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

I have weight problem mai ly due to overeating. I k ow it stems from childhood as my mum would give me same portion sizes as my dad and then seconds and thirds - I'm talking meat and potatoes not veg . Iv been very aware not to put my own issues on my children but iv also discussed eating to fuel our bodies and only eating until we are full. They have couple hobbies so out being active 4 nights a week. Iv been lucky so far with mine.

It does bemused me however with some friends who are mums and overweight who have overweight pre teen and teen girls and their mothers just say oh they are just built like me. Usually because their sons arnt overweight as they usually doing a sport

Around Christmas time, my children were playing in the bath (age 7 and 5), and I noticed they were getting a little chunky. I weight them and measured them and they were both 80th percentile.

We completely overhauled their diet as of that day, and are now sitting at 45th and 50th percentile.

We swapped out loads of processed food, and changed all rice and pasta to wholemeal. We started to limit sweets to weekend, and gave up squash entirely.

My children are at PS, and it is extremely rare to see overweight children. There are probably 5 in the whole school and they are noticeable in assemblies.

Healthy, non processed food is expensive, and takes time to prepare.

There are more fat adults and fat adults tend to produce fat kids.

There are more fat adults as we are sedentary. Sedentary adults don't spend active leisure time with their kids or walk or cycle places with their kids. Kids are more sedentary as they aren't free range in their neighourhoods anymore. Research has been done into how kids free movement in their neighbourhoods has declined over the decades.

I was raised in the 70/80s and I did not eat healthily but I was very active, as were all my peers. Nothing formal, just running free range where I lived and walked everywhere.

Schools and nurseries are absurdly safety conscious which limits kids' activitiy and physical capability, (its much worse that when I was at school) and, worse parents absorb these ridiculous levels of safety concern and behave the same way with their kids.

Portions sizes are much bigger now..

I do wonder if PS take sports and PE more seriously and this has an impact?

Car dependency and poorly designed towns are killing us.

It's hard to eat healthily on a budget

This always gets trotted out on these threads.

I batch cook from scratch, we have very few UPF's and the majority of our food is vegetarian/ vegan. We are not overweight, even though siblings, cousins and parents are in our family.

The issues are far more complicated than the availability of cheap healthy foods.

It's about time & energy to cook after a long day, cooking skills and the ease of convince foods that are at the heart of the problem. If you have a very tight budget, you're more inclined to go for that unhealthy frozen pizza that you know DC will eat, then try something new that will potentially end up in the bin.

Car dependency doesn’t necessarily track, lots of people in low income households are reliant on public transport.

however, being reliant on public transport does make attending after school and evening activities much more difficult. Unless activities are very local they may be off limits.

It’s common in these discussions to talk about how cheap carrots are. What that doesn’t give credit to is the overall cost per calorie. A mini pizza from Aldi is 70p, that’s a full meal. Three carrots isn’t a meal, it needs protein and fat and other food items. batch cooking requires time, effort, storage space, equipment, experience and a store cupboard. That’s before expecting a child used to a certain way of eating even is tempted to try it.

community larders with access to dried herbs and spices and ingredients in small quantities and weigh and pay shops can help.

It’s complicated, but also simple. Taking in more energy than one uses will lead to being overweight. The reasons why one overconsumes is complex.

yes. But I think it' goes further than this and it's in lots of small but cumulative things from bigger gardens to more opportunities generally for wealthier children - if you are sending your children to private school, there's a higher chance you're also out and about on weekeneds with lots of walking and moving from country walks to trips to museums to weekends away. Plus lots more opportunity for extracurricular things from football to rugby to dance to netball to golf.

It's not definitive - eg Ds has a number of children he's friends with at his local high school who come from less financially advantaged children adn whlie they're not doing all the extracurriciular and trips into London etc, they ARE far more independent at getting themselves aroudn on bikes/walking etc. But they don't do the variety of extra curricular mine do, and they have never had a city break walking all day, and they aren't doing day trips into London to see a show or go to a musuem or whatever.

So it's not one thing, and one thing only.

OP: your diet and lifestyle will catch up with your kid, at some point, and fast. He probably has a very fast kiddo metabolism right now. This will stop and you will find yourself a mother of an obese child. Change while you can.

Christ OP, your post describes an exceptionally unhealthy child, even if he’s not obese. Judging by his diet, lifestyle and obese parents, I would say it’s only a matter of time. Why are you allowing this to happen?

Maybe not the point of your post but you seem absolutely oblivious to what you’re doing to your poor child. Are you even embarrassed by the lifestyle that you have described?

Neglect.

The OP and her DH are on the 'brink of obesity' too according to the opening post.

It's what you eat plus genes. Rich or poor.

Until recently overweight people would deny that they ate too much or the wrong food and say that no matter how much they dieted they couldn't lose weight.
Now they all have weight loss jabs which stop them eating and hey presto they lose weight.

