Obese children

[Scarfitwere]

I notice so many obese (primary age) children around these days, it was very apparent at my childrens' sports day and these poor kids could barely do the races. One sat on the side as they were too large to participate at all. I understand overweight adults and it's hard to lose weight etc, but these are young children, their parents control their food intake. Why are so many parents letting their kids get like this? Its setting them up for bullying, not being able to join in sports etc, and health problems. I just don't get it AIBU?

If you're skint then sugary food is a really cheap way to 'treat' your kids to something. It's all very well for the middle classes to sneer at people, but if you're taking your kids off on a fabulous summer holiday or having lots of lovely days out, or paying for extra curricular activities, have a huge garden to play in, you will probably be far less inclined to buy them a bag of cookies as a treat. If your summer holiday consists of staying at home with not much to do, it's not difficult to see that food could become a treat.

I actually felt like I was veering into this way of thinking during lockdown....day after day with not much to do or places to go to...what shall we do? Eat something sweet...that will cheer us up. I can see how it happens.

Do you mean adults or children?

Children shouldn't only be eating one meal a day.

This is simply untrue.

Most families living solely on UC in the UK are officially living below the poverty line. UC is designed to lift people out of poverty, but many, many families on UC, particularly those with more than two children, struggle to afford basic necessities.

All developed countries and many developing countries now have a problem with childhood obesity. The highest rates are among Pacific Islanders, Chile, and in the Middle East - Kuwait, UAE and Qatar.

"In season fruit and veg are cheaper than takeaways"

Calorie for calorie the cheapest foods, by a very long way, are processed foods with a lot of sugar and fat.

If you live in a food environment where there's mass availability of comparatively very cheap, highly palatable foods - ie, those with lots of fat, sugar and salt - the groups experiencing the highest levels of social stress are more likely to become obese.

I know you want obesity to be seen as a moral failing, or a failing of education, but obesity experts know it's far more complex than that, and requires regulatory and social change, rather than moralising and finger wagging, which over the years have proved to be a singularly unsuccessful strategy of addressing the ever increasing obesity rate.

Exactly.

Some of the early suggestions made it very clear that some people have little idea of what it means to either grow up in poverty or raise children in poverty.

It's very simple to solve childhood obesity when you live in a middle class bubble.

If you can afford to be fat you are not in extreme poverty. If someone survived on a couple of slices of bread, water and apples they would not be obese

We live in an obesogenic environment. Children don't play out unaccompanied any more, extra curricular activities cost a lot of money, and the cheapest food is the most unhealthy and highly processed. It's a perfect storm.

It's not that people have suddenly evolved to have very little willpower, it's our surroundings and lifestyle that have changed.

Government intervention is needed in our food chain - parents need help to give their kids affordable, healthy and quick-to-prepare meals. Kids need more funded sports activities to keep them active.

Yes, parents bear some responsibility, as they 90% control a child's diet, but you're missing the point that no parent actively wants their child to be overweight - they just have the odds stacked against them, and if they're not rich it's going to be a struggle. Sneering at them as crap parents isn't going to help - they need support, not judgement.

@WideawakeinSanDiego

"If you can afford large portions you are not in poverty!!"

I think you don't understand how most people use the term 'poverty' or how it's defined in social research.

'Poverty' is not the same as 'destitution'. All destitute people live in poverty. Most people living in poverty are not destitute.

https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=advert&utm_campaign=low_traffic&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21293519664&gbraid=0AAAAADRxhmfpflO6fp49REyhx1tTJoSyk&gclid=CjwKCAjwprjDBhBTEiwA1m1d0vS1KMAXKdQDGtOhSKA22fupKkSXyEAc9x0trIZu7x3MdbxQJsN90xoCfPwQAvD_BwE

Social research generally defines poverty as a relative measure. And there's a mass of evidence that those in the UK who are living in relative poverty, are more likely to have children growing up obese and in poor health than better off people, regardless of the fact that their family income allows them to have the basic amenities of life, that would make them privileged in a much poorer country.

Come on with the excuses 🤣 I had my first kid before I finished secondary school you really think I live in a bubble of wealth?

Just stop giving toddler Timmy the entire family pack of haribos and he won't be morbidly obese.
Has anyone considered that in extreme obese young child circumstances the parents actually have a mental disorder like Munchausens and like that their child can't run around with the other kids etc

I'm an obese adult in a family full of obesity. My Mum (effortlessly slim) controlled our diets as children. They were terrible - little fruit and veg, loads of processed foods, oven chips with everything.

I really struggle with eating healthily now. It takes a lot of conscious effort to think about what would be good food choices both at home and outside it and I'm lucky money isn't an issue for me so it isn't a cost issue that drives me choices.

One of the greatest gifts I think my friends give their kids is a good grounding in healthy eating. The kids all eat a much better diet than me and make better choices more easily in restaurants etc.

That depends on your parents. Unless you lived alone as a teen when you became a mum.

Not everyone has good family support either so if you did, it is a different situation to some people who become young parents.

Again, the statistics speak for themselves.

Did I say I had good family support? my mother made me leave the family home when I told her.

Even at that young age I knew not to feed a toddler mounds of sweets and chocolates. There really is no excuses it's not rocket science

Its a good idea when you're discussing things to actually have some facts at your disposal rather than assumptions?

No, which is why I very clearly said 'if'.

Again, it isn't that simple. You can not feed a child mounds of sweets and chocolate and they can still become overweight.

Not everyone in poverty will be obese with obese children. And not all wealthy people will be slim with slim children. But the societal trend is that obesity and poverty are linked. That's just a fact. Shaming people and providing simplistic solutions does not help or get to the root cause.

