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.

Thanks Alpha

I see it from both sides I guess. I was always very skinny as a child/young adult but did a lot of sport. When I was high school/uni my diet was awful e.g chips every day (although plenty of fruit/veg & water) I never learnt much portion control etc as I've always eaten whatever I wanted. Obvs I started to fill out but was still slim. Now mid 30s, two kids in succession (one still a baby) I'm fat particularly in the belly area & finding it hard to restrict myself from nice food.

I don't think we should demonise fat people & say they are lazy but we also shouldn't shy away from discussing the issue.

I remembered watching a prog on BBC3 Must have been about 8 years ago so that prompted me to google to see if there was any articles on it and lo and behold........

With the hospitals though I can see it from the other side and having been a parent of a child in hospital for a couple of weeks the lack of food outlets on site was a real issue - I was lucky I had family who could bring things in. At that point healthy eating wasn't top of my list of concerns either!

If they are getting rid of things like that I hope they are providing a suitable alternative!

YANBU but from what I've heard America is much worse (not that that's an excuse)

I do think it is more expensive to eat healthily. I struggle with my weight, mainly because I love food (and wine ) When I had dd1 I made a determined effort to cook from scratch. It's not cheap! A half side of salmon that will feed all 6 of us is £15, before you add potatoes/ vet etc. I can get a couple of frozen pizzas for £6. I have become a bit more relaxed re snacking as the dc have gotten older and more demanding, as they are all active, growing and slim. Until we came back from holiday and ds (9) was struggling to do up his school trousers! I realised I needed to rein in the increasing snacking, so told them all we were cutting down. It hasn't been a popular move, but ds is slimming down again. So I can see how easy it is to get complacent, and I do realise that some children will have medical issues causing them to be overweight, but I still think the majority of us do have a responsibility to watch our children's weight. I feel really guilty that I let it slide and it was a fine line trying to be tactful about ds weight gain but also trying to make him realise that we had to tackle it. I really don't want my children to feel the way my excess weight makes me feel (and I am trying to do something about myself too!)

Back in 2006 DH had a major heart attack and was in hospital for over a week. The first night i spent 24 solid hours at the hospital when he was taken to A and E and then ICU. Eventually i went searching for something to eat. The healthy option salad in the cafe was £4.20. The crap junk food sandwich option soaked in mayo was £2. This was after my huge weight loss too.

As has been stated multiple times, we have lost sight of what size should be. Groups of teenage girls gather in town to see and be seen. They are beautifully and immaculately made-up and dressed in the latest fashions but are invariably far too big; however, in relation to their peers, they are average-sized so won't recognise it. This is the new normal.

Reported.

Thanks Helena

Well said.

clark im childfree by choice as well as having lost ten stone. I still dont like derogatory comments about overweight children though.

Helena Oakum There was pasta dishes when i was growing up. Italian DM

I remember you could buy macaroni and spaghetti at the specialist deli in our town ~ run by a European immigrant family, who also sold croissants and french bread (which were shockingly exotic at the time) ~ but dried pasta wasn't carried by ordinary grocers in our area (I guess because it had to be imported). Even things like Heinz spaghetti hoops were a "special treat" because they came in a tin and were rather expensive.

This only started to change when we got a chain supermarket (it was a Sainsburys) in the next town along in the mid-80s. That's when a lot of foodstuffs that seem very ordinary now became freely available: pasta, pate, frozen pizzas, even things like fruit yoghurts.

Remember: back in the 80s, they had to put TV adverts on for Ski yoghurts to show people how, when and why you might eat them.

And frozen chips as well. I remember when you couldn't buy them. All chips had to be deep fried in a chip pan after you'd peeled and cut the potatoes yourself and, to be honest, it was a bit of a faff and took longer than doing mash (and cost more in fat for the chip pan).

You know, I don't even remember anyone eating rice when I was a child, unless it was rice pudding (I think we got our first Indian takeaway in the mid-80s).

