To think we’ve lost sight of what a healthy child’s weight should be?

[Winniethepoohandtiggertoo]

Walking through town today as kids were leaving school and I was quite shocked by the size of them (primary kids). But then I noticed that so many of them were overweight that in a way it isn’t surprising that maybe their parents haven’t noticed or realised there is a problem? When I was little kids were skinny things, now it seems the norm for them to be built like shot-putters! I know a few parents with overweight children but they insist they’re ‘strong’ or ‘solid’, or ‘they run around so much they just burn it off’. When so many kids look like theirs it probably isn’t surprising they think that?

Loving the idea of all those greedy indolent babies "snacking" unnecessarily on breastmilk 😂!

Yanbu.

I think as adult weight has crept up we've lost sight of a healthy weight for adults. So many people argue against their BMI category claiming they're just muscular or the age old 'it's out of date' mentality, stating they're a healthy weight when they're actually overweight or even obese. I remember reading some research where they talked to adults who were overweight and obese and many of them thought they were a healthy weight!

So it stands to reason there'd be a knock on effect when it comes to kids. Overweight and obese adults are more likely to raise overweight and obese kids, and the more common it is the more 'normal' it is. I remember in primary school in the 1990s just one child was visibly overweight and it was very obvious as it wasn't the norm. Nowadays at any school pickup you can see it's a huge percentage of the class that are overweight. It's swung so far the other way some people think if you can see a kid's ribs they're desperately underweight when it's actually normal for kids to be lean enough to see their ribs.

Along with the increase in staying indoors and using screens, lack of outdoor spaces, lack of parental knowledge around cooking healthy meals, it's a ticking time bomb for the NHS.

what's there to laugh about? cakes from supermarkets have loads of added ingredients. classed as ultra processed food, plus they taste awful.
homemade is slightly healthier if given the choice.

It wasn’t me who made that comment, I don’t personally believe that either bf or ff has any bearing on weight in later life, I think it’s other factors that happen to correlate with bf.

If anyone can point me to a sibling study, or one that is otherwise adjusted to account for socio economic differences, proving a link between bf and reduced obesity then I’m all ears.

There is such a strong link between socio economic status and feeding method in this country that any study that doesn’t adjust to account for that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Anecdotally the only sibling study I managed to find when I researched this was one done in the US which concluded no statistically significant difference in any outcomes between bf and ff babies. With the exception, if I remember correctly, of asthma which was worse in bf babies although they had no idea why.

I’m not anti bf AT ALL btw, I did it exclusively for nearly a year, think it’s great for lots of people - but I am against people constantly going on about ‘all the evidence’ when everything I’ve managed to find out indicates that the evidence is largely fundamentally flawed!

@TheChoiceIsYours

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19693959/

Here’s a sibling study.

Absolutely.

Studies showing breastfeeding is correlated with lower risk of obesity don't mean breastmilk or breastfeeding prevents obesity. When they analyse it further there's zero evidence that bf or ff has any impact on weight either way. The truth is that households that are able to/choose to bf are more likely to have other factors that reduce the chances of their child being obese later in life. Same as with IQ. There's absolutely no causative relationship between bf and IQ proven, but households that bf also have other factors that make it more likely their children will score highly on IQ tests. It's really sad how the science has been distilled to such an extent in the effort to aggressively promote bf that the general public have been told that breastfeeding increases IQ and reduces the risk of obesity. It isn't true and it can put pressure on parents to bf who don't want to or aren't able to or are really struggling with it because they mistakenly believe it will help their child later in life.

Thanks very much, I’ll have a read - I’m open to being convinced!

Yes, I agree.

I'm quite petite and always been on the lower end of a normal BMI so never really thought much about the role of genetics in people's metabolism etc, but my eldest DC is prone to putting on weight easily (my youngest is a beanpole, takes after me!); she takes after my DH's side of the family (short and stocky!). So I do try and take (stealthy!) action if I can see she's looking a bit plumper than usual. She was on the 80th percentile for BMI at her reception check, so in the normal weight category, but only just. (Was always on the 75th percentile for both weight and length/height from birth, but then genetics took over and her height has gone down to about 25-50th percentile).

So it's a fine line, but not helped by other parents (and also grandparents 🙄) thinking that just because it's okay for their children, it's okay. It's hard to say no without making a big deal out of it.

The point I made earlier re EBF babies was regarding worldwide data which of course incorporates data from countries both rich and poor, so your idea (a bit of a smug MC trope 🤦‍♀️) that EBF is generally only done by more affluent women is only the case for a very narrow range of countries, on a worldwide scale.

Worldwide, women of all education levels and socioeconomic backgrounds EBF their babies.

It’s a bit outdated now but The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer goes into some detail on these issues if anyone is interested in a more in-depth view.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18846050/
This is also quite interesting as it shows how the way that data is processed makes a significant difference to conclusions.

I know, I’m a confused by these kind of assertions. My weight which was already creeping upwards since 2015 skyrocketed over the early stage of the pandemic and I seen a marked change for the worse in how people treated me. I used to eat ALL the cake in my office in my 20s and I was applauded for how I ate
it and was still “skinny as a rake”. Fast forward 6 years and I had a colleague who thought it was okay to warn me against eating a single bag of crisps. She would not have said that if I was still slim.

