Dissertation - Childhood Obesity

[Hollie03]

Hello everyone, my name is Hollie and I am in 4th year at the university of edinburgh studying business studies and doing my dissertation on the problem of childhood obesity and how it is being addressed by the NHS and supermarkets.

I am interested to know about you opinions on food shopping when you have children and what drives you to make choices - price, health, nutritional value, quality of food etc. I also work part time at Sainsburys Cameron Toll in Edinburgh and I am aware of a multitude of baby and toddler foods such as Ella's Kitchen, Cow and Gate, Plum organic etc. and some of the food options have "Mums choice" on them so I am assuming they are the healthier of the bunch. I am in no way biased towards Sainsburys but if anyone has any comments on the company that would be good hear about as well!

I am also interested to know if any of you are concerned about your child's weight and how you feel it should be tackled - are they eating the wrong foods at home? or away from home? do they have the option to go to greggs, chippy etc at lunch time at school? how much exercise are they doing in and outside of school?

Do you feel that NHS, local government and schools do enough to help children and their families lead healthy and nutritionally balanced lives? if not, what could be improved?

I understand this is like 100 questions in one go but any comments or information would be greatly appreciated!!! And responses will stay anonymous in my dissertation - I would never put anyone's names in unless they requested it!!

Thanks in advance,

Hollie x

Hi Hollie

I think that feeding children properly, and more importantly, teaching them to make the right choices for themselves is crucial. It starts in the home and should continue into nursery and school. And social status, class, level of income, background etc should be of no bearing. Cooking should be back on the school curriculum - it's a life skill just like any other. We don't all have to be Nigella's or Jamie's but we should all be able to cook ourselves a few healthy, nutritious, good value meals from scratch. I'm not a happy clappy tree hugging mum, my kids do have sweets and crisps, icecream and lollies, cakes and biscuits, but they have them in moderation, as a treat, not everyday, and home made if possible. As parents we have to take responsibility but this has to be backed up by our nurseries, schools, colleges and hospitals. I see so many kids the same age as my two (5 and 3) with flabby bellies hanging over their trousers and wobbling boobie bits, it never ceases to shock me. I don't think for a moment that their mums don't love them to bits, but I wonder if they realise what they are doing to their children. My daughter's school seems to think that they are promoting healthy eating and I acknowledge that they don't have chips every day and they have fresh fruit at snack time, but at the open evening I still saw plates with orange crumbed frozen fish and potatoes in strange smiley face shapes. What's wrong with a piece of fish and a commonall garden potato? I think something like Jamie's Ministry of Food should be taken more seriously. Sadly food preparation in the home (in the UK) has been in decline for some time I think. Many of us have lost the art of knowing how to cook as convenience food has taken over. We need to learn it all over again. A generalisation I know, there are families out there who cook at home, and eat as a family and know the importance of those times. But overall, we need some gentle encouragement.

Don't know if that's the kind of thing you were looking for or if it's helpful to you. Good luck with your dissertation, I hope it goes well - I just remember mine being painful and ultimately rubbish! Your sounds infinately more interesting.

Hi hollie, my child is only 3 and so not in school yet, but I thought you might like to hear my thoughts on the subject anyway (since theya re unlikely to change when my child reaches school age)?

dd was a fussy baby with a dairy intolerance and was not putting on any weight. When weaned she detested baby purees, though would (and still will) drink the squeezy ella's kitchen pouches. When shopping for her as a baby, I bought things I thought would appeal to her, whilst still being as close to "home-made" and nutritious as I could buy. She refused to eat almost everything put in front of her if it was "mixed up" ie, shepherds pie, lasagne - yet would happily eat mince, pasta, cheese etc. Obviously when shopping for her then I would again make my choices around what she would eat.

I am of the opinion that you can try and guide your childen to make the right food choices. It is difficult if you have a fussy child, but what you can do as a parent is encourage and offer little in the way of alternatives. dd will now eat most things, but if she refuses she will be offered toast or a banana. There is nothing "nice" for her to eat, nor is she allowed lots of snacks unless thy are fruit or veg (or dairy if I feel she hasnt had much that day).

I don't sweat the crisps/junk food provided she has eaten relatively healthily throughout the day. I make sure she eats at least 5-6 portions of fruit and veg a day and has 3 small portions of dairy. We eat fish at least once a week etc.

Once a week dd has to have a picnic in the car on the way home (us from work, her from grandpaents) so i buy things that she will like and will be excited by. Yes I try to buy organic, but the calorie or otherwise content is not important to me. What is important is that we provide a good role model to our children to eat healthily and to enjoy food, and understand it's value (ie carbohydrates make us able to run faster, brocolli stps us catching colds etc). Everything is fine in modeation, takeaways are not a problem as long as they are not everyday, convenience foods are for us, rather more of an inconvenience, because although we occasionally pick something up fromt he shops, it is actually quicker to make a quick pasta dish yourself than try and heat 3 different meals...

