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 can see why it's an issue for poorer families at my children school.

Overcrowding and often flats, time poor parents and no money for extra activities and unsafe streets due to traffic, cheap food quickly cooked and cheap food treats as they are few treats that can be afford – plus other reasons people mention.

However the surprising thing is how much less sleep many of the children get- so many have really late bedtimes if they have them at all, nearly all have tvs, game consoles or phones they are on till really late. Lack of sleep is related to poorer educational outcomes and being overweight.

While exercise food and portion sizes are at least talked about by many parents talking about sleep meets with blank looks and idea that children don’t need much past toddler years.

I agree that we are all going to die of something eventually but don't we all want the best possible outcomes for our children? They need to be as fit and healthy as they can be to have the opportunity to reach their potential - whatever that may be.
If we let our kids slide into obesity and all the horrendous health implications it brings we are knowingly robbing them of their future.

Not got through the whole thread yet but I was at school in the 80s/90s and literally always had a packet of skips & penguin in my lunchbox as did my friends. There was perhaps 1 overweight child in the entire year, so it can't be just what's in the lunchbox. I think it's the lack of exercise both in schools & at home.

The government need to include immediately an hours exercise every single day in every school across the country.
Sugary and fatty foods should be removed from schools and places children spend lots of time.
Free exercise programmes should be available to every child during the holidays.
We should stop body shaming and focus on the good health. A time bomb awaits us otherwise

I agree tiggy.....seen it on this thread already.... defensive. Why?

That's one packet of skips and a penguin - I'm talking about lunchboxes with a large 'grab' bag of crisps, a twix, a kitkat, a múller corner and a frube as well as a large sandwich and that's an average lunchbox. Some have much more in them. A few of them have less. I'd say maybe 5% of the packed lunches I see on a daily basis could be considered healthy and contain an appropriate amount of food.

littlebird I think that's a great idea

What would you have the government do? It is not the government's job to feed children, surely?

Absolutely not. But there are still things they could do. Including more exercise in the curriculum. More regular weight checks on children - even if it's unpopular with parents. Tighter regulation of the food and food advertising industry. Planning - should they allow yet another fried chicken shop to open next to that school, that estate. Lots of little nudge gestures that could help make it easier for people to take decisions that are better for them, because it really seems like left to their own devices a lot of people don't.

You're right Tiggy being defensive, although understandable, is not helpful. We do have parents who have refused the weight checks in Y6 and a small number of parents who have opened the letter and laughed quite uproariously at the fact their child is obese.

The judgment and classism on this thread poor parents dont know what bedtimes are? Yes ..ok then.

you Yes agree that portion sizes are too big now, & kids should have treat size & not adult size. I just meant that I don't think it's just the food.

We're more sedentary, kids can't play out and the remaining green bits of land are being acquired to build housing.
Weather is shit quite a lot of the time and gyms are expensive or difficult to get to if you don't own a car.
Dangerous and difficult to cycle on the busy roads.
Most lower and middle income families need both parents working so people are knackered and time poor. Hence reliance on takeaways and processed ready meals.
Portion sizes are much bigger generally.
Convenience food is readily available as are food deliveries.
Culture of coffee shops, Macdonalds, eating all the time and walking along eating and drinking.
Comfort eating, when life is hard and a bit shit people find comfort in cheap, tasty food.
Culture of love through food, lots of anxiety in families where children are fussy eaters or constantly 'hungry'.

As others have said - we eat too much junk food and too much in general.
Also, I think people overestimate how much exercise their kids do - an hour of PE in school does not equal an hour of vigorous physical exercise. A lot of my DD's lessons appear to be 'skills based' - catching the ball/hitting the ball type stuff, and then there's the queueing up to do it again type activities.

The problem is you can feed 2 kids a full meal of icelands frozen crap (which I make use of myself especially in hols when I seem to have at least 4 friends a day here! I'm certainly not judging) for the price of a packet of apples. Eating homemade meals can be done cheaply but they aren't necessarily healthy either. Think homemade shepherds pie full of butter and cheese for example. I think to eat truly healthy is very expensive and sadly some families simply can't afford it!

Tiggy has it spot on IMO

They eat a very healthy and varied diet and get tons of exercise... If we can accept that adults come in all shapes and sizes why not children?!

