To be shocked at the level of obesity of British children?

[MEM00]

Having recently come back from holiday I found myself really shocked by the size of so many other British kids at the resort we were at. It was mostly a mix of British, French and German families and I found it impossible to not notice the difference in the British kids compared to others. DD is 8 and I would say average sized, by no means skinny. She made friends with another girl the same age by the pool, and i'm not joking when i say the other girl must have been twice the size when they were next to each other.

Am i overthinking this? Because it really makes me worry for the future.

This isn't intended by be 'fat shaming' in any way btw.

Eating habits are formed in childhood. If a child is raised on cheap, processed food, they are not going to know anything different. They will accept the food, and see nothing wrong with it, or understand that the food is low in nutrition, and even harmful to them. All these things have to be taught. How can a parent pass on, what they do not even know themselves? Too many people have not been taught even basic cooking skills. The factors involved with this obesity epidemic are legion.

Its interesting how people see 'meals' and 'dinners' though

Even on this thread, people are comparing an oven pizza as a 'dinner' with scrambled egg on toast with veg and a yoghurt as a 'light meal'

Scrambled egg on toast is a brilliant dinner, particularly with some other bits, its not a 'light meal' necessarily. It makes a good dinner, a good lunch or a good breakfast.

Like the poster who gave an example of soup being queried by a colleague as their dinner, like its seen as insubstantial.

The problem and consequence of wanting apparently 'better' food has been that people would turn their noses up at sardines on toast for dinner or such like. I remember being given egg, cheese and mushroom baked in a pyrex dish for dinner (70s).

People would think thats bland and boring, wheres the excitement, boring British food etc etc.

Like others I think the problem for children is portion size, constant snacking, parents not wanting to say no and lack of exercise or activities where you dont have an eating opportunity. Im not convinced its down to UPFs as such because its just about eating too much overall really

I remember a thread on here a while back, parent had asked grandparents to look after the children for the day or something and she was upset that from 12 onward, the children had only had something to drink and nothing to eat, so were ready for dinner at 5ish or something. The amount of people that responded that this was neglectful and that children should be eating every couple of hours.

"too many people have not been taught basic cooking skills"
So? I was never taught how to cook, but I can read, so I read recipes. Or I watch James Martin or Mary Berry. Just giving up on something because you were "never taught" is a poor excuse.

No they are truly not if they are used to eat healthy food from early on and been quality brainwashed about UPF.
Having read Ultraprocessed People my teen DC read all labels now. They used to love some crisps very occasionally, read the label a few weeks ago and that was it.

I'm definitely going to do a bit of research. It sounds like a reasonable conclusion.

While we are not massively overweight and need to lose 7-10lbs each. We both agree we feel huge and don't look our best.

Wouldn't dream of feeling our kids the shit we snack on and the amount of caffiene we both consume.

I also said on another thread that I think obesity ties in to a 4-way issue with how children are raised now: screens, permissiveness, food and a lack of respect for authority/education.

Since parents stopped smacking their kids (and no I’m not saying we should go back to that 🙄) a kind of void has been left as to how to discipline them, and food has become a massive part of that. Food as a bribe, food as a reward, food to ‘keep them quiet’, food to ‘stop a meltdown’, food to distract them - just endless food. All the mums I know have packets of biscuits, bread sticks and melty puffs shoved under the buggy ready to be whipped out the second one of their kids moans about being hungry or starts to get difficult.

Same with screens. They’ve become a massive parenting weapon which are heavily relied on and of course have a negative impact on health, physical and mental.

Nobody seems to be able to parent without them any more.

Here in Scotland, they have given free bus passes to everyone under 22. My initial thought was, how amazing, now young people can travel around unhindered by cost.

But now, I have upper Primary pupils in my class taking the bus daily instead of walking two stops (about 6minutes!) just because they can. When I was a teenager, I ate a reasonable amount of junk that my mother knew nothing about…..but I played sport and WALKED everywhere; to school, to friends houses, to work, to town to hang around.

Knowing what the factors are, is a start. Cookery skills are essential if you are going to be cooking with raw ingredients. It is beneficial to install these life skills from when a child is old enough to start learning. People still have to want to do these things as adults, of course. But if they have been used to handling, and cooking from young it will hopefully be ingrained in them, and it would just be second nature to buy the ingredients, and make a meal from them. As I said, there are many factors for the fallout we are seeing today.

That's funny to me because if you were at my grandparents you would have had a full tea (snack between lunch and dinner) at my parents you would have had a drink and cake. At mine - maybe some fruit or a hot cross bun if you were lucky!! You would have at elevenses too. I always thought morning and afternoon snacks were quite old fashioned until I read on MN so many people saying they never had snacks when they were younger! 😂

Just a note those were my wealthy grandparents. My DF who was from working class background didn't have snacks as a DC.

