To think some people on here make too many excuses for parents feeding their kids unhealthy food to the point they become overweight or even obese?

[Giselle374]

I know a lot people are in really difficult situations financially, and the country overall has become harder and harder due to COL.

But I feel uneasy with the way some posts on this seem to imply that being in a hard financial position means unhealthy food almost can't be avoided.

People usually choose to have children, and food is a basic thing. If you didn't wash your child, or clothe them as best as you could, would that be similarly excusable? Arguably food is more important than many other potential areas since cancer and other illnesses are a very real danger if kids are overweight or obese young.

My mother had financial difficulties when I was young: she was a single parent and on minimum wage, and she hated cooking, ate very badly before I was born. But she ensured her meals (porridge, fish, eggs, veg based mostly) were healthy even if they were plain. I was barely ever allowed sugary or processed food. That's one of the things I'm most grateful for.

I do understand families in a depressing situation with few things for the kids to enjoy use food as something enjoyable sometimes
..areas need more resources, green space, libraries etc .

This isn't to deny the challenges of feeding kids healthily. But I think some posts on here lean too far to taking responsibility from the parents,,and I don't think that's helpful.

Same reason you dont see many with blonde hair

The utter refusal to accept evidence about genetic links to propensity to gain weight is bizarre. There are adoption studies that show that the birth parents' weight is a much better predictor of obesity than the weight of the people that raised them.

It's not "an excuse" it's factually correct to say that some children put weight on much more easily than others. I have one of those kids where you can see all his ribs even though he eats like a horse. His father is a beanpole as is his paternal grandfather. He's genetically predisposed to skinniness. DH struggles to remain a healthy weight and drinks bulk up shakes between meals just to keep his weight up.

In denial

Genetics don’t make people obese - they just make it easier to be obese!
I have a child with ARFID, i know how hard it can be. However, 25% of children in the UK are overweight or obese - that is not all due to neurodiversity, especially since oy a percentage of neurodiverse children has eating disorders.
Packed school lunches are often heart attacks in a box - crisps, white bread, cake.
Sport often doesn’t happen - children are supposed to have at least 1 hour a day of proper exercise- less than 50% of children hit this minimum (!) amount….

Seconded. I have 4 children. The first two eat anything and everything you serve. The third eats like a sparrow & the fourth absolutely has undiagnosed ARFID - she is repulsed by so many foods, it's impossible to get a balanced meal into her.

None of them are overweight, so I presume my inability to feed them all nutritious meals gets overlooked in the way it might not if they were big.

Here is the abstract from one study:

"We examined the contributions of genetic factors and the family environment to human fatness in a sample of 540 adult Danish adoptees who were selected from a population of 3580 and divided into four weight classes: thin, median weight, overweight, and obese. There was a strong relation between the weight class of the adoptees and the body-mass index of their biologic parents — for the mothers, P<0.0001; for the fathers, P<0.02. There was no relation between the weight class of the adoptees and the body-mass index of their adoptive parents. Cumulative distributions of the body-mass index of parents showed similar results; there was a strong relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and adoptee weight class and no relation between the index of adoptive parents and adoptee weight class. Furthermore, the relation between biologic parents and adoptees was not confined to the obesity weight class, but was present across the whole range of body fatness — from very thin to very fat. We conclude that genetic influences have an important role in determining human fatness in adults, whereas the family environment alone has no apparent effect"

I used to be obese, and now I’m just a little overweight. I was in total denial about why. It’s because if was just big generally, one of those things, metabolism, genetic, I didn’t eat much but yet I put on weight so it must be easier for me to put on weight than others, etc.

Then I sat down and considered what I actually ate and in what quantities and it was clear why I was massively fat. It ate the wrong things and too much of them. I made changes and guess what, I lost weight.

I used to do dietary research for children and adult.
We used to have people videoing themselves during meals, and fill in a list what they ate.
What people wrote on the list and what they actually ate (and fed their children) had almost no overlap. People weren’t lying, they were just completely unaware of their horrendous diet.
Parents swore (and believed) their severely obese children did have a healthy diet. Videos showed packs of sweets, crisps, cakes , creamy sauces, adult sized portions if everything. Parents didn’t believe us, until we showed them the videos - and even then denial was strong.
Research using food diaries is absolutely useless - most people have no clue what they are earning!
I stopped working in food research, its lime watching (well intended) child abuse on a daily basis, absolutely horrific

