Why are British kids fat?

[VogueVVague]

So time, two parents working, low budget/cost - all these things can result in ready meals being served up etc. but that still doesnt explain why, compared to the rest of Europe, our kids are the fattest.

So whats the reason?

Is it political?
Cultural?

Something must have changed for us and mot the rest of Europe in the past 50 years (doubt kids before 1960 were chunky).

3- fussiness is tolerated in a way in the uk it’s not tolerated in many other countries it’s eat or have nothing

I think this should be more of a thing here. With my niece and nephew it's always "but they'll only eat... [something sugary]". I say let them go hungry then! They'll eat something else if they're hungry.

But because neither one is fat (yet, aged 6 & 8) it's not seen as a problem. Yet.

I think lots of it is down to time/effort. It does tend to be more expensive to eat a healthy diet with lots of fruit and veg, and it also requires mental energy to plan and time to shop for fresh ingredients then prep and cook the food. If you are working several low paid jobs and juggling everything on a small budget it is just easier to shove beige crap in the oven.

P,us a lot of people live in food deserts with no shops selling fresh food only convenience stores.

When new houses are built, usually over fields, there is nowhere to play. Roads are too busy.

Kids don’t lead to cook basic meals at school anymore.

Our local sports centre offers slushes and pizza and chips.

Food companies are corrupt.

Food advice is outdated.

Children been introduced to junk food at an early age through brands purporting to be healthy snacks when they are filled with sugar with a cartoon character slapped on the packaging for extra added appeal. Then you have the adverts for McDonalds happy meals with the toys and fun music to lure kids into nagging their parent's for one and the obsession with snacking is unreal it seems there's no end to the amount of food aimed at children to eat in between meal times. But at the end of the day it comes down to the parent's and what they introduce their child to im a firm believer in they can't miss what they never had but i know a lot of parents who cave in to their children's fussy ways and sling them some junk food for the fear they'll starve to death otherwise and that's when all the things mentioned above come into effect

Amen my sil carries a lunch box for my DN in place of dinner it consists of

Cheese strings
Milk shake
Snack pack jammie dodger
Perloni
And a chocolate

Sighs and give up

I never bring snacks when out and fully expect my children to eat whatever is made

I've just got back from the pool with my two. I've been worrying about my ds as he's come back fine from his year 6 weight measure, yet he is developing "handles" and is noticeably heavier since he stopped martial arts. Yet there were a good quarter of the kids in the pool heavier than him.

In my class at school i'd say a third of the class is overweight. At least 3 of them cannot function, as in sit on the carpet and get up again easily. Ten years ago this was rare. Twenty years ago when i started teaching very rare.

What has changed? Let's leave aside easy access to shit food. For me the biggest impact is parents working longer days ( less time outside as a family, more time inside at childcare or kids clubs) and the unwillingness to let children range. Kids dont play outside now. They don't spend 3 hours after school outside building dens. They're inside, on Fortnite.

I don't need to go over the cheap food argument. We all know that some (bad) food is cheaper. It's time that's important. Parents who work long hours, shift workers, zero contract workers, we all need a quick tea for the kids if we can geab some time for them. It's all well and good saying its quick to slice chicken breasts and coat them in egg and breadcrumbs, but thats not as quick and easy as bunging some nuggets in the oven and crucially, spending ten minutes of your long arsed day with your child.

We are money poor, time poor, resource poor.

But there have always been people working several low paid jobs.
I grew up in the age of the Findus crispy pancake, spaghetti hoops on toast and Vesta Chow Mein (rehydrated dried things).

There just wasn't the obesity even though we had rubbish meal options and deprived families just as now. People just had 3 meals per day, even though they may well have been rubbish or beige.

I think it is the snacking culture that has added the extra daily calories together with less running around and more screen time. An extra 200-300 net calories per day will soon pile the weight on to a child.

