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.

Not a fan of Jamie Oliver but when he tried to make school dinners more healthy he was sabotaged by mums buying their kids chips and pushing them through the railings at their kids.

'So many of us'

I've watched a friend over-feed her child from the get-go. She herself is very very very very overweight and has a complex relationship with food and her parents that goes back to her teens.

Her partner (who adores her) is now very overweight as well. Feeding is a thing she does to show love. Her son is fat now. He's only young so maybe he will exercise it off when he's a bit older. His dad does his best to keep him active.

I spent the day with an old friend & her girls recently.

I hadn't seen them for a year and was shocked at how obese (seriously) the 3 year old was... and also at her mum who is a nurse... she has nicknamed her daughter a nasty name which her daughter is to young to understand, I said it is mean.

It's totally her parents fault she's so big anyway because she gets fed all the wrong foods whenever she wants them!

I felt very angry with my old friend over several things so we're not that friendly anymore.

the judging is horrible. Ds is 15 and a good bit overweight. Fat, if we're are being blunt. We know it, he knows it. I cook all meals at home but he refuses to eat vegetables, dislikes rice, pulses and most fruit. I can't, and won't force feed him stuff, just because it's healthy. I don't buy any biscuits/crisps etc and home bake at the weekend. I have no control over what he buys and eats during the school day. School is 7 miles away so too far to walk. He hates, hates, all sports and believe me, we have tried most. He likes tech and gaming and playing his guitar - none of which burn off any calories. He stands at 6 foot 1 and is huge. If anyone has any ideas how to turn this fat kid into a slim one, I'm happy to give it a go. Please don't assume that the parents of fat kids don't know about nutrition, or don't care or haven't tried to make changes! his older sisters were both overweight at 15 and are now size 10 gym bunnies so maybe there is hope..

YANBU, I see it all the time. I look in overweight people's shopping trolleys and see crappy food in them.

to add, yesterday's dinner was chicken stirfry with noodles (most of the vegetables picked out) and tonight was shepherd's pie (with a sneaky courgette grated in). He won't eat breakfast though sometimes makes a smoothie at the weekend

I agree with you dementedma, it is hard to get your kids to make healthy food choices. Maybe that's what I notice about the shopping trolleys...

It's all cynical marketing from people who just want to make money from the public and care nothing about the health implications.

I'm always surprised on threads like by this how little blame our wider consumer (quite literally!) culture comes in for. We're bombarded with messages - "Have a treat", "Fill that hungry gap", "When your kid needs a snack (do they?)give them our healthy option (is it?)".There are entire supermarket aisles dedicated just to crisps or biscuits, FFS! There's money in obesity for someone .

The children at centre parks or whatever it was are hardly representative of the population at large. Our children aren't fat and we would never do side holidaying in one of those places. Maybe there's a correlation? Or maybe you are just hyper sensitive to fat people and notice them more than their normal sized counterparts.

I think there is a normalising of being overweight in childhood. My DS is very thin. Hes naturally at the bottom of the percentile for his age, and has been from birth. It is impossible to buy him trousers. The elastic on them is huge. I think blaming a sedentary lifestyle alone is taking the blame away from food companies. It's a tactic used by McDonald's and Coca Cola to detract from their ticking timebomb products when they sponsor the Olympics. I am staying with my family at the moment. All of them are diabetic apart from me. I thought I'd just been extremely lucky until I saw what they were eating. Cupboards chock full of junk food. Too much food with little nutritional value. It's been a constant battle all week to stop my kids from being pumped full of sugar and looking like a mean mum. I'm talking Ice cream with a flake at 9.30am, not a couple of biscuits at teatime. They have had an avalanche of healthy eating advice, aren't poor or uneducated by any means, yet they can't seem to resist the constant supply of junk food on offer at every available turn.

OP I know what you mean- I think it's a conversation that needs to be had at national and international level tbh. I guess it's multi-factoral and due to lots of small changes in the way we live, move and eat. I have been truly shocked since wearing a Fitbit exactly how few steps I do in a normal desk-work day, despite parking at the far side of the car park and moving from my desk as much as I reasonably can. When I am off and walk my youngest a mile to school and back and do housework most of the day in between I do far more. Regardless of the 'on-purpose' exercise we do, if we all walk/move a bit less a day than we did 20 yrs ago and consume say 80 calories a day more this will stack up over time. The reasons we travel more by car/spend longer on the train/ and/or move less everyday and eat very slightly more need to be investigated and resolved, as well as the other factors such as links to income, gut flora etc. We all owe it to ourselves, our children and our children's children. And we need to do it without guilt or judgement- but first we need to acknowledge the fact together and fix it together.

I think size and weight perception has become massively skewed in the past few years. I'm slightly (half stone overweight) toned from the gym, size 8/10 and people say I'm too thin, skinny, don't need to lose any more. Yes muscle takes up less space than fat but i am still not a healthy body fat or weight. I still have some timber to shed.

My children are Very slim- visible ribs on both and they are "scrawny" yet when I was a child this was the norm.

A friend if mines toddler was deemed obese by the health visitor and she was angry- thing is the kid is visibly over weight!

It seems we don't see what's "normal" now

Are you slim yourself Demented? I've notice that if parents are slim, kids who have a chubby phase seem to slim down by their late teens. I think kids definitely get less fussy as they get older too. At 15 DD was very picky but at 18 eats pretty much anything and has the maturity to eat healthy stuff even though it might not be her favourite thing. I think having a family exercise culture helps too. Maybe your son could try the gym?

