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?

How many people in inner city areas have a safe wild swimming area nearby?? Or a mountain for that matter.

The cost of getting a family out and about safely can be outrageous. It's not just the boots. It's the unreliable or non-existent public transport and the cost of tickets. The petrol for the car and the car park at the other end.

All costs that I can absorb without a second thought because we have a decent public sector salary coming in every month and our mortgage paid off.

There's just way too much reliance on cheap, processed, garbage food.

Parents on here regularly defend their reliance on packaged snacks in school lunches, for example, because apparently the kids would all starve to death without them, forgetting that they wouldn't be eschewing proper food in favour of factory processed sugary things if they hadn't been introduced in the first place.

Or we'll see 'everything in moderation' and 'there's no such thing as bad food' - actually yes there is. And eating it daily is not 'moderation' or a 'balanced diet' because the kids managed to get a piece of fruit in somewhere - the two don't cancel each other out.

@Kirbert2 I suppose that's another thing that tends to be generational. Adults that can't swim don't teach their children, who go on to be adults that don't swim who don't teach their children... Same for cooking healthily or going for a nice walk after dinner. Unless people decide to break the cycle. Given there's many charities and subsidised schemes for swim lessons, cycling lessons, cookery and nutritition, the choice to do so is there and needn't break the bank.

None in DS class but a couple in school and football. One poor boy doesn’t fit into the bibs they wear at football. It’s so cruel on him, makes me so angry at the parents.

In some cases, it will absolutely break the bank because food and essential bills are more important than swimming lessons.

Even if subsidised schemes might be more affordable, it will also likely cost to get there which might end up costing too much in the end.

There's no excuse really unless the child has a medical issue or mobility issues.
I was an obese child and it really affected my childhood, my mum would serve me the same portions as my dad with fish shop chips being a weekly meal, crisps, sweets and chocolate always around my dad would bring them home.
My son has 3 moderate size meals with no rubbish in between and is a healthy weight, he is very active thankfully, allowed one treat after dinner a day and crisps only with a packed lunch. The only time he's had sweets or chocolate is from parties or easter/Christmas time so they are definitely a treat.

It's a horrible cycle of parental time, amenities linked to movement (like parks, pools etc), expectation of what food ought to look like, a desire to "treat", low cost of junk foods/UPF, multiplied by however many years. And I'd throw advertising/promotion of junk foods in there too.

I work in a food bank. My sense is that people overall want to eat healthily but those that don't know how to cook with lentils, or use a courgette or whatever - it's difficult to shift them into doing that. We now have a chef on site once a week making really delicious food with the things we have on the shelves to gently educate people.

Yes it is but also true and happened here probably during the 70's and really kicked off in the 80's. I'm old ( -ish at 62)and can see the difference in shopping /eating habits during the past 50 years. Even I got caught up in ready meals/ easy UPF stuff during the late 90's /early 2000's with my kids as I was busy working , parenting and time poor.

Book that reverted me back to cooking/ eating in a 1950/60's stylee was Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence in 2004.
Her most recent book Swallow This (2023) is eye opening and about how chemicals used in processing don't have to be classed as ingredients so are not on the pack label.

An example would be the frozen fish fillets in a supermarket. One of my favourite non UPF items of choice and little work (as bones and heads etc all gone). Definitely seen as an 😇 food item.
But ever wondered why none of the fillets stick together? You can open the pack of 10 and pull out 5 and they're not stuck together.
If you buy fresh fish, prep them then decide to freeze them in a bag, when you get them out of the freezer they would all be one big icy lump and impossible to do anything with until semi defrosted.
That's because the fish for the giant supermarket are dipped in a chemical solution and then frozen and the chemical (which I can't remember the name of) stops them being clumped together.

It's the control of the world's food supply by a few large companies that's also a big problem..... but that's for another thread another day.

Where do you shop that you can get all that for a fiver?? 500g of mince is over £4 where I live (SE), unless you buy the 20% fat one, in which case I'm not convinced it's going to be any less obesity-inducing than a frozen pizza (although arguably more nutritious).

Grim when you really think about it isn’t it?!

I’m very glad that over the past few years I started growing some of my own fruit and veg - I know exactly what’s in/on it!
Small step, but I guess every little helps!

I suppose the thing with this for me is that actually lots of exercise, and arguably the easiest exercise for losing weight, is free- walk, run.

Swimming is great, we are lucky where we live that all under 16’s can get a free membership card for the local council pool and with that card swimming is 65p for under 5’s or £3 for 5-16 year old’s, adult price £5. Not horrifically expensive but yeah if you added in bus fares etc it could get to £20ish here and that might be unaffordable, but you can all put your shoes on and go for a walk which costs £0.

You could put trainers on and go for a jog, you could buy a £1 ball from b&m and kick that around for an hour in your local park, or walk to your local park or the park slightly further away and the kids can spend an hour playing them walk back.

There’s a lot less walking going on now in general, I regularly see our neighbours get in the car and drive to the corner shop- which google maps tells me is 0.3 miles away- I can literally see it from the house. If parents do that, kids grow up thinking thats normal.

I got the letter in Y6 about DS2. It saiid he was "at risk" of becoming overweight as he was at the very upper limit of "normal".

I was seriously pissed off as DS was "sturdy" in my eyes, not fat. So maybe I was in denial? But he was so sporty that he was solid muscle, and having experienced his older brother who was the fussiest eater and very underweight, I was fine with how he was.

He slimmed down in his teens and is now a very fit, slim 26 year old.

