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

OP my guess is you're probably underestimating his size/weight, especially if you are overweight.

Why not go for more walks with your child and get them to see exercises as a positive? Why use the screen? Go for a walk, collect bugs etc and show how fun it is to get outside.

You sound like a lovely person, but allowing/teaching your child to be sedentary isn't good.

Well, if he’s at private school he’s already moving more than kids in our state school where PE and daily mile (as well as art and computing btw) seem to be always very short/ cancelled because they are not taken seriously. If he eats at school I imagine the food is also better quality. And he does climbing an hour every week. I also suspect your UPF is Ocado and not Iceland (I.e less UPF).

You really don’t see how not being poor helps?

I’m happy to describe myself as fat. The reason I used “obesity” is that I was using the NHS BMI scale as a reference point. The categories are “healthy”, “overweight” and “obese”. I hover close to the boundary between the latter two. It’s not visibly that fat actually, I’m a size 14 dress size.

Anyway, the whole point of this thread has gone whoosh over your head. I’m not looking for any sort of congratulation or medal. I was absolutely intending to shine a light on the scandal that is entire communities letting their children get fat and normalising child obesity. My own example demonstrates that it’s possible to have a pretty lax attitude to nutrition yet still not have an obese child. The logical conclusion is that we are looking at some pretty extreme behaviours to create the statistics in the article, way beyond my behaviour that has you all frothing at the mouth, yet nobody seems to know how to tackle it because everyone is too busy pussyfooting about and saying that they are all tired and can’t afford vegetables.

That's the point isn't it - sadly it's the lax or uneducated attitude now for your young child that will lead to obesity later in life, or high cholesterol or clogged arteries.

Please look after your child's physical health. Get off the screens. Eat well (there are loads of free resources online) and get outside. It'll be good for the whole family.

I agree that post feels insulting like it implies the peasantry are too stupid to know eating vast cats of popcorn and gallons of cola will make them fat and a bunch of savages who will tear apart any helpful weight loss tips from better off individuals.

I can't tell if it's meant to be insulting or a genuinely well meaning wealthy guardian reader who doesn't know many non wealthy people and thinks everything is statistics?

Either way having a thin 8 year old is nothing special, some kids just have really fast metabolisms I was a match stick at that age and ate mounds of sweets. More fool her if she thinks her bank account is going to stop him filling out as he gets older

It sounds pretty likely that he’ll be “fat” before reaching adulthood, so you should probably try to hold back your judgment. But yes, you’re absolutely right that you have far fewer legitimate obstacles to your family having a healthy diet and active lifestyle than many people do.

Vast vats not vast cats

Suggest you explain your point better in future if this many people can’t understand your point. I personally wouldn’t be judging these “communities” of people in poverty, who are most likely to be single parents with more than one child to feed if I was “on the brink of obesity” myself, rich, had a partner and only one child. Kind feels like you’re punching down.

Oh no, even the cats are eating too many Maccy Ds 😂

We’re the same. 90th centile as a baby, now approaching 5 and had the reception letter to say she was overweight.

Never sits still. Walks to school and back, does dancing and swimming and out for hours on bike or scooter, dog walking etc at weekends.

She eats objectively a better diet than most kids I know. Breakfast is porridge, weetabix or eggs. School lunch. Dinners are generally cooked from scratch, plenty of protein or veg which she eats plenty of. Snacks either fruit or veg. Only drinks water (doesn’t like milk to drink though has it on porridge etc). I try to be relaxed in as much as if treats/ sweet stuff is available she can have it and I don’t make a big deal of it but it’s not every day. I do bring her a snack after school but it’s fruit, maybe a biscuit on a Friday.

She does eat a lot though, big appetite. Still, I’ve seen skinnier children eat more.

In our case it just has to be genetics.

What is your answer to reducing those statistics then?

I’m going to suggest communism.

So you won’t judge, but what are your suggestions to improve things?

