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

Because they eat rubbish. Your child eats slightly better rubbish. All the same in the end. For whatever reason.

Yes but my question is, why do MORE people eat rubbish in those particular areas? Or, alternatively, why does the rubbish-eating cause obesity in more people in these areas?

i would say buy better quality chocolate -not stuff filled with upfs
I cycled to school everyday -that helped but sadly roads not safe now.

Because UFP food is often cheaper and because people living in poverty are living under stress which impacts on your bandwidth for this type of thing.

There is also multifaceted reasons around food culture that grows over time in families. Poverty makes healthy living harder.

And I said that pizza and nuggets were his favourite foods, not that he eats them every day. His chocolate treats are a single chocolate digestive or a couple of segments of chocolate orange, not a Krispy Kreme and a double caramel billionaire adult-sized ice cream washed down with a coke. Our bread is always wholemeal and his posh school feeds him fresh fruit and vegetables at lunch (along with his pasta with cheese). He also has multiple structured PE lessons a week

Doesn’t this partly answer your question - they just eat more of pizza, nuggets, chocolates etc and don’t have multiple structured PE lessons a week? The school do not give fresh fruit and vegetables for lunch or wholemeal foods.

School playgrounds are small. PE is limited - kids may barely break a sweat. Local playgrounds may not be fit for purpose or parents do not have the time or energy to take the kids there.

There is no denying (whatever tv chefs say) that it is easier to stick nuggets or pizza in the over for 20mins than to make anything fresh.

If you work 2 jobs, need to get the kids to and from school, perhaps they are hungry, perhaps home is cold etc then you do what it take to get through the day.
I see kids eating crisps on the way to school, toddlers with lollies on the way to nursery, a packet of biscuits on the way home. It’s cheap, quick, readily available and keeps the kids quiet when you are close to the end of your tether.

It’s not hard to imagine why they maybe more likely to be obese that those from well off communities that eat unhealthily but perhaps not as frequently.

Some kids are as skinny as rakes. They just are.
My son was very chubby. As were his older half brothers. All did sport - my son was very keen. He LOVED carbs though, cereal especially. I didn’t keep crisps or biscuits in the house, but he’d come home from school and have a bowl of cereal. At 13 he was tall and big. He was also the typical class clown. But he was trying to get more into sport and it was hindering him. I remember one heartbreaking moment when the rugby team were planning on visiting a team in the US for a week and everyone got very excited. Then someone said the itinerary would include a visit to a water park. He started making reasons why maybe it wasn’t a good idea for him to go. The trip didn’t come off but he put himself on a diet and if we got to practice early would jog around the pitch. The diet worked and seven months later he had lost 40kg! I must say that even though some of his classmates were quite cruel to him when he was heavier they all were delighted at his transformation and soon he was helping a few also trim down. He’s now a qualified personal trainer and fitness coach.
But I also remember taking him and his mates to Subway after a rugby match. Man those boys could eat! My son was defeated way before some of the others. One super skinny lad put away a foot long sub, four cookies, a large soda. My son couldn’t manage anything like that.
Even now with his daily runs, kickboxing three times a week, weightlifting and walking everywhere he has to be careful with his eating. Genetics do play a role.
I can’t answer your question about socioeconomic influences- but your son just might be an exception. Though it may catch up with him later!

My friends son was exactly the same. She was very worried about it and ended up obviously about his knowledge weighing all of the food she gave him and turned out he was getting much bigger than needed portion sizes. She was also using a lot of butter and oil which is fine and small quantities. Basically what an adult should have been receiving. She slowly brought that down and fed him more protein and veg/fruit and it sorted out

That’s exactly what I am interested in- what are these multifaceted reasons?

The question, though, is why eating a packet of crisps on the way to school is normalised - as someone upthread rightly said, being poor does not mean you are stupid. But something in the prevailing culture of these areas means that bad eating habits are not stigmatised or even questioned.

Remember the parents shoving McDonalds through the railings of the schools where Jamie Oliver took Turkey Twizzlers off the menu…?

I have explained why in my post - time, money, accessibility. They are not stupid but they may not be aware of the impact on health.
Not dissimilar to educational attainments - when parents have time, money and are invested then the child will do well - take them to museums, discuss topics, buy work books etc.

There have been a few threads on MN recently with posters saying they don’t bother with the news, politics, does it matter if a 12 year old can’t name the prime minster because they couldn’t themselves. You could quite easily not know about UPFs, marketing ploys, balanced diets if you only listen to music radio and watch streaming services. Nothing wrong with that but it can be very difficult now to get the information out to people.

