What the fuck is wrong with parents?

[TheBlueKoala]

Not fat shaming. Just pointing out the obvious: obesity is a serious health problem. So now we got WLI for adults who need medical assistance to eat less. But why are they giving shit to their children? You can't say it's because you can't resist it- not your body. I think it should be a reason for a safeguard alert when you have an obese 4 year old. SS should get involved just as if someone would be starving their child because it's parental neglect to serve your children shit and make them face a future of illnesses and eating disorders. AIBU?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/25/uk-gp-obese-children-research

Where i used to work they put in a quality initiative in the canteen where they started serving recommended healthy portions of the dinners. They said if anyone wanted extra they could ask and wouldn’t be charged anything extra. They received so many complaints from staff who said they were “too embarrassed “ to ask for more food etc that they stopped doing it. They used to load mountains of mash onto the plates (I’ve a big appetite but it was way too much) and then if you wanted less you had to ask. So that just tells you something .

Pure and simple the main leader in this is sky high food cost and the huge difference in cost between fresh and processed.

A pack of strawberries sets us back almost £5 and is a snack for 2/3. A packet of biscuits is 50p. A pack of chicken breast topping £8 but nuggets are £3. It’s insane - I understand why people have to choose the processed option just to physically feed their children.

Add into this that kids are a lot more into tech than playing out and it’s the perfect storm.

Eating out and people often see a good meal as being a big meal piled high as ‘worth their money’, rather than having a regular sized quality meal of fresh ingredients

As a family we’ve stopped eating processed foods - it’s a very rare occurrence anyway. We allow the kids to have biscuits, chocolate etc occasionally but it’s limited. DP and I have even gone gluten free so it’s mainly protein, veg, fats from nuts and avocados etc. All made from whole ingredients but it costs an absolute fortune to eat this way, especially as a large family.

Portion size is criminal as well.

I say to my DD "Ok you can have a chocolate bar" then we go in and the only ones on the countline are "double size" like TWO mars bars or chunky kit kats as one pack, which would be too much for a grown man. A normal bag of sweets like Haribo, that my children think is the size you're "meant to eat", as it's the one they have on sale, is what we used to call Family Sized. Because DD is very literal and struggles with starting and completing things the idea of having half the pack and saving for later makes her melt down and makes her feel like it's not right. So we either leave with her tearfully having nothing, and then tough our way through all the usual SEN dysregulation fun and games like not eating or washing for 2 days... or she eats what amounts to two chocolate bars, probably 5-600 calories, and I am a shit mother.

Not everyone has ASD obviously but her literalness shows the desired impact of the marketing, to make huge huge pounds of chocolate seem like one serving.

Slim kids need to learn healthy eating habits too, or they won't always be slim. It's the skinny little kids from school who are now overweight, whilst us more robust ones are slimmer as adults, IME.

Of course snacking contributes to being overweight. Ultimately it's to do with eating too much, so having extra food between meals is going to contribute overall, even if some people still manage to eat sensibly.

I don't know how you were given too much chocolate and snacked but still weren't overweight. But it certainly isn't the same for everyone. You say it caught up with you at puberty, how do you find it now eating healthily after that start in life?

I was always slightly overweight as a kid and teen. For that reason I loathe the BMI charts/monitoring because it always seemed so unfair that I ate a healthy diet, not full of crisps and sweets like others, but still had the shame of being fat. Also isn't it done by percentage? So someone is always going to be biggest, even if they're not fat? It's often mentioned on here that you should be able to see a child's ribs, but who decided that was healthy? Was it based on malnourished children from 1920 or something?!

Anyway. Being fed a healthy diet, not snacking, allowed "treat" food only in moderation ... and I find it pretty easy to stay a healthy weight as an adult.

I wasn't talking about teens though whom you obviously can't control. The article, if you read it, talked about GPs seeing an increase of obese children under 4. At that age parents do have control.* *

Foster care is not the first go to adress parental neglect (I'm a former social worker). Before putting children into foster care all solutions to support the family must have been exhausted.

It is not ignorance it is laziness and it is also people with very little intelligence breeding the next generation who go on to continue the cycle

That's crazy. Your DD offering basic healthy food and the school prefers children eating UPFs?

I’m not doubting you but it’s vanishingly rare that I would describe a child as skinny. I don’t mix much with young kids anymore though.

What kind of work do you do?

For those saying we should teach children good eating habits in school - yes I agree. But here we are talking about toddlers who are being fed by their parents.

My sons are absolutely allowed snacks and even the occasional soft drink and McDonald's. But they have their 3 standard healthy meals per day and even though they are teens and occasionally buy crisps/sweets themselves they know I expect them to eat their meal so save their treat to eat afterwards. Which is better because their blood sugar won't go crazy when eating sweets after a healthy meal and they will also eat less. In our family there are no forbidden foods- it's all about not replacing meals with crisps/sweets/treats. I love chocolate myself and I have some every day as pudding.

The only person who should write school dinner and snack policies should be a qualified dietician.
Teachers, HTs and TAs are not usually qualified dieticians and some of the nonsense they talk is ridiculous.

I think it's parents who want to "please" their children rather than thinking about long-term outcomes. The same parents that hand their baby their mobile in the bus because they can't be arsed interacting with them.

yes a banana is cheaper than a chocolate bar, but that doesn’t hold up across diets. Fruit and veg are both more expensive and lower calorie. Poor people generally focus on getting the maximum calories for the pound, because they need to fill up.

There’s also evidence that the stress of poverty actually changes your decision making and is itself a cause of obesity. Stress drives people to eat differently.

Look to the supermarkets to understand obesity. Aisle after aisle of empty calories, upfs, sickly drinks. Maybe two aisles of actual cook from scratch food.