I’ve lost a lot of weight again and I see strangers/acquaintance are a lot more pleasant to me 😐

My kids are Dutch, and over here they are normal but when we took them to the UK for the summer to see wider family, I couldn't believe how skinny they were compared to other kids we saw. Their cousins who are the same age, every park we went to, every shopping centre etc. the British kids seemed so much bigger. I can't speak for the whole of the UK, this was us travelling around NW England. I'm not sure where the UK is going wrong - I've never noticed this difference anywhere else we've travelled.

I think it is easy when you have skinny children to say 'oh parents are abusing and harming their children' when they are overweight but it's not as easy as that.
I have always been a size 8-10. Put on very little weight with both pregnancies, ate very well. Both babies born on 98th centile. Both EBF for one year. Both fed healthy food, homemade.
They were 98th centile at birth
At one year when barely eating food
At 2 year check
Now at 6 and 3. They are both very active, do swimming and gymnastics. Walk everywhere. Eat healthy homecooked food, minimal sugary snacks. DH and I both health weights and walk/cycle everywhere so good role modelling.
Where did I go wrong? When did I become abusive, horrible and a shit parent.
They don't look obese. They can run as fast as their friends, they eat healthier than virtually anyone I know and I asked the HV for a portion size booked when DC1 was 2 so I follow that to ensure no overeating. Never encouraged to finish food, intuitive eaters.
So these posts make me so sad as I feel I've done something horribly wrong when their whole lives I have tried to 'do it' right. And they both look healthy and well. But they are technically overweight on the BMI.

My DC is tube fed now 10 and has been since birth. We often get skinny comments and yet medically she is a healthy very perfect weight, always baffles me !

Come to my affluent SE town where very sporty focussed and can’t swing a cat for organic fruit and veg shops… I honestly can’t recall any overweight children at my children’s large independent and very sporty school

What is interesting is that so many people here are making excuses for why children, and adults too, are overweight. For the majority of people if you eat more than you need you put on weight. I've put on weight recently from eating all the Christmas chocolates etc. Extra calories I don't need. I know the reason why.

People are overweight because they are eating too much (with a few exceptions). The difficulty with children and young adults being overweight is that it becomes harder to lose weight as you get older and it sets a pattern for life. I was very slim until my mid 30s then I started to put on weight. Now in my 50s and a bit overweight because my body really doesn't need that much food any more. If I ate what I wanted I'd be massive. I worry about the young women I see who are obese in their teens and their twenties and the impact it will have on their health.

But when it comes to evidence of benefits, I don’t think it’s at all appropriate or helpful to compare the UK with developing countries where access to clean water to make up formula is lacking, for example. Of course the benefits of bf are much greater if you can’t safely make up formula. That’s not the case in Surrey!

Far from ‘smug MN trope’ (patronising much?!) it is fact that in the UK there is a strong link between affluence and rates of bf. And I believe that studying this issue is best done in the local context.

@DownInTheDumpster then that suggests that for them even a standardly healthy diet is a little too much. Do they snack?

And there lies the heart of the problem. Overweight parents are less likelty to recognise that their DC are overweight as being overweight has become so normalised. The poor eating habits of parents are passed on to the children.

I think we also have lots of people that have limited knowledge about good nutrition and a lot are not able to cook meals from scratch. Then when affordability comes into play…

@Winniethepoohandtiggertoo well I give them the suggested portion and let them eat until they have had enough. We rarely have puddings other than fruit and they don’t snack a lot especially the eldest who’s at school.

I would write down everything you feed them it might surprise you. Fruit is very sugary and contains a surprising amount of carbs - this obsession with tropical or sweet fruit over green veg is definitely not helping. The number of parents I see wheeling out pineapple fingers and grapes thinking they’re a healthy daily snack is mad! I would also cut back portions again a little.

There is a 4 year old, obviously very overweight girl that I have seen a few times in public - only for 5-10 minutes at a time.

In every single one of those instances she has had a bar/bag of chocolate. Interestingly, she's often playing with it/giving it away/saying she doesn't want it and the mother tells her off that she has to eat it. It's shocking.

I grew up in the 60s/70s.
Pretty much every child was skinny by today's standards. There was one fat child in the school who stood out a mile. probably blend in today as not exceptional.
We ate three meals a day and puddings but never had snacks. No crisps, biscuits or sweet drinks. Most food was basic home cooked food - eg meat and two veg and fruit crumble, nothing processed. We never had a takeaway other than fish and chips on a summer holiday.
We simply ate a lot less food.

If a child was undernourished the parents would be accused of neglect. Obese is just as bad for health. I also notice lots of euphamisms around weight. Chunky =fat.

Pineapple and grapes are not going to make kids fat or give them type 2 diabetes. Get a grip.

The usual. Complete and utter denial from parents.

Big boned, solid, chunky, due a growth spurt, has my genes, doesn't like healthy food, he can still run/dance/do the long jump, puppy fat, all there, I only ever homecook from scratch/grow my own/organic food yada yada, prone to weight gain, puts of weight for no reason bless him...blah blah blah.

The disservice these parents are doing to their children is heartbreaking. Kids are NOT meant to be fat. Unless there is a VALID medical reason, kids are not meant to be fat or overweight or obese. They are children. They don't wake up one morning and are suddenly fat. It takes time and it is gradual and how parents do not notice is beyond me. Or else they do notice and make excuses like the ones above. Those children become fat teenagers who become fat adults if it is not addressed. Show me a fat child and most of the time I will show you a fat mother. Not all the time but MOST of the time. It's horrendous and the denial in parents is dreadful. Anything rather than take the blame or change their OWN diet or attempt to change the diet of their child.......it's a cop out.