But it's very hard to hear that your 10/11 year old is overweight and I was very sure he wasn't. I imagine many other parents feel the same. I'm not saying that's right, but it's reality.

Thank you for the really kind message. She is doing very well, a few years ago she stopped eating, drinking and became mute, almost catatonic, id sit outside her room on the worst nights. People might look at her and think she's overweight, I look at her and marvel that she's brave, courageous and alive.

Now she goes to her specialist school most days, has therapy. I have also suffered with my mental health. We went through a big trauma. We are doing well.

I agree @After800Years. Presumably we now have two working parents in the majority of homes. I know that many people are well able to work a full-time job, do the after school clubs taxi service, AND put a healthy meal on the table at the end of the day- but I’m not one of them. I have worked PT since I had my children- not very feminist perhaps, but it has allowed me a lot more time to shop and cook properly for the family and not have to reach for beige food from the freezer. I feel privileged for it, because I know that millions of families rely on two FT working wages. It’s a pity that the state of our economy doesn’t allow for one parent to work PT so there can be more focus on eating well as it is so incredibly important to health.

I tend to agree. My youngest is year 5 and a couple of her friends have sort of ballooned a bit over the past year, but they’re all active sporty kids and honestly I feel really pleased that they are still comfortable in their bodies and enjoy moving them rather than being consumed by self hatred and a pressure to be thin. Ironically the two I’m thinking of both have mums who are quite thin (but bigger dads) so probably they’re just expecting a growth spurt anyway, whereas my daughter is thin but may well put on more weight in puberty as that’s the way my sister and I went (albeit I make much healthier food and we do a lot more exercise as a family than we did as kids so we’ll see how much that helps!)

Yep.

Those are definitely more realistic options.

I grew up in poverty with a single parent and we walked everywhere but then my mum rarely had a choice because she was never able to afford driving lessons, never mind a car and sometimes even bus fare would be pushing it.

Swimming lessons were an expensive luxury I never experienced and my mum, also having grown up in poverty, couldn't swim either. Trips to the beach/sea? Maybe once a year if I was lucky and it was a huge treat, not just something you might do at the weekend on a sunny day.

Lots and lots of walking as I said though so I was never obese but then she wasn't either.

My 14 year old is in age 16 uniform because trousers for 14 year olds are half mast on him. He is one of those tall skinny teens, not overweight. His brother is overweight (long story) so I'm not ignorant about weight, in denial or anything else. 14 year old is just too tall for his correct age size in clothes.

The frozen pizza is bulked up with cheap ingredients and is Ultra Processed.
Very little wrong with full fat mince occasionally and it would be cooked with a load of vegetables. Proper staple of my childhood with mashed potatoes but my mother would have stretched out the mince so the sauce was probably 70% mixed root vegetables. A very different type of meal to a UPF low grade pizza (that bears very little resemblance to a real freshly made Italian one)

@AnnaQuayInTheUk- obviously we can’t know if your son truly was or looked overweight but I had a couple of friends who also got that letter re their DC and were surprised. In one case I thought (but didn’t say): ‘Well, yes, your child is clearly overweight’. But I had more sympathy for the other parent whose child was similar to how you describe your DS- sturdy and heavy but lots of muscle mass and clearly a large frame (large skeleton). BMI is a useful tool overall, but there will always be people for whom it is not a very accurate measure (My own BMI is in the healthy range but higher than you would think by looking at me- I have a lot of muscle). So it sounds as though you were right not to take too much notice for your DS.

A far better measure would be body fat % (perhaps in addition to BMI) but it is difficult to measure accurately.

It's so sad isn't it. I just want to help the kids so it doesn't affect them for the rest of their lives.

I see pictures of someone I went to college with. She and her DH are sadly both obese but in the past have both lost tons of weight. She did tons of gym and really changed her life around and looked so so happy. I guess old habits slipped back in and so the weight went back on. They've had kids and the seven year old already looks like she might be overweight. Every picture I see on a day out the poor child is eating multiple ice creams and takeaways. I feel so bad for the poor kid. She is still using a swim vest and arm bands on holiday and stabilisers on a bike so I imagine she doesn't do either of these activities very often. These are middle class and highly educated parents.

I myself was quite skinny until I hit around 13. However I was walking a 5 mile round trip to school each day, playing football several times a week for school and recreation whilst winning most sports day races. I imagine my diet wasn't all that great, lots of corner shop and cafeteria stuff. However I did completely drop the weight when I went to university. Now I'm still well within the normal BMI but it does fluctuate between the two markers from time to time.

That's a bit of a generalisation. I can't really swim (never took to it and sink rather than float as everyone says you "just" do) but my DS is currently doing rookie lifeguard and hoping to train as a pool lifeguard once he is old enough.

We aren’t a upf free house…at all. It’s not realistic. But we are generallly healthy and we eat generally well.

you ain’t have to mention over eating at all. As parents we just self regulate their diet,

eat pizza one day….the next we’ll have salmon and salad etc etc.

and we very, very rarely let them have soft drinks….empty calories,

letting your children become over weight is bloody selfish.

no excuse at all. Every one has access to Google and plenty of quick and easy to cook healthy food.

Do kids in Italy never eat pizza, pasta, ciabbata, pastries or gelato? Often wondered about that, maybe they just eat fish, olive oil and vegetables all day long.

I live in south London in an area that's very mixed racially and economically. There are very few obese kids in my child's school. I think London is a bit of an island. But one thing that makes a difference is less car dependency. Pretty much everyone walks / uses public transport.

I think is a disgrace when parents let their children get that way.
it affects them so much later in life especially teens years.