Childhood obesity

[Unopenedpackofmenssocks]

New report lists 9 areas of England where the majority of children will be overweight or obese by 2035.

It’s got me thinking about what causes childhood obesity. I have an 8 year-old who doesn’t like football, can’t ride a bike, never took to his scooter. spends a lot of time on a screen at home. Has does run about at school playtime and PE lessons and he likes climbing so goes to a class once a week for an hour.

He has an incredibly sweet tooth. I don’t allow unlimited desserts/sweets but I know for a fact we are much more liberal than many of his friends’ parents. The only things we are strict on are no fizzy drinks, Haribo type sweets maybe once a week, and no sugary cereal.

But he has something chocolate after every dinner and also when he gets in from school. Breakfast is a toasted fruit tea cake dripping in butter. He steals honey and Nutella from the cupboard when he thinks we aren’t looking.

We drive to school. We don’t go on family walks and our favourite joint family activity is watching Saturday night TV together. Our garden only has a small patch of lawn 2mx 4m and he has no siblings so doesn’t naturally run about playing at home.

He eats limited vegetables and his favourite foods are nuggets and pizza. He eats pasta with tomato sauce and cheese every single day at school lunch, won’t touch anything else. He has never eaten large portions though. We have no issue with McDonalds/fast food in general but he’s not a huge fan, maybe eat it once a month. Subway usually.

He is very slim and his teeth have no decay (was last at dentist 2 weeks ago).

My husband and I are both overweight BMI, on the brink of obese, but we were both naturally slim as kids too. I imagine it will catch up with our son when he is an adult, or maybe even sooner. (We all need to make changes and will work on that).

What we most definitely are is financially and socially privileged.

My question is this - these areas where obesity is running rampant are low-income and socially deprived. So what are the other factors caused by social/economic deprivation that mean these kids are obese but mine is not? Or are we literally just a very lucky exception?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/23/majority-children-overweight-obese-nine-areas-england-by-2035-study?CMP=ShareiOSAppOther

More EXPENSIVE rubbish, in fact. The OP seems to think fat,carbs and sugar are better if you pay a lot more for them.

I dont think that is uncommon, certainly not on this website, the threads about Iceland and the like and how people look down their nose at some processed foods but then eat other processed foods show this to be a typical mindset.

I regularly bring out the link to a Tesco basic lasagne ready meal. Not a UPF.

I didn't realise I had to read all your posts to comment on the first. Let me know when you are finished posting and I'll catch up and comment then. My bad.

Beams and motes come to mind.
You might be interested in finding out about normal weight obesity. If your child's diet is as you describe (I don't know if you're exaggerating for effect or not) he may be metabolically obese normal weight, i.e. be living with the same pre-diabetes changes as obese children, and with the same stressors on his cardiovasular system leading to increased risk of hypertension and premature coronary heart disease.

That only makes sense if you have people whose kids eat more expensive foods scratching their heads and wondering why their kids are as just as fat as the kids who eat cheap stuff. But my entire point is that my son is not fat…honestly, the amount of people rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of me being proved “wrong” when my son becomes obese. It’s very distasteful.

He won’t though, not because you have all shown me the error of my ways and saved him from neglect, but because you all made a massive load of incorrect assumptions in your rush to beat me up, instead of actually answering the question I asked. Classic Mumsnet.

Over and out.

Ok. He won't be fat or unhealthy, so carry on as you are. Job done.

The question is not why your son is not overweight, but more like why are you and your husband overweight? You said both of you were slim when young, so what went wrong? The fact is that if both parents are overweight, their children have a much higher chance of becoming overweight themselves either in childhood or later in adulthood. These are statistics and also plain common sense. So at present moment your son is not overweight yet, but might become fatter later if you are teaching him your own eating - and lifestyle habits.

It may be your question, but it wasn’t mine…my question was about obese children, not slim children who might become overweight adults.

Don’t you see? A significant and growing number of parents are doing something right now that is making their kids obese despite children’s natural propensity to be slim- you have to work pretty hard to displace that. The idea was to identify what it is that they are doing that goes beyond what I am doing. Then perhaps start to understand how to address it.

It’s also a class thing. Middle class children of higher income parents are rarely overweight. It’s because of a combination of things. Middle class parents are more academically educated, not just in their field of work but also about what it means to have a healthy, balance diet and good nutrition. They have more money to pay for sports and physical activities, not just for their children but also themselves. They are way more strict about what their children eat. Sweet treats are only occasional, no fizzy drinks, lots of vegetables, fish etc. These children usually have nannies who are also strictly instructed about what to feed/not to feed the children, and they often have child nutrition qualifications. They go to private schools where the lunch menu and all the snacks are healthy and nutritious.
Just walk down the streets of any city in the afternoon. The children of lower income parents who go to state schools come through the school gates in large groups, pile into cornershops and come out with tons of fizzy drinks, boxes of Pringles, packets of crisps, marshmallows, those awful pick’mix sweets and watch them stuff themselves. You see them in McDonalds, KFC or other burger joints and fast food restaurants. Why? Because they are hungry. Why? Because the lunch in their school is low quality and not very appetising. They are given a couple of quids by their parents and of course they will head to the nearest place where they sell junk. Nobody supervises what they buy and eat in those places.

Your son is also an anecdote, seeing as you insist no one else can talk about their own "anecdotes" guess what I was also a scrawny whippersnapper at 8 despite eating loads of junk food, unlike yourself my parents were not rich either.
Being thin at 8 is nothing special.

I've read all your comments btw and it seems like you're absolutely gagging for people to make "excuses" like healthy food being expensive etc so you can scoff at them and say people with less money than you are just too stupid to know they shouldn't eat the entire multi bag of haribos.

I'm wondering what the "right" answer is that OP was hoping her carefully laid trap would lead us to, also.
That the great unwashed are clearly weaker and susceptible to ill health and there should be some program in place to stop them reproducing so much?
OP, the reason obesity is a concern is that it is associated with various poor health outcomes. Those poor health outcomes can also result from malnourishment even where obesity is not evident. I now suspect you were exaggerating for effect in your initial descriptions of your son's diet and activity levels, because you are completely unworried for him in all follow ups. But if it was as you described he would be living with the effects of poor diet, even if this didn't cause him to be obese.
Fat isn't bad or evil: in and of itself there is nothing wrong with being obese. Overweight /obesity is simply a very obvious indicator of likely ill health and probable poor outcomes. Associations. It's a necessary, but not sufficient, indicator of (probable) ill health (present or future). You seem to be fixated on obesity as a phenomenon of badness in and of itself. And ignorant of the effects of malnourismnent in the absence of overweight.

So your question is why is obesity and poor diet and lifestyle normalised in some communities?

perhaps because they have other things to worry about, they don’t want to live to 90 in poverty so don’t see the point in living what they might see as a poorer life for not much return?

I think there is a rather short sighted view for some of the benefits of being healthy. It’s not amount of living long it’s about living well for as many years as you can. Health will give you opportunities to keep doing what you enjoy.

perhaps there is a large mental health component and lack of incentive to avoid the hyper palatable, cheap and easily available food and drinks?

How do you know he won’t become obese?