She never lost the "puppy fat", she never "grew into it" should have been tackled before she could talk

To be fair for lots of one year olds it is just puppy fat. All three of mine have been "obese" until they were about 1.5-2. Definitely not diet as all 3 were reluctant to eat and subsisted on breastmilk (no treats or crisps until well after 1.5 which is ironically when they started). All our varying degrees of lean or average now (none are above the middle of the healthy range).

Anxiety about weight is actually very counter productive. What we should be doing is not getting kids worried about being fat but getting them in the habit of listening to their bodies to know when they're full and providing a balanced diet and plenty of opportunity for exercise.

phlebasconsidered

No I think we have become pussys and don’t want the fight in 2018

They have nither parents simply don’t want to say NO

If you microwaved 5 meals at 7 minuets each it’s about 30-40 minutes that’s not quicker than chicken meat and veg into a slow cooker switching on then going to work

Wetherspoons put the calorie content of their meals on the menu. It’s very effective in making you aware of the large amount of calories you can so easily eat. Now with my meal I share a side of chips with dh or dcs and have stopped having a dessert as most of them are between 800-1000calories a portion and make do with a tea or filter coffee instead.

Metoodear

"Thesearepearls If you really think children are fat because they are doing PE in the playground and not on a delis then your misguided"

I'm not sure what you mean. I was making two points - the first being about obesity being normalised and the second being about the way kids travel to school. As well as all the other points that posters are making and not instead of.

getting them in the habit of listening to their bodies to know when they're full - totally agree with this. That is where breast feeding has the edge over bottle feeding - you never know how much they've had, you never urge them to finish the last drop they control their own intake based on when they feel full. This is why I never forced my dcs to clear their plates - I wanted to teach them to stop eating when they felt full.

We have the opposite problem - my dcs don't seem to think about eating or drinking unless reminded to and don't seem to like the sensation of being full when they do eat. It's a weird experience when their friends come round, because they regularly ask for snacks and drinks. I think children being visibly overweight is far more to do with overeating/eating far too many calories than lack of exercise, although the latter is directly responsible for all sorts of other long term health problems.

People do know that smoking drinking eating bad foods , gambling and taking illegal drugs is bad for you but they will still go it. There isn’t any answers really.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/24/the-mediterranean-diet-is-gone-regions-children-are-fattest-in-europe
(uk doesn't join in this study - but has comparable data)

So does everywhere now Champagne, it's the law.

Agree about the French thing.
I was told by French colleagues to only gain 8-10kg max during pregnancy. No one mentioned ideal weight gain over here. Likewise the French children’s snacks involve natural yogurt with fruit or tiny portions on chocolate.
Obviously this is changing but there is definitely an openness about talking about a healthy weight - and it tends to be much lower than over here.

Maybe this is it. My SIL (French) will often just grill some fish or roast a piece of beef or buy a roast chicken and then she'll just serve it with some veg and the cooking juices and maybe bang a bottle of mayonnaise on the table.

^

Totally late to the party but DH is French and this is the way I've retrained myself to cook. It really OK to not have carbs at every meal. The war ended a long time ago. You'll eat tomorrow. Don't worry.

Excersize.
I’m currently outside a large outdoor sports complex where there are about 80 kids doing athletics and football. They are all a healthy weight.
My own DS eats me out of house and home but not an ounce of fat on him - because he burns all the calories off.
Simple

The fattest family I knew (both adults and children were noticeably overweight) used to eat massive portions. It was mainly home cooked food , they just ate far too much of it. They didn't walk or exercise much either.
I have noticed on mumsnet, from the numerous lunch box threads, that some people give their children much bigger portions than I have ever given my kids. I remember one thread where people were giving 6 and 7 year olds what I consider adult sized portions.
I agree with snacking as a factor as well. Meeting kids out of school with a snack - unheard of even when my kids were young (15-25 years ago). When I was growing up we only ate outside if we were going to be out all day, and that would be sandwiches and maybe an apple. Same with things like going to the cinema, if we were lucky we had a choc ice during the interval and considered that a real treat. Nowadays eating during the film seems to be the whole reason for going to the pictures.

