Nutritionist in yesterday's Observer suggests we should go back to the methods of the past to combat rising rates of obesity in children (17% of all 2-8 now obese)

[harpsichordcarrier]

Anita Bean says "A common mistake for parents is to give the child too much choice. The old-fashioned rule of just eating what was put in front of you seems to havewaned.The children chouldn't get into the habit of rejecting food, which gives them power and control. Don't let them demand food."

this seems to me to be really crappy advice and massively missing the point. I sort of see what she means, but surely giving choice is not the problem, it is whether the choices and the diet is healthy enough...
and surely giving children power and control over their intake is exactly the point, so they can make good choices when we no longer have power and control over what they eat.

but what do I know, I am not a registered nutritionist

I think the stats are wrong. Tall children are being labelled overweight because their height is not taken into account when looking at their weight/age.

soapbox, good question

I am always surprised by how few obese children there are at my DSs' (very ordinary, state inner-city primary) school.

I agree that children are sometimes labelled overweight by medical 'professionals' but they seem to look OK to me.

Of course a lot of people argue that if the medical profession say you are overweight (i.e based on BMI) then you are - end of story. I personally think that is a lot of bull as I know for a fact that I am MUCH heavier than I look.

This is because my hand and feet are large and my wrists are large (There is no fat on my wrists but the circumference of them is still bigger than dh's - I know I've measured them in a moment of obsession).

Based on my BMI I am obese at the moment yet I fit into size 14/16 clothes and I am 5ft 8". I am to my mind definitely overweight but to say I am obese is probably a step too far.

Soapbox my DH seems to teach a fair proportion of them. I mean obsese children, not just fat. I feel so sorry for these poor children (in both senses of the word), who are excluded from most of the friendship groups and who are too fat even to participate in PE. It's tragic.

I was at a theme park yesterday and it was incredibly noticeable how many really large children there are around.(and most with do-nuts, fizzy drinks, burgers etc)
I mean really large amounts of very large children. Ds1 even noticed. And declined candyfloss...he is rather thin for his height and age)

obese

meant to add twice I saw children unable to acomodate another child in the ride next to them

I see a lot of obese children. I wonder where people who don't are living. When we were driving past a school at home time earlier this year it was noticeable that practically every child we passed walking home was eating something - whether a bag of crisps or an ice cream.

But Kathy, children come out of school ravenous.

thinking about eating until full - my dd's primary school REALLY encourages them to finish their lunch with rewards of stickers. dd says she often finishes her lunch when she is too full and fells sick afterwards. what a lousy idea - surely should just encourage them to eat till full????

People - adults and children - snack a lot. You rarely hear someone say "it'll spoil your appetite" or "nothing between meals." And snack food is usually high calorie.

and kids' packed lunches are often huge - what's wrng with a sandwich and piece of fruit plus water?

I'm not sure that advice is so terrible, harpsi...

but she's not p[reaching to us is she? she's preaching to those parents who give their children chicken and chips because they don't like the other options. some people do do that.

and littlebella - are those people who eat less also the ones who are overwqeight? because like others say, most of the fat children I see are always eating

Senora, no idea, it's just averages.

The average number of calories consumed each day has gone down. But the average waist size etc, has gone up.

Whether the two correlate exactly is a good question, but the usual view is that it is lack of exercise which matters. For example, I recently realised that my default means of transport has become the car. I walk only if I am being very conscientious and aware that I ought to be walking. Whereas fifty years ago, everybody walked everywhere (i use the term "everybody" loosely). Now, any walk longer than 10 minutes, or in less than perfect weather conditions, is considered unacceptable. I was at a Walking Bus meeting recently where one of the questions asked by one of the mothers was "what do we do if it rains?" I mean, FGS, at what stage in our culture did it become impossible to walk in the rain? We don't even get off our arses to switch TV channels, we use the remote control. We don't do the sheer amount of physical labour people did fifty years ago. So they could afford to eat more calories than we can.

My DD's aways eating btw, but she's not fat. because at the moment, she burns it all off. If she continues to eat at the rate she does though, but doesn't keep her activity level up, she'll get fat.

the average waist has gone up, but that's more about changing shapes than weight. my aunt had an 18 inch waist, or so she says, and apparently that wasn't terribly unusual.

also do we exercise less than we used to? more people have cars, but also more people go to the gym...

SA my 4 year old has a 21 inch waist, and his trousers are hanging off him! I cannot believe a grown woman had an 18 inch waist and all her intyernal organs intact

more people have sedentary jobs
there is much less general activity in terms of walking, vigorous housework etc.
also, we eat crap and too much of it.
I think it is crap advice to say "don't let your children have power and control over what they eat" - that's just bolleaux, massively oversimplistic. educating your child to make the right choices and to have a good relationship with food, appetite control, not to when they aren't hungry, not to use food as a method of control - these things will have a life long impact. the period of time when we have absolute control over our children's eating is so small.

Kids don't go to the gym (thank God) but they aren't as active as they used to be.

My dd1 is willowy yet eats like a horse, but hs eis on teh go all the time. I refused to get her weighed at school for the Government's nosing about how much children weigh.

An hour a day in the gym just doesn't make up for the lack of activity for the rest of the day. And also, most people don't go to the gym, only a tiny percentage of the population do.

People just used to be far more active adn that used up the calories they took in. Women had to go shopping every day, usually on foot. Men had to walk to work and even if they commuted, they wouldn't drive to the station, they'd walk (and most jobs involved considerably more physical activity than nowadays. No computers, no call centres, only middle class men in the main sitting still at a desk all day.) Cleaning a house was physically more challenging than it is now. Activities for children were far more active, no such thing as children's TV or playstations.

We are just unutterably lazy compared ot previous generations. Unutterably. (Can't walk in the rain FGS! I'm still reeling from shock at that, I want to ram an umbrella ... no I won't go there )

Hm...where I live are loads of obese, and I mean obese, children and in the themempark we went to (cleethorpes way) there were also loads....and of course, where I live and where we went both are areas where the poorer and often less educated live/go...
I think the main issue is, to make people aware of teh reality of fast foods and prcessed foods and make them realise it's not just statistics and some rubiish some scientist made up or someone who want to sell their faddy diet!
People also need to realise that things like enzymes, essential fats etc...are vital and that the whole low sugar, low fat shite, in general is complete rubbish...

there are a scary amount of obese/overweight children around here.

I don't see many at the school the DSs go to - part of the reason may be that there is a large Muslim contingent whose parents cook almost all homemade food and don't use convenience foods and takeaways.

I don't know any obese children.

Oh god there are loads round here.

Although it tends to be teenagers rather than little children. I think that while they're small, little kids are running around the playground, climbing, skipping, just moving all the time, so they burn off all those chips and lard. But then they get to secondary school and stop moving, but keep the same diet they had and hey presto - balloon so that by the time they are 15 they are utterly grotesque, I know that sounds harsh, but some of them round here are heartbreakingly large, they are so young and must be so unhappy and unhealthy. I've noticed it particularly this summer, where of all the gangs of teenage girls I've seen, at least half of them have been seriously fat, not just a little bit chubby. It's terribly sad.

I went to my niece's sweet sixteen party in the summer and I would say about one third of the guests were conspicuously overweight. I was quite shocked tbh.