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).

I didn’t say poor. You did.

but have you been short of cash long term lethaldrizzle?

Yes of course you eat worse, and are more likely to buy (eg) a bag of cheap doughnuts, if you are struggling. George Orwell was writing about this before ww2. (the Road to Wigan Pier)

And please, can nobody start about the 'big pot of vegetable and lentil stew' ...:)

In the 80's, on average people ate more than they do now and drank more than they do now. At least 20% fewer calories are being eaten, so even if people were all eating 3 meals a day and never snacking (I've never seen any evidence, just anecdotes of people who didn't, and biscuit saled have declined since the 80's suggesting some people were either snacking lots between meals or sitting down to rich tea dinner)

There isn't a single answer, please stop thinking there is and blaming individual things, obviously it's appealing because individual things can be easily changed, but the causes are not simple! So the solutions won't be either.

If you have few pleasures in your life, food is an easy, cheap and readily available source of temporary pleasure. It's not hard to understand.

My belief is that historically, the stay at home mother had incredible skills in the kitchen. Making everything from pastries and bread to complete meals - this is where home economics come into play and your leftover breadcrumbs can be made into a stuffing for the Sunday dinner etc etc. Since this traditional role has vanished as a societal norm, the skills of a mother are not being passed down to their daughters and we now have several generations who cannot cook or use leftovers creatively. We need a fresh meal every day and a lot of the time it's completely eaten! I have recently decided to change my life and eating habits and since I have started, I cannot get over the amount of obscenely oversized foods that are on my social media feeds. Meals that could feed a family of 6 but for 1. Our concept of eating has been completely lost.

Snacking
Pacifying young children with snacks
Large portions
Pressure to clear your plate
Worry over poor appetites and not eating enough
Time poor for preparing more nutritious meals or for active play
A constant avaliability of calorie dense/ low nutrition foods. Poor quality children's menus.
Changes in the composition in foods with substitution of ingredients for cost, artificial ingredients for product life etc
Focusing too much on the health value of individual foods and losing the big picture, so fruit= good, dried fruit= good, marketed children's dried fruit product= good when in fact it is calorie dense, high in sugars and actually not that healthy and satisfying so child is hungry soon after. Foods such as yoghurt which may not be nearly as healthy as percieved. Variations between brands.
Loss of general activity and active play. Lack of walking/ cycling.
Overvaluing formal sporting activity for energy burn (my DCs spend a fair amount of waiting their turn during swimming/ gymnastics etc)
Pester power. When faced with a vending machine here, a vending machine there, sweets by the till there etc, a parent can say a lot of "no" but they might say "yes" on the 50th occurence
Treat culture
Small living spaces and lack of safe outdoor spaces to play including tiny gardens in modern housing
Risk adverse culture with inflexible guidelines on supervision e.g. schools having rules about year groups walking home regardless of where the child actually lives. Fear of being neglectful.
Expectations of children being seen but not heard (see pacify young children with food, also "no ball games", neighbours moaning about children playing in a reasonable, non-damaging way.
Denial "big boned" "built like a rugby player" "takes after dad"
Children not looking overweight because it is so normal. Overweight children don't look the same build as overweight adults, it's much more subtle. Thinking slim children are thin.
Oversized childrens clothing. (I find it difficult to get the right proportions of waist/ leg length for my fairly slim DCs)

My DCs are slim but some of the points I've listed do apply to us to some degree.

It is a localised issue with some connection to class/ income. Some schools I've worked in have the balance of healthy weighted children that was normal in previous decades. In others, the children that aren't overweight/ obese are are a minority. There may only be a few miles geographically between them.

We have a culture of children needing to be fed here in Portugal, and looking at the charts, yes, we are also one of the countries with the highest rates of child obesity, funnily enough.

My ow son was only fed what he felt like eating, with little encouragement and respecting when he wanted to stop.
One of my nephews was clearly overfed (driven by parents) to the point that he'd throw up at the end of a meal.

My son would eat a small bowl of soup. Nephew would be fed a full to the brim bowl, with minced meat thrown in.
My son would eat small portions and he largely fed himself. Nephew would be given a full plate.

But apparently, my nephew was difficult to feed and I considered that my son ate well.

It's not surprising that my son is very lean, although he was in the 90 something centile when he was 12 months old and although he's developing a huge appetite in his teens - but that I can still see it's highly self regulated. He plays football in a team and when he can at school. He loves his PS4, but doesn't sit to play. He also walks back home from school (a 15-20 min walk with a heavy backpack).

My nephew is much heavier and although he takes swimming lessons he's much more sedentary.

It's anecdotal, but it's a pattern I see repeated in other nephews, and even in the kids in DS's football team.

Fourfried - yes I am speaking from experience. I wouldn't comment on something so contentious if I had not. I am no longer penniless but my mind set has stayed the same through out. I've always exercised and eaten well.

sirfredfredgeorge
The problem with this is that it relies on people reporting what they eat and people tend to lie! They ignore all of the snacks they eat and so this sort of research is really unreliable.

" I've always exercised and eaten well."

well that is good, but it does remain a fact that the less money you have the more likely you are to 'comfort eat' with cheap sugary food.

