To think that fucking cartoons on cereal boxes aren't what's making children overweight and parents just need to say no to their kids?

[GoblinGreen]

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7848217/amp/Supermarket-Lidl-announces-remove-cartoon-characters-sugary-cereal-packaging.html

Ffs, what are they going to do next, get rid of all sweets and chocolate in case the kids pester their parents?

@MrsBrentford - you may be right but I've often found the support offered extremely prescriptive and if the family doesn't need that help they get recorded as 'refusing all help'.

@Freddiefatpants - agree

In my LA we always try to offer help that fits with the families needs.

We never would record a family as refusing all help. We would record them as “difficult to engage”

These day kids are brought up to think that having treats like a cake, biscuit or chocolate bar every day is normal. When I was growing up these things were occasional treats once a week or at parties etc.

There is also the habit of constant snacking starting right from weaning. Little kids are given regular snacks often as a pacifier or a distraction when they are not even hungry creating an really bad habit of constant grazing. There are 100s of snack products aimed at babies and toddlers marketed as organic therefore parents assume they are healthy. While some are ok in moderation most are just processed non foods with littler no nutritional value.

@MrsBrentford - yeah and some people are! But I remember a family who the new SW said weren't engaging - yet she had canceled 2 meetings and the first they'd turned up to as she hadn't told them it was cancelled!

yet 30 years ago, most children walked

30 years ago you were more likely to be in walking distance of the school you went to.
The definition of walking distance has changed. Kids used to walk miles to school, now they are driven if the school is anything more than 100 yds away.
30 years ago you were less likely to have a mum who needed to get to work on time.
Secondary kids didn't depend on their parents to take them. Older primary kids didn't either and often took responsibility for younger siblings too.
30 years ago, roads were quieter and safer.
Probably because fewer people were driving unnecessarily.

A few years ago I remember watching a TV series where doctors looked at an overweight child (or a pair of siblings), their diet and lifestyle. A computer-generated projection of what they would look like in several decades time if nothing changed (not good was generally the theme here). The parents were then told "You are killing your kids" and made to realise that it wasn't 'puppy fat' but that they were filling their child with junk.

I’m a bit mixed about this - childhood in 70s was full of cartoons on cereal packages and obesity very much less of a problem.
I do, though, think the marketing of foods (and other things) to children (and us!) is so sophisticated that it’s good to realise it and reduce it where possible. Remember vividly when I read decades ago that the eyes of the cartoons on cereal were angled so that for child height they would be looking at lower height from the shelf. I found that quite chilling and very very clever all at the same time ! Think of it every time I’m in that aisle.

I used to have chocolatey cereal every day and was really thin. I wasn't a big eater so I think my parents were just happy I was eating something!

Cheap highly processed food didn’t exist in the 1930s. You either cooked from fresh ingredients or you didn’t eat.

Not true. Chip shops thrived in the 1930s - a penny's worth of chips would be a cheap treat for the whole family. Corned beef was a cheap way of eating meat. People filled up on bread and marge and sugared tea.

What made the difference was that they, by necessity, got more exercise - a working class family wouldn't own a car and wouldn't be able to afford what few labour-saving devices were available in those days. For example, laundry would be an all day event involving lugging sopping wet clothes about.

Also, there was no habit of snacking back then so while meals might have been unhealthy, they'd have been all the family were eating - malnutrition was more of a problem than obesity. Having said that, there were fat people in the 1930s, just fewer of them.

Just made late NY resolution reading that list. No snacking. I don’t smack a lot anyway but ffs Why on earth do we ! ?
Just back from a holiday where snacks were completely unavailable - restaurants only on an island.
For first time in ages I was properly hungry before every meal and enjoyed it a lot !

When a PP spoke about accidently buying a sugary cereal and then throwing it away - it did kill me a little bit!
That was me. I bought it in error but thought we (,well DC) would use it anyway.DH is particularly strict about it (I don't know why, we eat all sorts of other stuff healthy and unhealthy) and said he didnt want them to have it. I suggested taking to a food bank but he took it upon himself to throw it away. Sorry I know that is very wasteful.

I think that the amount of food advertising in the breaks in family TV shows is a much bigger problem. It seems to make up so much of the ad content and sponsorship.

Is it still even allowed on kids commercial channels? ( Out of touch now mine are older)

The definition of walking distance has changed. Kids used to walk miles to school, now they are driven if the school is anything more than 100 yds away.

Yes, I totally agree with this. I don't drive and for shorter distances (20 minutes/half hour) I'll walk it. Walk an hour most days as it's just part of how I get around and DD has been brought up to be the same. It's quite often faster than waiting around for buses too. Most people were shocked when DD was small that she would walk for that long, saying their children wouldn't, some even said I was mean making her walk. Some people give me a strange look even now if I say I'm walking somewhere. A lot has to do with time too, I have to get up earlier to factor in the extra time to walk, some people's lives are so busy they just don't have that time, and are reliant on their car. My life would certainly be easier if I could drive, but I'd probably be fatter! It's just necessity that makes me walk really, with the positive side effects that I'm fitter and it's better for the environment.
That said, where we are now I wouldn't dream of walking a small child to the next village where the junior school and shops are. I'm setting off shortly for an appointment there, and it'll take 25 minutes to walk there, would take 5 in a car, but it's a rural road with no pavement in places and I wouldn't want to walk a small child along there. I also don't walk it after dark as it'd just be dangerous.
The world has changed too over the last 30 years in ways that don't lend themselves to putting aside time to walk instead of cars/buses and aren't as safe as they were 30 years ago.