😂

I think it all starts with the parents… so what I would do is enforce mandatory educational classes based around nutrition to all potential parents, if they fail the class they can’t have kids until they pass the class, to show that they are a responsible adult. After the child is born all parents must face a mandatory weigh in, if the parents are over the desirable healthy weight they pay a £10,000 fine for every pound over. The money will go towards all the NHS services that are used for obese patients. Anyone that can’t pay fine will be forced to live in a workhouse until they get down to their healthy weight and have paid off their fine 👍🏼

I don't care for the statistics I don't see that many obese kids out and about certainty not as many as these statistics claim. Like I said though I lived in a room in a house share with my kids until recently on a street full of other house shares, by your logic my kids should be obese and the whole street should of been teeming with fatties and their vats of popcorn but that wasn't the case.

Come down from your guardian statistics to the real world some time also try and get the little man into a sport or he might not stay thin forever.

99% of people know eating too much junk food makes you fat what they choose to do with that information is on them. People aren't stupid just because they have less money than you.

The world has changed. More houses being built with small gardens which don’t give a lot of space for children to run around in. The pressure on school places means that children often have to travel to and from school by car. We are more time poor than ever. This means that children are more likely to be driven to and from school as parents have to go straight to work. If families are not getting in from after school club until gone 6pm (compared to 3.30pm) this means more exhausted kids and parents who are likely to whip up something quick (and unhealthy) like a UPF based dinner as they haven’t had time to make a meal from scratch. Much less time also to be going to the park after school or even the garden. People don’t want the big gardens either as they take time to maintain.

I agree with the previous poster who said there is so much onus on body positivity. There is one influencer who has posted a lot recently about this, and her young children who are clearly very overweight. People have lost sight of what constitutes a reasonable meal for a child. My friend’s 6yo is starting to become overweight but my friend insists she eats an adult sized portion every single meal so it’s not surprising. My 10yo DS went to his friend’s house once and him and his friend were given a whole adult sized pizza each plus offered piles of biscuits. People think it’s terribly unhealthy if kids’ ribs are showing but actually that’s normal pre puberty. They don’t realise that prepubescent kids shouldn’t have much visible fat on them, not like adults who can have noticeable fat and still be a healthy weight or even underweight.

Society favours extra curriculars aka adult led activities more than ever, often under the guise of it being good for kids. But most of them don’t involve much cardiovascular activity. Kids will burn off more energy running around the park. A lot of parents seem to hate taking their kids to the park though.

Children are allowed less independence which means they are more likely to be at home on screens.

My children are underweight. I think it is partially genetics (their dad was the same) and also because they just do not stop running around!

I wonder what the ops excuse is for being overweight? I mean being she said she’s rich and educated, her and her husband. Maybe society needs to do something about all the fat, rich parents out there who use their cars for short journeys instead of walking.

But op is saying what should be done about these “communities”… meaning poor people and those in poverty. If poor people can’t even afford basic food, I very much doubt they can afford houses with gardens or cars or after school activities. Plus it’s usually just one parent in the household, so all the looking after and cooking is solely on that one parent. In poor areas they don’t have the same resource as nice middle class places such as parks and what parent would want their child running around an unsafe street. If you live in London and you’re rich you’re very lucky to even have a garden so I doubt these poor people have an outdoor space to play in.

I’m an adult. This thread is about overweight children who do not have control over their own diets and lifestyles.

But that has always been the case, yet obesity is increasing in the areas listed.
And LOL at the poster who “doesn’t care for statistics”. They don’t change just because you decide to ignore them.

And as a person who has publicly announced they are overweight you should know better and do better to help your child, no?

No, people in poverty weren’t always fat, it was the opposite. If you’re so bothered about poor obese children, what are your suggestions? Because on this entire thread you haven’t mentioned a single one. Are you saying that it’s only poor people that are obese? Because based on you and your husband that isn’t the case. Maybe stay in your lane and suggest what can be done about the increasing number of middle class women who are alcoholics.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/25/oh-well-wine-oclock-what-midlife-women-say-about-drinking-and-why-its-hard-to-stop

I didn’t mean that they were always fat I meant that they always had the same living conditions as you describe but were NOT fat. Some are in agreement there.

I’m going to ignore your utterly random swerve into discussing alcoholism.