But lethal I presume you already had the skills and ability to do that before hand?

So often it’s a vicious circle and if someone isn’t taught how to eat well on a budget then they won’t know how to so they will continue what they have learnt and so the cycle continues. We need to break that cycle to be able to have any impact in a lot of communities.

There must be some middle class people that are overweight surely?
It cant all be ' the poor' they seem to get the blame for everything!

I went to France and was shocked at how overweight so many children were and just how full to the brim of shite the supermarkets were. Yes the shops had a more interesting selection of cooked meats/ cheese etc but it was no different ratio wise to Asda with regards to how much of the shops were given over to processed food vs fresh. It wasn’t what I was expecting tbh as people always go on about the French being healthy and thin- that isn’t what I saw.

I think it’s probab a snacking/ lack of exercise thing that is causing overweight kids/ people. Sugar is in everything as well. Mindless eating as well probably plays a part, even out for dinner or lunch kids are glued to iPads so they aren’t paying attention to what/ how much they’re eating.

ParisUSM Unless food waste has reduced in massive amounts, and the suggestion is actually the reverse, we know calories have reduced because of total sales of stuff have massively reduced, which lines up with the report.

The stats are not just based on consumption reports, consumption reports line up with sales, it's a difficult argument to say that people lie more now in food diaries and in food waste info. Sales and waste are more easily measured without the biases.

There must be some middle class people that are overweight surely?

Me! I was an overweight child and came from a MC background... privately educated, nice home blah blah blah. Fed good quality food.

I don't follow any of these stereotypes.

I hate fizzy drinks with a passion and never drink them.

I never get takeaways.

I don't drink alcohol.

I'm still fat!

I forsee it getting worse. When I was a child you at least had to walk to your friends house to play nintendo. Now everyone has a screen. Getting kids off screens is a new challenge, forget feeding them well.

I have two dds, one is rail thin, and the is thin and strong but eats like an adult at the age of 9, so I am a bit worried about her. She is athletic but going through a sedentary phase.

Go to the gym several times a week too...doing a mix of classes

The observations I’ve made compared to my home country where obesity is very low:

Being overweight is socially acceptable here and seen as normal.
Traditional British food is quite heavy and stodgy and while it’s delicious, if eaten in large quantities I can see how it would be easy to gain weight.
Children don’t seem to be encouraged to exercise through the day.
What’s seen as “children’s food” is usually processed crap.
Snacks, seem to be a thing here, where kids are given extra food usually 2-3 times a day!
Takeout food is very unhealthy. Where I am from, street food is not full of fat and sugar and salt.
Fat kids were always seen as healthy.
School dinners here are awful!

I'm sure it's because British parents are lazy and stupid, whereas parents in other nations are exemplary.

Or, you know, perhaps other more complex reasons. You decide.

The less money you have does not mean you're more likely to eat donuts - sirzy- I learnt the 'skills' not to eat crap from my upbringing I suppose, one in which we didn't eat fast-food etc because we couldn't afford it. Perhaps I just never got the taste for it. I rarely ate donuts as a kid

formerbabe, i have the ' menopause' to blame these days ( i know i shouldn/'t of course) - i put on the weight in my mid 30s and yo yo'd ever since. this thread has made me realise i need to overhaul the food eating and buying a lot more and help my son too who has put on weight at uni ( his own fault) he is going back to his exercise regime.

I am not a biscuit / cake eater and dislike fizzy drinks etc etc as well, but i am clearly doing other things wrong.

I was in Norway recently and I was surprised at how many more overweight people there were than when I used to go regularly about 20 years ago.

Of course middle class people are overweight! My son's only 2 friends who are chubby are very middle class. They go out to eat a lot! And working class people know how to cook a chicken 😂 Not all middle class people know how to cook either..
And of course being poor doesn't mean you have to comfort eat, but when you are really strapped all the time, and you feel like you have nothing to look forward to food is a manageable addiction.
I think a bit more understanding and a lot less smug judging would be a good start.

I'm sure it's because British parents are lazy and stupid, whereas parents in other nations are exemplary.

culture and climate must play a role.

When I first moved to the UK (from the US) I was pretty surprised at how little food knowledge there is and how little people care about food in a sort of deep cultural sense. It seems like you have to hunt quite a bit for good ingredients (and I live in London), and baked beans and fried chicken are everywhere.

Contrast that with the mediterranean. We often holiday there, and get flats for our family and there is literally great fresh fruit and veggies everywhere for dirt cheap.

It's no surprise that the fresh food offerings are better in spain, and it does filter through the culture and food.

Snacks, seem to be a thing here, where kids are given extra food usually 2-3 times a day!

If You look at other threads though people are called smug or sneered at orblaughed at for objecting to people feeding their kids snacks.

Told to lighten up it's just a biscuit etc

However I don't know about you but if we have a large meal out somewhere we would he very small if we even had it. Portions/meals adjusted to accommodate any unexpected extras we may have had during breakfast or lunch etc

But all these "just a biscuit" or "it's fun size it's ok" or "have a treat for being a good boy/girl packets off haribo" are what adds up. People don't account for all these little extras.