30 years ago was the 1990s, not the 1960s! Two car households were the norm, and both parents working was probably the norm too!

Portion sizes, the availability of obesogenic foods and lack of exercise (far easier to be entertained sitting on your arse at home) have changed. Boys at my DCs school used to play out on the (enormous, well equipped playground) after school - now they want to go home to chat to their mates on the Xbox...

@Dementedmagpie - that's ok. I understood from your post that it had been thrown away by your DH and was a bit of a gut reaction rather than calculated decision!

Was talking about this at the weekend.

I weighed both my girls, 7&10.

Both came up as "underweight". At 20kgs and 35kgs respectively.

A/. They both look perfectly sized.
B/. I don't know how a 35kg 10yr old can be considered underweight.

However, our discussion centered on the fact that the youngest, doesn't stop eating. And it's not all healthy stuff, a lot, admittedly, is crap.

So we couldn't figure out how they stayed slim.

Then we realised, neither of them drink fizzy drinks.
And nor do they eat processed food. I cook everything from scratch. Not because I'm super woman, but because I was taught to.

Compared to the fat kids in their TKD club, who at breaks are drinking isotonic drinks, and talking about what snack they'll have after...despite eating before they came.

We're the other way on, a snack before and their dinner after.

Education is what we need. Taught how to cook. Understanding to listen to our bodies.

The 10yr old doesn't graze, and self regulates her sweets (Xmas sweets for example, still over half left). But she does eat big meals. She's also more sedentary and chilled.

The 7yr old, grazes all day, but never stops moving. Even when she's reading a book, her feet are jiggling.

@Freddiefatpants - I agree about the norms of walking distance having changed. Someone was shocked that I walk my daughter to school - it only takes 20 minutes! The fresh air wakes us up too and we have a nice chat.

@Kelsoooo - that sounds like my 7 year old - she is always hungry but spends most of her waking hours cartwheeling!

don't know how a 35kg 10yr old can be considered underweight.

Are you sure you’ve done the numbers right? Is she very very tall?

It's just what the scales said, stupid smart scales.

Just double checked and she's lower end of healthy weight , yeah she's really tall.

The most interesting part though is where it tells you their body fat %.

Portion sizes play an important role and simple calorie counting. A few years ago during a period of high stress I wasn't eating a lot and because of the food choices available to me what I did manage to eat was mostly crap bought for convenience and speed - Gregg's, McDonald's, Subway, etc. I lost a fair bit of weight so started tracking my food via MFP to make me more mindful of my intake because I really didn't want/need to lose it. I was averaging 1000 calories a day even though I was eating rubbish because 1000 calories is still only 1000 calories regardless of where those calories are coming from.

There needs to be more information about portion sizes including visuals. It's all good saying a serving of cereal is 40g but how many people would know what 40g looks like? Change food labelling to include a small photo of what a portion looks like. In the red book given to babies at birth include an infographic in the weaning section of appropriate portion sizes up to age five. Stop schools from rewarding children for clearing their entire plate at lunchtime. Children's centres used to run toddler and me cooking classes with advice on portions and food ideas, bring it back. Move away from the idea of good foods and bad foods and using food as a reward, food is just food. Stop with stupid "initiatives" like removing cartoon characters from cereal boxes because it just makes people roll their eyes and say how ridiculous it is then they switch off from the issue.

Alongside improved education there need to be improvements to mental health services. Eat less, move more doesn't help solve anything if overeating is due to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, or other mental health issues.

Food and fuel poverty need to be addressed as discussed upthread.

Encourage more exercise by investing in parks so people have somewhere their DC can go to play. Make PE lessons enjoyable rather than torturous, if you keep making kids do cross country running in the pissing rain and bleep tests in gym then they're not going to see exercise as something that can be fun. Invest in after school sports programmes, our council funds several of these with hockey, archery, dancing, football, athletics, and basketball available. Don't make it indoor play at school just because it's windy or too sunny or a little bit drizzly. Support children to walk or cycle to school with organised walking groups where kids from the same area meet up and walk together and cycling proficiency schemes so they're confident in cycling the distance to school.

@hoik - some really good ideas there. The cooking sessions at Children's centres were so good. My local one (closed down now, of course) use to run them in the holidays for primary age children and their parents too. It worked so well as it was open to all so no stigma of singling out the 'crap, lazy' parents. It was teaching actual skills rather than lecturing parents on 'healthy eating'. And it was fun so parentts and children wanted to come back for more. Such a shame the Tories have closed down our children's centres - ours was purpose built and really fabulous - there was lots of data showing the benefits of it but it was gradually run into the ground by budget cuts and then closed.

With my older DC, the HV was really quite obsessive about the 50th centile. She was a real help in some many ways, but she had a real thing that babies should be on the 50th centile. DS1 was around the 9th centile and she was quite insistent he needed to gain a lot. DS2 was born on the 50th and that made her so happy, even though he had reflux, terrible eczema, prone to bad coughs etc .

Totally agree OP