That's why we fund smoking/alcohol/drugs services.

Preventative medicine is much cheaper than the after effects.

Yes I was just about to say, we were working class, not well off, this was the 70s and the main playing was playing out so we werent around in the house anyway. No snacks for us and the only fizzy drink was lucozade and you only had that when you were ill and not eating

Having said that, I was served massive portions so was quite big as a child

They do less P.E at my DD's secondary school than I used to, but only 20 minutes less (per week) and they go in to school in Sports kit so would save that 20 min in not changing.

I know that tackling obesity is complex and not as simple as ‘eat less and move more’….but is it especially complex in young children? Those for whom lifelong habits have not been formed, hormones are not at play yet etc.

This is anecdata, my lived experience. I am obese. Was underweight until puberty with a very healthy, fresh food diet. Then by about 15 I was very overweight, despite not eating differently (though more, I fainted when very hungry) and being even more active - had horses, walked half an hour to school, cycled to neighbouring villages to see friends etc.

I was diagnosed with PCOS when TTC at 30. Hormonal chaos with IVF then birth of DDs, but am now at 37 finally on the right meds and losing weight rapidly. Eat the same as DH and DDs, all of whom are healthy weights, can see ribs in the children etc.

I guess what I’m saying is that for me, as an adult with a medical condition, obesity is not a simple fix BUT as my DDs are fine eating less than their peers and moving more could I conclude that it really is simple for many children? And therefore, any focus on addressing obesity in children would be less nuanced as in adults, and so could be something that an incoming government might look at tackling?

This thread has me remembering my mums meal plan from when we were little
It wasn't perfect as like I said, I was overweight (other siblings weren't) and I know my portions were too big and my mum relied on carbs to fill us up.
Breakfast was always the same , toast and jam, and cereal if we wanted.
Lunch was a sandwich, an apple, a yoghurt and a bit of homemade cake or very occasionally , a penguin.
Dinners were always
Monday Bubble and squeak from roast leftovers
Tuesday omelette boiled potatoes and peas
Weds cottage pie or mince and onions
Thursday slice of ham, egg and chips or ham salad in summer with boiled potatoes
Friday boil in bag fish in parsley sauce potatoes and peas
Saturday bacon and tomatoes with French stick
Sunday Roast

About twice a week we'd have angel delight or a choc ice
Homemade apple pie on a Sunday

I still have the little dishes she would make the angel delight in and they are tiny. A pot of yogurt fills them right to the top and we would have them about half full. I also have our plates we used specially for Christmas and they were massive , they are now smaller than my regular plates I bought from Next
You realise we were all eating a lot less.
We also walked everywhere

What strikes me is how simple her meals were. No sides or extras or sauces really

My DC are half Dutch so have that shape too, although DS wasn't tall til his growth spurt are DD isn't tall yet but they just have a certain shape! H&M to the rescue!

Too many carbs in particular pasta.

A different issue but clothes for a very tall 14yo without a ‘womanly’ shape is a nightmare!!

I used to do that when mine were small and I was poor - I'd just eat their leftovers.

This is very very similar to my 70s food

Some bigger dinners like shepherds pie or liver that she tried to make me eat (bleugh), but a lot of sardines on toast, egg baked with cheese, tinned salmon sandwiches on a Sunday afternoon, fish in parsley sauce in the bag, the ubiquitous 70s salad of cold new potatoes, lettuce, cucumber and tomato, salad cream, slice of ham and a hard boiled egg!, roast chicken on a Sunday but not that often, very occasional Angel Delight and like you say small amounts of it. The occasional mini milk or such like. Breakfast was ready brek or scrambled egg on toast. Very occasionally we would have spaghetti bolognese and my dad would test the spaghetti by throwing it at the wall!

So many excuses on here

When really it come down to the parents simply not caring that their child is overweight

My DC's dad is overweight. He doesn't eat very healthily. They have one meal with him a week which is a takeaway. I'm not thrilled by that but it is what it is. But they eat all the rest of their food with me so I don't think they have a 50% chance of obesity.

If your going to take what I say so literally I will change it to kids don't walk anywhere much anymore

Really gently, and with great respect, this is the exact issue. There is statistical anysis of this issue. But instead of going " right ok, they've got an obese parent and I know this statistic, so I'll work hard to counteract and I'll attempt to get him to understand this too and let's make sure Our kids escape this" your reaction is " I don't think it will be 50% for my kids " you wouldn't do this with passive smoking, or any other health risk to kids