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.

I grew up in the 1980s/90s.i had a chocolate biscuit every day as far back as I can remember (club, penguin, 2 stick kit kat etc) but also had homemade cakes frequently too - not just birthdays.
My mum also cooked meals from scratch and we walked most places locally because she didn't drive. She was always overweight, neither me or siblings ever have been.
Apart from a period in my late teens/early 20s, when i had an ED, chocolate is a daily habit for me. My kids eat chocolate most days too, they are not overweight. I think it can't be pinned on particular foods although I think UPFs are supposed to be quite addictive.

Absolutely. Isn't the McDonalds sign one of the first things children recognise and 'read'?

It's about access and availability too. Another correlation is that deprived areas have the highest numbers of takeaways. If they are all you can access- plus maybe the corner shop - you can't buy fresh ingredients to cook from scratch.
You seem to be putting the focus on the individual whereas I'm putting it on society and the food culture we live (obesogenic environment).

Anything I say on here sounds pious-reading back-so I should perhaps just stop! I guess that people trying to change the situation have the same problem. Talking about whole foods, one comes across as sanctimonious.

I will just say that despite my name, there is way more to cheap food than lentils, and perhaps we should teach children to find pleasure in vegetables. It's not as shocking as it seems. Children across the world like veggies. It's only here in the UK that it is considered torture to feed your kids aubergines or spinach, and instead give them "nuggets". These things are delicacies worldwide...

I am part of an Asian women's group, and there are always mums panicking when a white British child visits "What should I feed them? Will they eat a veg pulao with very little spices or parathas? The response is always: " Don't risk it! Just buy in some nuggets and fries! ".

Ok, now delete me!

I haven't read ANY of the thread apart from the OP.

My Mum was considered the fat kid at school in the 50/60s.

We all had a fat kid at school during the 80s and 90s.

Looking back at photos now, those werent kids fat at all! They were larger than us, but having had 2 children go through primary and secondary during 2000/2010 - their obese equates today's normal.

There has been a HUGE rise in obesity.

Me and my brother, brought up through the 80s knew how to use the chip pan, bread and butter was a staple on the table. Chip butties ahoy! We'd gave whatever with chips, usually luncheon meat and a fried egg.

Pudding being an Instant Whip.

So, we were full of sugar and carbs, but were normal weight. Not skinny, not fat.

It had to be the indrofduction of the microwave, the additives, preservatives, and ready meals surely.

Ps the fat kid at school now looks thin compared to me!

Also my Mum in photos at her wedding pregnant with me... She is SO slim. Def not a 16, more a 10/12 with a bump.

It had to be the indrofduction of the microwave, the additives, preservatives, and ready meals surely.

Also simply portion sizes. People used to eat a lot less at one mealtime.

I hadn't heard of these ladies until recently, they were a dance troupe on tv in the 70s. Their USP was that they were supposed to be very large!

images.app.goo.gl/ScqV93Z9R7GzydYT6

In my primary school, there was one overweight kid. And in my high school of 600 girls there was one overweight girl. Both of those would be just plump or well-covered standing next to and compared to the average seriously overweight child and young teen now, of which there are many out and about.

I understand many are time-poor, just plain poor, live in places where fresh food is hard to come by, are surrounded by fast-food outlets, live in an obesogenic environment, don't have cooking skills - but I also see many sneering, incredulous, defensive posters here who seem to have no knowledge about the effects of junk food on overall health.

It is astonishing to see the number of posters who eat multiple processed sweet treat foods every day and list them on threads here proudly. It is not surprising some school lunch boxes look like party bags rather than actual food.

Sure. However, at the point that any adult looks at a 'big' child and starts with the judgemental thoughts (and god forbid comments), they can't know if the child has a condition, is on medication or just has parents who buy unhealthy food. Any which way, it's not the child's fault yet they are the ones left feeling terrible about themselves.

Also, it isn't just about visible fat. The amount of visceral fat some of these kids have packed on is alarming (also their skinny-fat, what's the problem? parents).

There are rising rates of serious liver disease, some requiring liver transplants, being recorded in the US at least from what I've read, because of this junk diet. And the rates of type 2 diabetes (that used to be called adult-onset diabetes) is skyrocketing worldwide in children, also.

Obviously, no judgemental comments are acceptable at any time. This is only to be discussed on here. But we are talking about a population, not individual cases who are on meds.

Thats so interesting. I remember this, one lady in the middle looks a little roly poly. The rest pretty regular.

Im not saying it was right but I remember Hattie Jacques being a figure of fun, due to her size.

Yes, a pound of mince for 4 adults. A small chicken for 4 adults and meal number 2 the following day.

When considered entire populations then you are looking at the impact of social psychology and social economics. It's too big a subject to do justice with here but ultimately obesity in the individual is created by society and will only be curtailed by the entire society. The book 'Nudge' by Sunstein and Thaler is a really good explanation of the factors at play.

And then my Mum boiled the bones of the chicken for soup for day 3.

Genuine MN chicken long before MN existed.

We had lovely roasts in our house on a Sunday, but the proportion of meat to veg was much smaller than it would be today.

This is an interesting case study

www.theguardian.com/befit/story/0,15652,1385645,00.html

I've mentioned this in another thread, but when I was at school in the 80s there was one overweight girl in my class - who really wasn't that big. Just slightly plump. It was taken very seriously. She was taken to the doctors and put on a diet of very plain foods such boiled vegetables and fish.
These days no one seems to care. Kids can be huge and still fed diets full of junk and UPF. No one's allowed to mention it either.
Another observation is that we all know and accept that a lot of poor people have awful diets here. However, I've lived abroad in Spain and Portugal and poor people do not exist on UPF and junk! They may not be able to afford steak etc but they eat home made stews with pulses or pasta and tomato sauce. The food they eat is nutritious and tasty.
We really need to look ourselves to see why we have so much unhealthy foods available.

Oh yes, soup was a great filler.

I remember seeing them on TV. Nowadays only the one in the middle would be considered at all overweight. Larger than most professional dancers but they wouldn't stand out otherwise.

Nope, not buying that.

The internet is absolutely saturated with free cooking tutorials, and just about every bit of nutritional information you could ever read, but parents have to WANT to do it.

Some will spend longer reading the instructions for their new phone, they would learning to cook healthy meals for their kids.

This has got me thinking back to my teens! breakfast a smallish bowl of cereal or a piece of toast, walked over a mile to school. School lunch or nick the money and buy chips. Either way, it wasn't much. Walk home.
Evening meal, a variation on meat and 2 veg The plates were medium sized, somewhere between a dinner plate and a side plate. Somethimes pudding or yoghurt. Sometimes a couple of crackers before bed.

The one on the far right is trim for her age, to my eyes

Indeed and yet they were all considered to be fat in the late 60s/ early 70s.

It also used to be unacceptable to eat on the street or in public, on trains, etc, unless you were eating an icecream or fish and chips beside the beach perhaps. Nowadays, people feel the need to snack on junk or eat fastfood meals any time of the day, any place. It seems as if many people including children are just constantly eating (crap). Treat food is now not weekly, but multiple times daily.