I was the chubby kid in school in the 90’s and I can still remember some of the barbed and snide comments now.

I’m no longer fat but I think that there is a variety of interconnected reasons leading to a big increase of overweight children:

1. Led mostly by UPF and the shit they have been allowed to put into food over the years. Making it hyper-palatable and removing any kind of nutrition so there’s no satiety. They are in the business of making us eat more to make them money. Those with less money also have more reliance on these foods.
2. Highly obesogenic environment, you don’t need to leave the house for anything. It can be delivered to you straight away. Sometimes I have to walk around various shops to find fruit or some nuts rather than pre-packaged UPF.
3. Cold climate prevents many from being outside as much as we should. Who really wants to go out in the freezing rain for 320 days of the year?
4. Toxic fat positivity. I believe everyone should have self-confidence and be able to put a few extra pounds into perspective when looking at overall health, but this has been badly skewed to the point that many of these influencers advocate being morbidly obese.

I wouldn’t wish being an overweight child on anyone. It led me to years of self-loathing and terrible self-esteem and prevented me from taking part in activities I would’ve enjoyed and ultimately benefited from.
I have children now and determined the same thing won’t happen to them.

I think some parents have a lot to answer for but it’s more complicated than that. No parent wants to see their child go hungry. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned £1 Iceland pizzas. That will fill you up more than a £1 worth of fruit or vegetables.

You could have suggested this to the OP who would have found that the fast majority are not obese

Of course there is a correlation with poverty and obesity in children, and I suspect a huge part of that is processed food.

But I also think there have been changes in society that mean that processed food is a much bigger issue.

And high on the list is the cultural change around eating outside of meals and snacking. At one time, most parents discouraged snacking outside of meals. You certainly didn't run around with food, get treats multiple times a week, or eat in front of the television.

Kids now seem to eat masses of junk and snacks.

And then there is sitting around in front of the tv/gaming.

The chemicals in food have changed how our bodies metabolise things. The microbes in our gut that are responsible for things like digestion, metabolism, appetite control etc… are often killed off by the chemicals in upfs and replaced by harmful bacteria. Children inherit their mother’s microbiome so if parents have damaged their gut with upfs, alcohol etc… the kid is starting off in a more difficult position putting on weight more easily, craving more unhealthy foods. When you live with someone your microbiome also adapts and becomes similar to your partners. Junk food is often cheaper and more convenient which is why people are more likely to be overweight in less affluent areas where people are cash and time poor.

There is a huge rise each generation of food intolerances as well as obesity. My granny put cream in her coffee, cooked everything in butter and cream, snacked on chocolate throughout the day and was a tiny thing of about 7 stone but she didn’t eat chemicals. The people to blame for the obesity epidemic are the corporations lacing food with emulsifiers, binders and various e numbers! You think you are being healthy buying sourdough bread or wholemeal bread in the supermarket but most of the time they have all these ingredients added to extend the shelf life.

It really depends what we mean by child ill make it clear I mean young kids Ie under 8 when I say there's no excuses. I haven't reached the raising teenagers stage yet but yes I understand you cannot micro manage their lives and even if you were to give them zero pocket money and pack a healthy lunch box for them every day all it takes is one school friend who buys them massive bags of chocolate every morning. I had a generous friend that used to do thatt that every day.

I'm just saying based on my own experience as a really young mum I don't think there's any excuse for having an obese child under 8 years old except certain medical conditions. I cant get behind grown woman in their thirties saying they don't know enough about healthy eating or they're compelled to give their toddler large amounts of sweets to comfort eat over being poor together.

@Bamboozlinggreen

"Even at that young age I knew not to feed a toddler mounds of sweets and chocolates. There really is no excuses it's not rocket science"

And yet obesity continues to rise in children across most developed countries alongside the mass of public health information parents are exposed to about the dangers of obesity and the value of a healthy diet.

So clearly there's something going on at a population level that's complex and is about. more than just the moral fibre or intelligence of parents. There hasn't been a sudden nose dive in parents caring about their children or wanting the best for them, while at the same time struggling to provide it.

@Bamboozlinggreen

You don't need to eat 'large amounts of sweets' or have a diet that consists mostly of junk food. You just regularly need to eat a few hundred calories a day above your TDEE, and bingo, in a year you'll be fat. So that could be a couple of cookies, a bag of crisps, a small portion of chips.

BTW - if we're looking at adults, in 1960 only 2% of British women were obese. Now that figure is 25%.

So either we've become much greedier and less self disciplined at a population level, and we now know less about the importance of a healthy diet and the dangers of obesity than we did in 1960, or there's something going in our food environment that's creating a public health crisis.

It doesn't make sense that there would be a massive population level change in people's personalities, does it?

@Comedycookyou"re right. People who live in bubbles of privilege and choice have no idea how grim and relentless life can be at the bottom of the income scale. If you have pretty much run out of gas and electricity and have a fiver left to feed yourself for a week you are not in a position to cook pulses or buy expensive salads. You will choose filling and calorific foods. Instant noodles that need minimum cooking. Own brand baked beans and sausages. Budget teabags for a warm drink. Cheap digestive biscuits do the trick if you're really skint. Of course they're not "healthy" options but full is the priority when you're that hard up. I have lived this and it's something I never want to go back to.

It's also not going to be a time when you start cooking something like pulses which you may have never cooked before knowing that your children have never had them before.

You're going to stick with the £1 pizza or insta noodles that you know your child will eat and that you aren't going to mess up cooking.