at his school.

MrsOverTheRoad Are you talking about The Road to Wigan Pier? My family were the poor of Wigan who he lived with. My relatives who were around at that time could all cook. In fact, the stuff they made, whilst simple was always delicious. They all had physical jobs and never ate between meals. They would be appalled at people's eating habits these days.

Is there are a direct link between low income and obesity? If so why are there so many fat middle class adults?

Well if you feed your kids between meals, of course they are going to get overweight. I am shocked at the eating habits of a lot of children these days.

YANBU. It makes me sad to see overweight children not that I would ever comment to or about them. Yes, some of children have health issues/take medication which makes them hold onto or gain weight but that's not the norm. Generally, children - the same as adults - are fat because they eat too many calories and don't move enough.

I was a child who constantly had food given as a reward. From a 'normal' family in a 'normal' area, not poor not rich. Having a jab? Here's a box of milk tray for being brave. Managed to eat one piece of vegetable off your plate? Here's some chocolate cake as a treat, well done. Refusing to eat your healthy home cooked meal? Have a cheese sandwich or a bowl of cereal, you can't go hungry. Oh, you don't want to do PE because someone said you've got fat legs in cycling shorts? That's bullying, here's a note to get out of PE.

Poor habits started in childhood. I started getting a bit chunky towards the end of primary school, was on the heavier side of normal (not obese but definitely a bit overweight) as a teen and then fat as a young adult. Managed to lose it all mid-twenties by completely changing the way I ate and exercised. I've gained loads during pregnancy and in the 18 months since birth and am now mid-thirties trying so hard to lose it and get back into the 'food is fuel' mindset rather than 'I've had a hard day I deserve a treat' mindset.

We need to be educating kids from weaning. My DD is 17 months old and can be fussy (like most toddlers) but I am determined that she will not be rewarded with food. She has three meals and day, which she can take or leave, and healthy snacks (like fruit or natural yoghurt) if she needs them on that day. I constantly have to stop my mother giving her crap like she did me. She came round the other day and as soon as DD had finished her dinner, she whipped out a packet of biscuits from her bag and said 'oh, she's eaten all her dinner she can have a biscuit can't she?'. I am not opposed to kids having the odd bit of chocolate or biscuit but does a 17 month old need a chocolate hob nob after eating a portion of shepherds pie followed by a bowl of chopped berries? Of course not. So I said no and asked her to put them away. It's those attitudes that are causing the issues we see today.

If so why are there so many fat middle class adults? Booze. So many people drink way more than they should. Myself included. There is a massive disparity between what people say they drink in surveys and how much alcohol is sold in this country. Denial all the way. 1 glass of wine every night is way too much according to the recommendations yet most people that drink this much wouldn't admit to having a problem.

I either read a study or was presented a study once where obese/overweight children and children of a healthy weight were both presented with a range of foods - many of which were 'junk' food - in a buffet style setting. They found that both groups of kids ate loads with no difference in caloric intake between the two. However, at the next meal the overweight/obese group of kids ate much more than the slimmer children, with the latter naturally self-restricting.

I also think snacking contributes, especially as the types of foods are salty/sugary and not inherently filling. Vigorous exercise normalises the appetite too, I think. I find that on the days the kids have swum 90 hard minutes with the squad they'll eat anything, even the slow cooked stuff they'll normally pick at.

BR62Y
Yes there is a link between poverty and obesity particularly amongst white women and children. But obesity has long been predicted to rise amongst all socio economic groups, peaking in 2020. It's the age of diabesity (diabetics and obesity) as they say...

if you have small, fat children, you've got something wrong, somewhere

Not always. I posted upthread that one of my children put on a huge amount of weight as an exclusively breastfed baby -- went from middle centile to 98th in her first couple of months.

As a teen, she is the only one of ours who struggles to keep down to a healthy weight. She's always hungry and doesn't seem to have any natural 'brakes' on her appetite. It's hard on her, and does seem to be innate.

The issue is not how the poorer among us should cook more healthily/buy lentils but rather how everyone should have enough money to buy real food.