But those were the days when the meat van came round the estate to serve all the mothers with small children who couldn't get down to the high street easily. It really was a world of meat and two veg, with sponge and custard for afters.

I do wonder whether the start of the rise of obesity can be tracked to the rise of the chain supermarket because you needed the space of those large supermarkets in order to be able to stock frozen and convenience foods. There just wasn't space in a local grocers or small co-op to have an aisle of crisps, chocolate or biscuits or two aisles of freezers.

I go into a large big box supermarket now, and once you take out all the junk, sweets, convenience and processed food, there's not actually a lot left ~ only meat, veg, salad, staples, dairy and fish and that's only about a fifth of the store maybe? One of the big boxes near me allocates less space for fresh meat than they do for alcohol.

Fuckin' hell clark . Please don't derail the thread with such cruel comments. Most of us are having a sensible discussion - even if not everyone agrees.

In the article it says that they will be replaced with healthier option. But are those options going to cost more.

I'd be interested to know how much of the obesity crisis is being created by the lack of mental health care at the lower levels.

If you are suffering from depression, getting out of bed can be a challenge. Spending an hour cooking a healthy meal from scratch just isn't going to happen.

Oakum DM made her own

We have a very large 5 year old at our school. He is sluggish can't sit on the floor with the others because he can't get up.
And yet
His dad is a fitness trainer who sends him to school with a bag full of snacks or a grab bag size pack of doritos.
It makes me v sad that aged 5 he is wearing age 12-13 trousers that his mum takes up.

Helena, there was definitely pasta available in the 70s (Italian grand mother).

I used to like crunching dry spaghetti.

I think stress has a lot to do with weight problems and being poor is quite stressful.

I used to stick macaroni pieces on boxes with glue.

It is awful. One serious missed opportunity, IMO, is Home Economics at school. Things may have changed (I started high school 20 years ago!) but we were taught how to make scones, rock cakes, pizza, creamy tuna pasta. A load of useless shite.

If that time could be used to show kids how to make a tasty, healthy, filling vegetable curry or soup, or how to season food with herbs and spices instead of salt, it could be a game changer. Or a filling, healthy chicken salad that isn't just two leaves or soaked in a creamy dressing.

I guess there were a lot fewer families with two working parents in the past as well, so everybody is more time poor when it comes to making food. My mum is a brilliant cook and since she retired my dad has lost 3 stone, not even trying, just eating the fresh, healthy stuff she makes.

I'm as guilty as anyone - it's just so much easier to walk to Tesco at lunch for a sandwich, which then becomes a meal deal, than it is to think about and prepare something healthy to take to work for lunch. But it's a habit I have to break. We graze so much at work in my office too - at stressful times, we're always bringing in cakes and biscuits. I notice the Europeans I work with don't do this - the French, Spanish, Italians - they don't snack. They'll bring in pasta or quiche at lunch but they're all slim, probably because they're not padding it out with biscuits all day!

A few years ago, our primary children were having cookery lessons in PPA time. They learnt how to make soup, hummus and healthier pizzas. Health and safety swooped in and stopped it all in case the school burnt down or they decapitated themselves with a paring knife. Really? Weren't they being supervised by qualified staff?
They were starting to take an interest in nutrition and really enjoyed the sessions - such a flippin' shame.

Expensive real food is a myth.
A joint of ham or beef would be around £12 in Asda, for example. The same store sells packs of pre prepared ham or beef for around £4 for five slices, so 15 wafer thin pieces for the price of a joint.
Considering the joint is actual real meat, not preformed and would provide around 100 as thinly sliced pieces then i guess people are just lazy, have too much money or have surely fell for the marketing peoples line....

@picking you bringing back memories now, my nan made best chips ever cooked in lard. As a treat we would have bread dripping (lard used to cook egg in).

Homemade chips are best, I'm too lazy to cook them much and still done way parents do them. Oil in a pan.