My great nephew 3yrs and niece 1yr are slim children. They are not fed on any crap at all. No sweets, ice cream, cake, biscuits. For snacks they have bananas, yoghurt and fruit, sometimes 'cake'- home made oat and peanut butter cookies. Both parents work. Both parents cook from scratch veggie/vegan food as a matter of course. They are used to devoting time to preparing decent food. They are a slim family. The children have lots of time outdoors every day regardless of the weather- they are well wrapped up if need be. The 3yr old loves to help with chores and cooking. They don't lead a pampered over comfortable sedentary life. Most people in the UK DO lead pampered over comfortable sedentary lives. Food is used to soothe and consolate for the lack of a real life. Used as instant gratification. Escape from reality.

My DS was plump in primary school, but very active playing in a football team. He ate the same food as his skinny sisters, lots of fruit and veg. In year 7/8 he suddenly lost all his weight due to puberty and has been skinny ever since.

It doesn't have to cost a fortune though.

We eat healthily with minimal UPF (not none, because we are mainly vegan so we do use some vegan milk and meat substitutes though I'm also big on pulses and tofu). We are also on UC so hardly well off!!

I wouldn't buy strawberries out of season, of course they'll cost a fortune! I also don't buy meat. But we always have fruit - it's just seasonal or from the reduced section, or frozen.

For breakfast the DC have stewed fruit (apples with cinnamon, or frozen fruit cooked up into a compote, I batch make a week's worth every Sunday) and some seeds on porridge/yoghurt depending on weather.

We have a rotating meal plan that's always based round soup on a Monday (so we can have it for lunches during the week), pasta on a Tuesday, rice on a Wednesday, jacket potatoes on Thursday, pizza (home made) on Friday, the DC take it in turns to choose what we have on a Saturday so it's often a bit more "treat-y", and a vegan roast with a proper cooked pudding (apple crumble, fruit upside down cake, sticky toffee pudding etc) on a Sunday.

Snacks are Nairn's oatcakes, Aldi mini bread sticks (excellent non UPF crisp-alike), apples, flapjacks, crumpets with nut butter, but tbh a lot of the "I'm hungryyyyy"s are met with "dinner won't be long" because frankly there's nothing wrong with kids feeling hungry in the hour or so before a meal!!

Born and raised in the UK to parents who are Mediterranean. There is poverty everywhere but it is only in the US and UK where I hear this type of reasoning.

Most cultures have their own ‘peasant food’ recipes; most are vegetable and legume based, easily prepared and cooked within minutes. Tinned pulses are cheap and nutritious, no need for soaking or long cook times.

However, from my personal experience, some people have fixed ideas on what children should be eating. My English in-laws viewed the pulse based ‘peasant food’ meals I cooked for DC as insufficient bordering on neglect. It was clearly so much of a hot topic of conversation amongst the family that one of my sister in laws was concerned enough to talk me through the British way of doing things. Did I mention I was born and raised in England. Apparently, children should be fed earlier than adults and different child friendly meals that didn’t include lentils and butter beans. DH was mortified.

Yes, poverty grinds you down; having to watch every penny and plan every meal is exhausting. But poor health is also exhausting and UPF is making us ill. Childhood obesity is on the increase, more children are being referred for dental surgery and clinicians are also seeing an increase in ailments due to malnutrition and poor diets.

kids are raised in frozen shit out of the air fryer not a vegetable insight

There's a lot more to social services than taking kids!!! Family support workers can go in and support and educate parents in healthy eating, routines etc. There are tons of community programmes focusing on healthy cooking on a budget etc. I do think it is more of a role for GPs to refer people to these programmes that you would find in most communities

It has taken me a long (generally happy) marriage, diabetes, WLI Etc. to get here, but I have cracked it…

I do the shopping, buy minimal junk-food snacks, more vegetables, fruit for snacks, fill the freezer with healthy food that can be cooked in the air fryer, swapped out chips for sweet potato fries and provide a variety of salads, soup plus one “old normal” (cottage pie, curry, roast etc.) meal per week. I’ve stopped asking what people want and now just put it in front of them!
One DC lost 7lb in 2 weeks, and is delighted!

I'm not adverse to giving my dcs pizza and chocolate, and I love a maccies, but childhood obesity is also due to adults being so reliant on driving. I don't drive (DP does) so my dcs often have no choice but to walk, people seem to think my kids are hard done by because they have to walk 10 mins to the shops with me rather than hop in the car.

The UPF problem is growing. At one time, perhaps a decade or so ago, Italy had the highest childhood obesity rate in Europe. The government actually worked to reverse it. We are seeing the problem grow in middle income countries like Brazil and Mexico.

The cheapness of processed foods (and their caloric density) is an issue. In other countries, the relative costs are different: in particular fruit and veg are easily available and cheap, and chicken nuggets aren't cheaper than buying a chicken. Another factor is time poverty. US and UK have longer hours and fewer allowances for families. Parents are more pressed for time and more likely to use convenience products.

Poor parents also feel like they can’t buy their children new trainers or electronics, but a packet of crisps or a fizzy drink is an affordable treat. The sheer availability of junk is an issue. A British or American child will be presented with far more opportunities to purchase.

Agree with this completely. I was told my 2 year old was overweight because he was the 98th percentile. Not once did the health visitor consider the fact that he’s the height of the average 4 year old. He’s the most active little bean, a little fruit bat when it comes to snacks and you can visibly see his ribs.
I’m not saying I think these statistics are wrong (I haven’t looked into it enough) but how are they calculating it because technically my child would be on that list and he is definitely not unhealthy.

That's alot of nonsense. Schools still teach basic cookery up till 3rd year (Scotland) so end of Year 8.