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.

Interestingly though poverty is absolutely rife in my area, yet in any of the school or the local sports teams, there are very few overweight children.

Even when I go to the tournaments involving lots of other schools from surrounding poor areas, it's rare to see an overweight sporty child.

@MrsPinkSky Do you think the sports teams reflect the spread in social circumstances in the local area, or do you think the children whose parents have the time and inclination to take them to sports clubs, pay for their coaching sessions, buy them their equipment and kit and so on, pay for competitions and race entries, might be skewed more heavily towards the children whose families aren't living in poverty?

I don't get all the "no excuse" posts. No one cares that you don't consider xyz to be a good enough excuse. People are making the decisions they are or feeling unable to cope with whatever regardless of what other people think.

Lack of routines are an issue too. Children need to know when they are eating and when a snack can happen. We have meals at 7:30, 12:30, 5:30 & a snack at 10 & 3 (banana, nuts, rice cake & nut butter etc).

My children never get a bag of crisps in the buggy. I loathe seeing toddlers woth their little fists stuffed into crisps or chips in the buggy. Also sitting in a buggy with an ipad. Such unhealthy habits from a tiny age that stick.

Exactly - you don't know what you don't know and I expect if everyone around you is the same you don't bother finding out.

I'm not making excuses and I'm not talking about myself. I know how to make a meal with vegetables and pulses and I'm not overweight.

How interesting. What about people who experience low mood and can't motivate themselves?

It's not that you don't bother, you don't realise what you don't know! You have no idea what else is out there. It's a result of generational neglect and/ or poverty. (General you, not you personally)

I mean most of us are just getting by day to day. If we are going to take the time to learn something new it's either something that interests us or something that we think will help us with a more immediate problem in our lives.

I think a lot of people had rationing so firmly in their minds, it stayed for many years. They took pride in making things last, stretching out their resources, not wasting.
Something went wrong ( maybe early 80's?) Both parents had to work, kids in day care, Parents exhausted, cheap addictive food readily available. Another factor the low status given to practical skills like cooking. I'll never forget my kids decorating a prebought chocolate log in " food tech". That and design a cheesecake. What a load of nonsense.

My food tech (2000s) was all about convenience food. One term the project was to design a snack product and it's packaging and another term it was to design a microwave meal and it's packaging. It was very normalising of processed food.

That long term deprivation also feeds into other difficult behaviours such as hoarding.

DGM was a pre-war baby. From infancy to her teens there was rationing. DGGM was no great cook anyway so there was no inspiration with food. The 60s/ 70s of her younger adult life, thinness was aspirational. The best thing that happened to DM's cooking was the packet seasoning mixes in the 80s to vary up tins on toast and meat and soggy two-veg.

There's probably a lot of polarising of food attitudes in that generation of either virtuous abstainence or feed with love while you can.

Following generations have been raised with "clear your plate" even though the food environment has changed and it can be more detrimental to do so. I've never had a weght issue, but I twigged as a student that excess food can be as wasted in me as it is in the bin, so no point in stuffing myself and I suspect this has kept my weight more stable than average through adulthood.

It's taking younger generations effort to learn to self regulate in a calorie dense environment because often training wasn't avaliable- in the same way of learning how to breast feed with no generation support (and often cats bum faces in response)

Yes, my parents had very distorted ideas arounnd food. Stealing if off other peoples' plates for example.

They didn't snack though. I think that's key. As another poster mentioned, this constant drip drip of food and the crisps in the buggy thing.

Yes, exercise is very good for us, but as that piece says people would need double the amount of exercise that the NHS recommends to stay at a healthy weight and that's probably talking about the average person not the ones eating a diet causing obesity.

I think if you take your DC to sports clubs you are more likely to be feeding them a decent diet and those DC will most likely be getting more exercise than the recommended minimum.

That's what I was saying. I don't disagree with you.

Yes, this is what I was saying earlier.

Quite honestly if you're feeding your DC what you think is healthy based on what your mum fed you, what everyone else around you is giving their DC and your social worker seems happy then you're not going to have a reason to question it.

This is the crux of the problem. A lot of people think you should feed children nuggets. That that is all they can manage to tolerate.

When I was weaning my children a family member told me I should be using baby rice and plain foods as a child's palate isn't ready for flavours. If these beliefs are around then children won't be fed real foods.

Sorry!

How interesting. So what?

Unless Im muddling them up with another shop, tins. Tinned food has gone out of fashion but tinned fish, tinned soups are cheap and filling. I always buy my tinned fish in shops like that, Home Bargains for us, we also buy other packets in there, tarka dhal usually and then use them as a base for meat. Their meat is quite cheap too.

I think it’s because many UK parents probably feed convenience foods more. So many families I know get take outs once or twice a week too which is excessive.

It is amazing to me that some people do not understand this. I wish I was so lucky. Thank you for persisting in explaining but I don't think you can to people who really really just do not want to get it.

We have applied so much moral judgement to weight. Reading Ultra Processed People and Why We Eat (Too Much) by Andrew Jenkinson really helped me see the issue with fresh eyes. I feel like that knowledge is power.

So I like hearing things from another perpective, its interesting.

Books like that will be the death of us because it externalises something very personal, ie what you personally put into your shopping trolly and then into your mouth

Perhaps London is still better funded that many parts in the north then because my local library has gone and I'm not alone. I think there is such a difference in different parts of the country which is sad.