Yes, all of this. I said upthread that I have 2 children who have a very healthy diet. I truly believe that feeding your children nutritious food is one of the most important things you can do as a parent, and most people should be aiming to give their child as healthy a diet as they possibly can, so I agree with the OP on that respect.
Then I had my third child, who is severely autistic and has ARFID. I feed him what he will eat. And to those people who say ‘they won’t starve themselves, if you only offer healthy food then he’ll eventually eat it’ are wrong. When he was 4, all he ate for 6 weeks was fromage frais. He lost nearly a stone in weight, which is a lot for a 4 year old. Without the fromage frais he’d have starved himself. We work with a dietician and while many people would be aghast at his diet, she is happy with it.
The funny thing is though that we actually haven’t experienced any judgement about his weight. He’s underweight by quite a margin. I imagine we’d get far more judgement from others if he was overweight, despite the fact that being underweight also carries significant health risks.
And to those who say ‘disabled children need teaching about healthy diets too’… well we’re trying to teach him not to smear poo everywhere at the moment, but we’ll definitely bare that in mind for the future 😏.

Which is?

Genetics?

I don’t get this ‘time poor’ thing at all.

Nobody is suggesting whipping up gourmet meals from ingredients you’ve grown yourself every night. But how hard is it to monitor portions, buy bananas and yoghurts for snacks rather than rubbish, not rely on beige freezer rubbish? Pasta with pesto and veg, chicken breast and mash, omelette with toast, tuna sweetcorn on a jacket potato. All low effort, cheap and far more nutritious than nuggets and sausage rolls.

So why did nobody walk out of Hitler’s extermination camps still overweight due to their genetics? Sorry for the crude example but it’s true.

My ds is 25 and had a massive wake up call after a health check up. He knew he needed to change. He did a calorie counting app. Exercised. Snacked less and makes an effort to be healthy. There's a large history of diabetes and coronary artery disease in our family. He needed to make a change.

Did you read the study upthread about the impact of genetics on weight? It’s quite interesting.

It’s fairly hard for your metabolism and fat storage to work against you when you’re being starved to death.

Which none of us would actually do to our children.

Yes, no one was overweight but some people stayed alive longer than others on a near identical caloric intake. Those are possibly the people who with a more normal calorific intake would be a heavier weight than the people who died. There is a study that shows that obesity rates in holocaust survivors are significantly higher than in those of those of compared control groups. That could be overeating in response to a previous period of starvation or it could be that they had genetics/gut biome that predisposed them to survival in periods of very low food availability but made them quickly overweight when food was abundant.

Yes I think a lot of people would actually be horrified to look back over a food diary and realise what their children are REALLY eating. I’ve also noticed a culture of people thinking so long as the food has a side of cucumber, then it’s healthy or acceptable no matter what is on the plate.

I follow a woman on Instagram who gives money management advice but also does a bit of ‘real life, spend the day with us’ content now and then. She’s well presented and switched on yet her kids diets are just appalling! The other day it was bourbon biscuits and sugar over cereal for breakfast, sausage roll with crisps and cucumber for lunch, a slice of cake for a snack, then a £1 Iceland-style pizza for dinner with again a couple of slices of cucumber. Another day it was chocolate for breakfast, white bread toast with tinned tomato soup for lunch, more chocolate and sweets as snacks, and another beige freezer dinner. Another day she took her 2 year old to Greggs for lunch where he had 2 donuts and can of Vimto but captioned it something like ‘we’re all just doing our best, it can’t always be perfection’. I thought yes but this is never perfection or anything remotely close.

Somebody did pop up to mention it in comments but she was very offended and said it’s normal for kids to eat the way they did… cue lots of supportive comments saying ‘yes this is us too!’

Haha, you've described my go-to dinners! But seriously, I agree that it's much cheaper and not that much more effort to have food like this. To prep the lunchboxes the night before so that the food is fresh and healthy rather than pre-packaged. To organise a grocery shop that has healthy things rather than rubbish.

Obviously it's different for those with SEN children, or those in extreme poverty. But for the average person, we've never had to much at our fingertips to help us eat well. Grocery delivery. Youtube with millions of free videos to watch to learn how to cook different things. I don't know if it's laziness, or everyone being overwhelmed with modern life, or people caring less about health... I really don't know. But I see the consequences everyday at school and it worries me, it really does.

Yanbu. Food poverty is the only justifiable reason.

Can’t you answer my question? I’m guessing in famine situations some victims have fat genes. So why do they not stay fat as food becomes scarce?

I know who you mean and I admit I wince at the shit she feeds her kids too 😬

What happened to telling someone not to be greedy

Well, fed is best compared to nothing at all...

No I can’t, sadly I’m not an expert in the subject. I was just saying that the study was interesting. Apologies.