I didn’t miss your point. I got it. I just don’t understand your attitude to your child’s health, why seems indifferent at best.

My DD’s primary school is interesting in that few kids walk (small village state school). I would say generally the food isn’t the middle class healthy stuff, many more unhealthy snacks than I’d be personally comfortable with. There are very few overweight children and obviously being small the school doesn’t have massive green areas although does have a small running track.

What it does have though is a specialist PE teacher who comes in and it really seems to be good PE. There are also lots of opportunities in the school day where the kids are encouraged to try and run the mile during gaps in lessons. This seems to make a massive difference to me!

Genetics and individual make up has so much to do with it.

I have five kids. ALL were extremely skinny as children. Now they are adult, one is still so skinny that he's had medical investigations to check on why (he's 5 foot 11 and weighs around eight stone). He's fine, apparently, just thin. Then two of my girls are slim, they put on weight but not easily and stay reasonably shaped without having to watch their diets too much, my eldest DD is overweight bordering on obese, has underactive thyroid and other health difficulties, but as a child was so underweight that doctors were involved with her. Remaining DS is a little bit on the chunky side but still within a healthy weight (just), but does loads of exercise.

They obviously all grew up eating the same meals. Neither their DF nor I are overweight (although I, post menopause, have to watch my diet like a particularly well-focussed hawk). So trying to extrapolate adult weight and size from the shape of the child doesn't really mean anything.

My eldest in Year 3 does:

Monday- a whole afternoon of games
Tuesday- matches in the afternoon and a sports club after school for an hour
Wednesday- forest school in the afternoon after art and music which are in completely different areas of the school so more walking.
Thursday- sports club at lunch and after school.
Friday- whole afternoon of PE.

She then does gymnastics for 2 hours on a Monday, Netball on a Wednesday, Cricket on a Sunday, and in season, hockey on a Saturday.

At least 80% of her peers are doing the same.

Genetics and individual make up have always been a thing.

Childhood obesity crisis', not so much.

My DS2's school is very similar, absent the visiting PE teacher. You can count the number of obese children on one hand.

Interestingly, we're in Cornwall, which is one of the poorest counties in the UK. Our village isn't particularly poor, but I wouldn't say levels of obesity in the more deprived areas are that high either (I used to work in a secondary school in one of the legendarily bad areas, where you would sometimes have kids coming into school with literal malnutrition).

I think it's that we do have easily accessible countryside and the coast here, combined with limited indoor attractions. I think the proportion of families and kids that get outside for regular exercise (even just a simple walk) is much higher than the average.

In addition, there isn't the access to fast food that there is in many British towns and cities. There isn't a fried chicken shop on every corner (Although there are pasties everywhere of course 😆).

But you don’t get fat from cheap cuts of meat. You get fat from sweets, crisps, other junk and large portions.

I think weight is so much about portion sizes. So he might be eating the correct portion sizes for him.

Also you don’t mention but you might be cooking a decent dinner. Pasta and tomato sauce and a decent home cooked dinner isn’t the worst diet. Some kids are literally living on food with trans fats and artificial sweeteners, little fibre and protein and together these seem to mess up your stomach bacteria and mess with your hunger signals.

Has he has difficulty learning to ride a bike?

There are also lots of opportunities in the school day where the kids are encouraged to try and run the mile during gaps in lessons. This seems to make a massive difference to me!

I'm sorry but this 'run the mile' thing really depresses me. If schools invested in interesting, active play environments, and allowed children to engage in active , more risky play, kids would be more naturally active through play the way they are evolved to, and more of their bodies would be challenged and engaged than just running does too. And more of their brains and social skills. Then we wouldn't need ' run the mile' initiatives.

Snacking is definitely an issue. I just don't buy snacks, initially because it just wasn't something I grew up with myself. I was primarily raised by my grandparents & I don't think their genration had the habit. There's a fruit bowl in our house and that's it. So my two (10 & 13 now) just aren't in the habit. But their friends who come over are constantly on the hunt for snacks, to the point I feel a bit mean (I probably am 😬). We do do dessert - small portions - but that's it really. I was chatting to a friend recently who was complaining about her 9yo DS constantly snacking on crisps & chocolate bars & then not eating well at mealtimes. I suggested just not buying the snacks & she looked at me like I came from outer space 😆

In many places you can McDonald’s delivered to your door.

Lots of children have a pudding after dinner every single day. I remember a few of us being jealous when a friend would get pudding every Sunday! It was a lot more random.

When I was a child, if I had done well on my spelling test I would be allowed to pick a chocolate bar or sweet from the shop on the way home. I see children popping in every day for their after school snack.

Kids get driven to and from school when it’s only a 20 min walk or less.