What I think is lacking in today's society is exercise. In the 70's for example, everyone had crisps and mars bars and fizzy drinks as part of their school day. We didn't have the problem with mass obesity then. We are fortunate to live close enough to open moorland and beaches. dd will walk on the moors 5/7 days and on the two days she doesn't she will be with grandparents, normally swimming/at a park/soft play centre etc so getting lots of energy and fresh air.

Exercise and the pre-disposition to enjoy fresh air is something you can teach though. You can make even the most mundane walk into an adventure, a learning game, a hunt for something...there is no excuse for not going out and runnig around. The feel good factor outweighs anything else.

I realise I may have gone off topic a bit, but I wanted you to try and understand why I have made the decisions I did and hold the opinions that I have. I am happy to answer any specific questions, feel fre to PM me.

The problems start with WEANING incorrectly - the breast feeding police keep banging on about how important it is then all of a sudden nutrician is dropped and no one is there or checks up. I have read on other forums mums starting weaning too early because "mum knows best" syndome. Weaning on completely the wrong foods - jumping the gun. Starting the kids on sweeter foods over savoury. This is where it starts going wrong and I absolutely believe it.

The attitude we have that children like bland boring food - who came up with this - I wonder if it was the orange breadcrumbed fried food companies???? (this is worth looking into).Because this didnt exist in the 70's. We all eat what our parents did.

I'm not particulary educated nor overly bright but I control my children and we are the leaders and the childern follow - another modern way of giving children opinions and options particualry when it comes to food. I decide what is for tea and they eat it. There is no alternative.

Somewhere along the line in time someone decided that food wasnt important (in sence of proper cooking)and leisure came first. Nutrician, vits, protein, fats - none of this is important to children - filling their belly to satisfy is more important and many people think that this is ok.

I dont find a problem in the supermarket at all and only ever come home with a gingerman biscuit. my 5 yr old knows that we can make cakes that are better than the shop bought.

Both boys are skinny and any sign of fat I'd sort it in the instance.

Also depends on the lifestyle the parents live, if it incoporates an outside/sports/rec this deff influences the children in the early years.

I could go on...you can pm me if nec

oh fgs breastfeeding police

jeez

thank you all so much for replying i really appreciate it! xxxxx

My approach to food, I suppose, is what you'd call 'traditional home-cooking'. I work full-time and find making an evening meal quite relaxing rather than a chore. I do the grocery shopping alone and make all the food decisions for the household so find that the ready-made foods aimed at children don't influence my shopping habits very much at all. Neither, for that matter, does government or NHS advice.

My philosophy is 'spend more, eat less'... i.e. I'd rather eat a little good food and pay a decent price for it than eat lots of poor food just because it's cheap.
The only products I tend to avoid are the heavily processed ones claiming to be 'healthy' :) I believe that there's room for all things in a healthy diet - a few chips or a little chocolate is fine. Living on chips or chocolate is not so good.

When my son was a baby he didn't like any of the food in jars so I can't comment there. He's been through fussy stages as a toddler but, ever since, has been keen to try new things. He doesn't have a weight problem and is in very good health generally.

I'm pleased that my son's primary school cover nutrition and food as part of personal development, keep the children nicely active and I think the best thing any education minister could do is make cooking skills a firm part of the curriculum. In the meantime, I'll pass on my knowledge to my son and hope it stays with him.

thank u!!! i appreciate you taking time to respond!

Lack of exercise is a problem. Portion size is a problem. Cheap takeaway food is a problem. But the biggest problem is the constant grazing. Overweight families are the ones who feed their kids breakfast, morning snack, dinner, afternoon snack, tea, evening snack and various other snacks in between. Then they settle down for an evening in front of the TV, surrounded by yet more snacks. Paradoxically, the individual cooked meals might actually be well-balanced and healthy.

I was a child of the 70's and we had breakfast, dinner and tea. Very occasionally my mum would let us have a biscuit when we got home from school - one plain biscuit, a rich tea or something. But that meant we were hungry for our meals.

I tried to do the same for my children (who are now 15 and 18 and normal weight), failed on many occasions of course, but stuck in the main to the very out-of-fashion idea of "nothing between meals or you'll ruin your appetite".

I see overweight children today who are never more than half an hour away from their last/next episode of eating. At school pick-up they are given crisps/sweets. The same at any activity pick-up, so even if they do something athletic like swimming, they are given junk food afterwards.

Health professionals should not be afraid of hurting the parents' feelings by telling them their child is overweight. Again, so many parents simply don't know, they think their 'chunky' 'big for their age' 'strong' child is anything but overweight.