Lots of people have the money to buy real food, yet they and their kids are still overweight.

It's not just about healthy choices, it's often about the sheer volume of food eaten/offered in one sitting, snacks in between meals and lack of any meaningful regular exercise.

Even those who regularly eat decent food are often eating far too much of it and not burning the calories off.

I also think snacking contributes, especially as the types of foods are salty/sugary and not inherently filling

Yy

We have people frequently saying they have to turn up at the gates with wraps and crisps and stuff because the kids are ravenous after school.

Why not just give them tea at 4 Instead?

Instead of expecting them to eat a meal just an hour or two after enough food to constitute a meal.

It must take far longer sometimes to keep going to get food and make snacks up in order to stave off hunger than it would to chop up a salad and leave it in the fridge. Boil a few potatoes for some potato salad. And make up some tuna mayo. Kept in sealed containers some of these things would keep for 2/3 days in the fridge.

What do we expect when we feed children poor quality food that requires lots more to fill them up?

The food industry really, really needs to get its house in order and stop orchestrating attacks on people like Jamie Oliver for daring to call them out.

Lancellottie My brother was an EBF baby too and he was huge. Like a little Michelin man, rolls and rolls of chub. My mum took him for a routine check up at 6 months (this was in the 80s) and the Dr told her he was far too fat and needed to lose weight. She laughed and said she wasn't sure how to put an EBF baby on a diet!

He was a chubby baby until he started walking, and has always had an enormous appetite. He's 30 now, and is skinny as a rake. He eats a huge amount but does a lot of exercise (football 3/4 x a week).

We were both brought up the same, with some poor food habits, mostly using food as a reward. Genetically, we're as close as you can get. Yet I struggle to lose weight, even when dieting and exercising and he doesn't. Even if he doesn't exercise he doesn't gain much really. He's never been overweight apart from as a baby. I've been overweight by varying degrees most of my life - except for as a baby!

Many of the overweight people I know are certainly middle-class, not poor in the least. I slightly know a family who are millionaires, and they are all - parents and three children - significantly overweight. It's not lack of intelligence - both parents are highly educated - but it seems to be an ability to ignore the obvious.

There seems to be a fear that children should be hungry. Why? A tummy rumbling for an hour or so won't hurt them. Nobody would want to starve a child but they don't need food constantly on demand. Knowing that a child has had a good breakfast, my response to "I'm starving" was often a cheery "Yes, me too. Only an hour until lunch." My DC are now adults and grateful for the fact that they are slim and fit.

Someone upthread mentioned that people don't move enough. That's certainly true. There seems to be a wide division in society. On the one hand you have more and more people going to the gym, running, (our local Parkrun is getting bigger each week), wearing Fitbits etc. On the other hand you have people who barely move. When I mentioned that I'd walked 17 miles recently, someone said that that would have killed them, almost in a proud way. Yes, yes, I know some people can't exercise for various reasons, but it's not hard for the majority of people to move a bit more. The excuse of exercise being expensive isn't valid. Walking is one of the best aerobic exercises there is, and nearly everyone can manage that in their locality. Children here can swim for free in all the public pools.

of course they are hungry when they come home from school, aren't you hungry ever? They will survive.

oh cross posts with above.

livelife This worries me when DD goes to secondary school. On her transition days she bought a muffin at break- it was 2 days so no biggie.
I've told her that when she starts there she can either have money for break time once a week or I will cut her lunch box down to just sandwich and fruit and not the 4 items she has now.
She is proper skinny, I struggle to find trousers that stay up and are also the right length but she's going through puberty and that can all change.
I was overweight in my late teens, my Mum is such a feeder. She bakes constantly and buys my kids sweets all the time. I tell her we don't eat half as many biscuits and cakes as she thinks we do.
I don't want my DC to go the same way as me when they're older.
I lost the weight in my mid twenties when I stopped eating so much crap and going out drinking so much.
I'd rather my kids not have to put the weight on in the first place so I'm trying my best while they're young to see food as fuel and not an all day experience.