I said being poor doesn’t mean you are stupid. Can I ask what you do for work? Did you go to university? Do you have a professional job? Because you said financial and socially you’re doing well. So i assume you’re middle class if your son goes to private school? So what is stopping you from giving your son healthy food and losing weight yourself? Is it due to lack of education from you and your husband?

I think also there is normalisation of being overweight. That’s it, so it leads on to the question of how to do that, which is an interesting public health question that the Guardian seems to be asking.

My son is not overweight. I do give him healthy food. I also give him regular small portions of unhealthy food. I am managing my own weight, which is currently in the overweight BMI category, but not the obese one.

My son is of average weight for a child his age in our area. He is below average weight for the neighbouring low income area (London boroughs).

But by your own admission from what you feed him it isn’t exactly healthy and he’s not doing exercises, hence the reply’s about his diet. So why are you still feeding him that kind of food?

You’ve failed to answer my question about your education/job or your husband. You’ve asked a question as to why childhood obesity happens in lower income families and not yours and you’ve been given plenty of answers. Childhood obesity isn’t due to lack of education, surely there are plenty of people who are overweight and obese, like yourself who have access to resources which lower income people don’t. So what’s their/your excuse?

If obesity is to do with poverty rather than overeating, why are all those on weight loss injections talking about it 'switching off food noise'?

WLI make people eat less not better and that's why they lose weight.

Very true. A lot of very healthy foods (veg, pulses, whole chicken etc, apples) are still very cheap. It just takes time and effort to cook them. When you're poor and stressed you still have a choice to do cooking or doom scroll.

I already said that I am solid middle class and affluent, I don’t feel the need to give you my or my husband’s CV.

Look again at what I wrote- everything I describe sounds, on its face, to be a recipe for an overweight child. But actually the reality is that I am educated and aware enough to know that portions should be controlled, UPF should be avoided, exercise is necessary, we need to talk to children about healthy eating and having a fat child is not socially acceptable in my my social circle. I just didn’t mention those bits. That’s why he’s not fat.

My point is that there is a societal problem of childhood obesity running rampant in certain communities. I don't believe anyone has offered any deeper insight into how to address it.

Well crunchy things are nice to eat, sweet things are nice to eat,salty things are nice to eat. So that’s what all the snack food panders to. It’s so available and relatively cheap. Hard to resist.

Yes but why is it bought and eaten more freely by some groups and not others?

A lot of it is just eating crap.

At the supermarket I see overweight parents with their overweight kids buying bottles of fizzy pop and pizza.

Its for convenience cooking and that they don’t know how many calories they’re consuming. We are also a nation of overweight people so its not as noticable when a child or adult is overweight- only as they become very overweight and start to stand out.

Those people are eating more junk. Your child also eats lots of junk, but most people in your socio economic group don’t feed their kids the same diet that you do. Your child will be fat eventually if you keep letting him eat junk and staring at screens.

Both my kids have ASD one also has hypermobility low muscle tone and a serious heart condition that she needs a pacemaker so uses a wheelchair part time. She’s also Gluten free and VERY fussy with food. My other child will eat anything really and both of them have very mixed diets. However I have never made them clear their plates or restricted snacks or anything and they have worked out for themselves when they are full and they actually don’t snack often and both are tall and slim. I have friends who have placed so many restrictions on what their children can and can’t have that the minute they are out of their parents sight they are stuffing their faces because they are not allowed xyz at home so they buy it when they are out at school and socialising etc )age range is 12-18

Sort of

But many immigrants who are in poor cramped housing tend to share food, utensils, ovens, money etc etc, so will be able to buy enough fresh stuff to use up in one go without it going off and then share with the next family and so on and so on, they're also more inclined to have simple basic foods/soups/stews on repeat, something which is greeted with horror on many threads here about lack of variety.

Its difficult to do if you are poor, cooking for 2 adults and a child, no where to store things or share costs with and can only buy at Asda in massive packs of fruit and veg

But you said you’re educated enough yet you aren’t giving your child a healthy diet. Giving him chocolate after school and after dinner isn’t healthy, eating chicken nuggets and pizza even if they aren’t the cheap brands are still UPF. Teacake dripping with butter for breakfast everyday isn’t healthy either. You also said he likes a Subway and McDonalds which again are all UPF. You drive him 10 mins to school, when you could walk and don’t go for family walks. So again all this you do despite being educated and middle class enough to know this isn’t healthy. So if you can’t get it right how are people in lower incomes going to get it right?

A lot of these problems are caused due to time and not having family help or having to pay for childcare. It’s quicker to give chicken nuggets and pizza after working a long day than cooking a homemade meal, especially of you are a single parent. You come from a two parent family, have a car and yet are still giving your child UPF, surely you can see it’s not down to education.