It's not magic -- the weight you see on your dcs doesn't just appear on their bodies out of nowhere. It comes from accumulated calories remaining after those consumed by exercise. Look it up, exercise consumes far fewer calories than we think.
And we should not accept that children "come in all sizes". There is no debate the connection between long term health issues and body weight. No one can be "healthy and happy" dealing with a lifetime of diabetes.

Two words portion control. I blame food companies for making it so cheap to size up (MacDonald's "supersize", you can buy 2,000 extra calories for 10 cents more! Yay!) Parents must resist the "good deals". My dd1 was 13yo when she discovered that the Snickers chocolate bar that she's always had at home was not the "regular size" bar but "fun size" bar. Her taste buds have become so sensitive to sugar that she can now only "enjoy" 1/4 of a piece of Godiva truffle at a time. Yes, that's right a reasonable treat is a 0.6 oz "fun size" bar of Snickers, not the 2.07 oz "regular size".

Kids are disabling themselves and a lot of the time, parents are complicit.

Imagine somebody in a wheelchair who would love to go for a run and yet we have able bodied kids who can't because of excessive weight. Life limiting, no control, a waste.

There is a lot of buck passing too, always someone else's thought. No need for personal responsibility we can always blame big boned.

[Disclaimer - yes there are exceptions but a lot is to do with a lack of self respect, excess greed, discipline is missing.]

Fault!

It's a very complex issue & I do agree it's expensive to be healthy, in terms of activities, cooking from scratch.

I agree some kids over eat and don't exercise but it's a fact that some people are naturally more likely to struggle weight wise.

dollyknocker it's well known that overweight or obese children are more likely to become overweight/obese adults. Thats a fact that is impossible to ignore, and why so much emphasis is being placed upon dealing with childhood obesity. It's not personally directed to your children, or any other individual. It does have a massive effect on a population level though.
It's the same as any other health issue. Not all smokers will suffer ill effects but a significant proportion will, enough to make smoking into a public health issue.

I go to Lidl, Aldi, Farmfoods and Iceland and buy frozen veg. During term time, I am working 70 hours per week so time poor. With frozen veg I can whiz up loads of soup and freeze it or make the basis for stews. Lots of frozen meats, sausages etc. from freezer shops are absolutely fine - just check labels etc. Tinned mackerel is brilliant and cheap - more so than tuna.
Butter and cheese are healthy and have lots of essential nutrients - eating these will keep you fuller for longer. The bread in supermarkets has very little nutritional value and as soon as the carbs are broken down into sugar, your starving.
We have been fed so much misinformation since the 70's about what is healthy - our macro needs are dangerously skewed.

There are some quite nasty comments on here when the op is clearly concerned rather than abusive. There is a crisis in this country that needs to be addressed. It isn't about criticising people but worrying about health. I blame the snack culture for some of this. When I was a child we had breakfast, lunch and tea. Now kids are given snacks as soon as they are weaned and this is habit forming. My daughter is slightly plump and loves to eat. I am constantly monitoring but worry she will grow up more obsessed with food as a result. Her friends seem to be allowed so many snacks that it is difficult to limit hers and when I do she says I think she is fat! My son is skinny and has never really cared about food. I watched an interesting programme a while ago about an obese 5 year old. Mum maintained that his food was all healthy but when it was monitored it was clear that he was eating loads of healthy food every 2 hours in adult portions. Parents should be given more info about portion sizes and restaurants could help with standard portions rather than children's meals the same size for 2-11 year olds. I think we should also campaign to get rid of the 5 standard items in kids menus to be replaced with small sizes of the adult menu. I'm tired of the chicken nugget, sausage, pizza, burger, bland pasta menus for kids. Overweight parents are statistically more likely to have overweight kids (and dogs!!) The problem is not just poverty but unhealthy relationships with food.

Until society as a whole sees the overfeeding of children as a form of child abuse in the same way as starving them or physically beating them, not a lot will be done. Unless a primary school child's ribs are visible, they are overweight. For a small percentage of children there will be a medical reason for their weight. In all other cases it's too much food, with the prospect of heart disease, a higher risk of cancer and a real chance of diabetes. How can it be acceptable to do that to children under the guise of "treats" or lack of willpower and discipline?