I remember the weetabix thread somone was giving their kids 3 weetabix

P,us a lot of people live in food deserts with no shops selling fresh food only convenience stores.

That doesn't hold up to scrutiny, anecdotal evidence does not count, we are commercialised to the hilt as a population (globally) and if there was an untapped market some bug business would have moved in.

It is not children in some quaint little village surrounded by farming communities who are denied access to cheap fresh veg, nor is it working class towns with markets on a traditional saturday/mid week scenario, it's the parents buying habits.

A lot of it is put down to not playing out as much but I don’t believe that has as much impact as some think. I was a fat child, so was my sister. I was very active, played out constantly, rarely watched TV and was always out on my bike.

I put it down to 2 things. Firstly my mother is a feeder. She equates food with love and we were always given massive portions, plus something like a chocolate bar as a pre-bed snack. Trying to refuse an offer of food from her still results in a lot of pressure. One won’t hurt, have another etc

Secondly, we ate what DM could carry home from the local frozen food shop, lots of chips, breaded chicken and the like. If my DF had bothered to get out of the pub and out to a local supermarket she may have had more options but that’s a whole other thread and she couldn’t drive.

My Dsis has gone the same way. She overfeeds my niece and she is really overweight but her appetite thermostat is now set. She can’t see it though and thinks she’s just a naturally big girl.

I have been very aware of it and tried to always feed the DC what they needed with plenty of fruit and veg, not too much junk and limited snacks. I have always battled with DH as he always moans at them to clear their plates and I hate that. Just let them eat what they need to be satisfied.

DC1 is very active and self regulates naturally so is very slim. I’d say at least half of her friends are significantly overweight though. DC2 is the opposite (lazy arse) and definitely chunkier but ok still at the moment.

It’s such a complicated issue. It’s a matter of education, time with many parents working full time and being tired, awareness because obesity looks normal to us now, dietary advice changing constantly, money, so many things. And portion sizes are significantly bigger everywhere!

Real food is now not the norm. Giving children carrot sticks or apple with peanut butter is less common than a bag of sweets If you got back a little before that, to the 50's, food was dreadful by today's standards. The idea that school "tuck shops" should sell anything other than chocolate bars and crisps was quite unheard of. I was not unusual in coming home to a tea of bread and jam followed by sponge cake (and if I'd had my two pieces of bread I was allowed to fill up on cake). In summer tea had the addition of fresh strawberries steeped in sugar and smothered in evaporated milk. Yet I wasn't fat as a child and I've never been out of the "healthy" BMI range. The real big difference between then and now was the level of physical activity. It's only in recent years has "exercise" been something you had to go out and do in addition to everything else - back then, just normal living gave you more than enough exercise.

I look back at school photos and think that the 2 fat kids in my year were not fat at all in comparison with today. I've read the thread and agree with the snacking, from weaning it was I suppose easier to give DD something to chomp on even if it was a supposedly healthy rice cake snack. She is in her normal weight range but I think that is down to the fact we walk 1.5 miles to school and back every day, she does put on a bit of weight in the holidays.
My son is in his 20's and was very overweight as a teen - I put this down to sugary/energy drinks. I couldn't police what he was spending his paper round money on. He is now rake thin and walks every where including to and from work so it's a good 6 miles a day.
I walk 5 miles a day with the school run and walking to work but I am still overweight, I'm really struggling to shift it but I think age, hormones from the Mirena and antidepressants have some part to play - my legs are toned though!
I have lived in France and maybe it wasn't the norm, but the local Super-U was only open until 6, there wasn't a barrage of chocolate and crisps (the kids would complain - no flavours?!) If we did buy crisps, a grab bag would last for days served in a bowl along with olives and some cheese. We'd buy a baguette every day and eat it with real butter and with or without ham and cheese. I actually lost weight in my time there!
I'm rambling