I also see a correlation between poverty and obesity among children as a general rule.
I think you need to get to the root of the problem - 4 chocolate bars for £1 in Tesco, ditto a 6 pack of crisps. A package of asparagus tips however, £2.75. Stands to reason that if you are short on money and can get a takeaway from the chipper for £1.99 vs a healthy meal of lean meat and vegetables that you have to prepare from scratch and clear up afterwards and is probably £4 per head ish, you might go for the former option.
IMO, people need to be educated properly about the effects of unhealthy food choices coupled with a need for fresh produce to be cheaper than junk food. I can't say I'm optimistic about a trend reversal any time soon.

ILoveMillhousesDad

Ahh, sorry the chunky kids are ruining your family holiday.

Don't be silly. The OP is using "chunky" as a euphemism for hugely overweight / obese.
Have you got nothing better to offer than the sneering comment about the overweight children spoiling the OP's holiday. Come on. It is a significant problem and we should face up to it. Perhaps dealing with it would be a good idea, too?

Well you can't out exercise a bad diet although of course exercise is very important and I wish schools had PE every day.
People are hugely out of touch with food. People are addicted to sugar and salt without realising it. People don't like to cook, they eat on the go, packet snacks are easy, they have lost the ability to know when they are full before they are stuffed. I went to a carvery and my goodness the amount of people opting for the bigger plate and pilling it high with food and eating it all shocked me (and I like my food). It is disgusting that we can gorge on food in such a way.
I really feel for the kids with health issues but I believe processed food has a lot to answer for. I heard that children of this generation will be the first to die before their parents due to type 2 diabetes (which is totally reversible) we are killing ourselves. I visited a mother of an obese kid and she gave him chocolate snack and a sugar filled drink, 10 minutes later he asked for more she gave the same snacks again and a packet of crisps. They were also all suffering constipation and wondered why the doctor wouldn't do anything about it! Its about education...sadly there are some people you can't educate.

Many things..hope I don't sound judgmental cause that's not at all my intent, it's a complicated issue.
I think Human biology has not caught up with our society and new lifestyles yet. I imagine our ancestors didn't much have to worry about child obesity when they were out hunting/gathering/even farming their healthy food and burning calories while doing so. Now all our food is chock full of absolute shit and sugars (I'm in the us and it's BAD here). And we sit all day..in the car in traffic..at work for 8 hours..in school..then we relax on the couch after with tv or iPad

The cheap , easy-to-prepare foods are the ones packed with preservatives and high fructose and gmo soy , estrogen Mimickers and all sorts of endocrine disrupting shit.

sugar is addictive as hell and "soul foods" are used to comfort and coping. Which leads to insulin resistance etc and spirals

It's passed down from parents for generations. Then there's the "clean your plate! No dessert until you've eaten it ALL, there are kids in third world countries" that's been engrained in ppl where they don't listen to their bodies when it says "stop eating you're full!"

Medications that destroy gut bacteria and lead to obesity in ways not even known yet (I experienced it myself a few years ago with remeron)
Idk, I think it's so many things

No I'm not slim - size 14 - and DH is overweight. Dh had started going to the gym and we manged to persuade ds to go twice during the school holidays and then he wouldn't go back because it's "boring". I think going with his dad is boring, but he won't do sport with his friends because he's embarrassed about how he looks and that they are all fitter than him and he can't keep up. it becomes a vicious spiral then... I worry a lot about his health but am all out of ideas...

OP - you are brave. But YANBU. It's been sad watching many friends of DDs (17 and 14) who I've known since they were 5yo, grow into overweight teens. The psychological toll can't be underestimated either. Overweight kids are bullied in ways obvious and subtle everyday. The other day, I overheard dd1 and friends casually saying about an instagram post in their feed, "Oh she's never in the picture. They (her friends)make her take the group shots because, you know, they don't want to ruin the pic by having her in it". I am sure that girl knows why she's always the one taking the group shots.

Nice to see so many people assigning blame sharing their 'theories' about why children become/stay overweight, while actually not seeming to have any experience of having an overweight child.

It really isn't as simple as people like to make out.

DD tracks a little above the top end of healthy BMI. She gets a chubby look about her before a growth spurt. She attends a nursery that's won awards for what they feed the children. She goes full time so the only meals she eats at home are at weekend. She gets homecooked meals and no snacks. She's been seen by doctors about the fact that she doesn't seem to have any awareness of when she's full. They're reluctant to investigate because they look at her head to toe and tell me categorically that she isn't overweight. She goes to 3 additional physical activities outside of nursery. And multiple people on this thread would call me a neglectful parent anyway.

If you look at nothing else today, look at this link. It really isn't as simple as the vast majority of people would have us believe.

www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html

Literally no-one looked like this when I was at school 25-30 years ago.

Well they did when I was at school 25-30 years ago.

When I was a kid it was completely usual to have bathroom scales. I was aware of people around me ie my family, friends, their families 'watched' their weight in the most matter of fact way, 'cutting back' if they felt a bit heavier than they were comfortable with. I knew what my weight was. There was no big deal about it, just being responsible and taking care of themselves in the same way they would get their hair done or go for a check up at the dentists. In the last 20 or so years it seems talking about weight has become taboo perhaps because of concerns regarding anorexia and then the 'it's my body and I'll do what I like' brigade. It's tragic.