Is your child obese - really? Are you doing anything about it?

[Tinker]

Just curious after all the news reports today. No-one ever seems to describe their own child as obese and yet some must be.

It might have been one of hos others with mothers in the title, but boy did the main character walk. I worked it out at about 20 odd miles a day!

I think it is S&L, Jimjams. I suspect my copy is in the attic so I'm not about to go and look!

And houses were colder, so we needed to burn more calories to keep up our core body temperature.

My two aren't even on the fat side. I am, and make sure that they eat well without coming across as having 'issues' about food. They also run around like mad things.

I don't see that many obese kids in school, but more of them could be classed as overweight.

Re the school diet. Agree 100%.....it is rubbish. And even if there is a well cooked , healthy option they will eat chip and cheese instead. At leat the school has now banned fizzy drinks, thank goodness. last two lessons lots of the boys would be bouncing off the walls with 'E' numbers.

I don't think that it is a coincidence that the children who are most motivated and pleasent to work with seem all to bring healty packed lunches into school

Did anyone see that recent article about a chef who used to work at a top restuarant but then needed to have fewer hours in order to help out at home and so went to work for a local school. Keeping within the meal budget (which was shockingly tiny) he produced really good food, sourced from local people, used what was in season and so was cheap, plus cheap cuts of meat cooked well in stew and so on. He also did themed meals, like Spanish stuff after the summer hols when lots of kids would have been to Spain on hols. The kids loved it and were all eating liver/stew/veg/fruit etc. I thought he was really inspiring, and shows what one person could do. I imagine a lot of schools are tied into catering supplier contracts and so cannot take advantage of cheaper seasonal stuff. There must be a way to spread what he is doing around a bit more and get some healthy eating habits started in school. Having said that - I do think it's the lack of running around that is more of a problem, children can eat the most spectacular amount of calories as long as they burn it off. When it snowed recently I looked out of our back window which looks over the secure, floodlit garden of a tower block where I know there are a lot of children. There was no one in the garden between 4 and 7pm - virgin snow, lovely clear evening. A couple of teenagers came out at about 8pm and had a snowball fight, thank god, or I was going to scale the wall and run around in the snow myself. So depressing - where were the other kids?

Portion sizes have increased enormously (literally) in just a few years. Giant muffins, bagels the size of dinner plates, supersized portions of everything, buckets (literally again) of coca-cola. Pizza Express recently had to increase the size of its pizzas because they now seemed small compared to other companies' giant ones. We are losing touch with how much is appropriate to eat. Children in particular, I think.

aloha I agree completely! Portion sizes have increased, particularly if you eat out. I was brought up to clear my plate an dthat is still with me, so if I go out I eat far too much as it is given to me

School meals are an issue with us now. DD1 started school in Jan and wanted school dinners - so I agreed, they did seem to be OK (primary are often better as there is little choice) However it has just been announced that school dinners will stop form after Easter There will be a 'packed lunch' option that we have to book weeks in advance (that will be more than we pay now) or packed lunches from us. It is not so bad through the summer but I feel a decent meal at lunchtime is good when they are at school. I also know I get little time to organise packed lunches. I am going to get organised Hopefully Fortuneatly DD1 eats really well and loves fruit as much as crisps or whatever. I have always been quite lax with her treats as long as meals are eaten. She was so tiny at birth that feeding her up has always been an issue with me. She is still tiny, but in proportion. DD2 will not eat fruit (bar raisins) and can be picky sometimes, hopefully by school age she will be better as she won't often eat a sandwich! Only the filling

crunchie, does your dd go to st georges by any chance? just wondered because ds goes there (to the juniors) and they have ended their contract with the current school dinner supplier and are deciding whether to offer hot school dinners with a new supplier at vastly inflated prices or go with a prebooked packed lunch option

I think that it is such a shame that kids don't have the option of a hot meal at lunch time. I do thank that it is better for their concentration. And for some kids it is the only chance they get to eat a hot meal that is nutritionaly balanced....not your children Crunchie, but YKWIM.

Some of the kids I teach have a breakfast of sweets and a can of Coke. And then they can't concentrate in lessons.

Many of them have no idea of what they should be eating each day. I teach a girl in Y 8 with the most awful gum disease. She was busy telling me how healthy her fruit drink was.....14 grams of sugar in 100mls. She didn't have a clue what was rotting her teeth. It makes me want to weep some days.

I think Ks makes some excellent points, and I also agree with Aloha about portion size. When I eat out I can never finish a meal. I was brought up on small portions and I'm shocked by how much some people eat. That said, I still think I eat more than is neccessary.

I'm amazed that some people here (mentioning no names ) seem to think it doesn't matter, or is a fuss about nothing.

I think it is a matter of huge concern, for everyone. It's not just about body image it's about serious health issues.

It really upsets me seeing overweight children

Oh, and I think exercise is a major part of it, but it's a combination of good diet and good exercise which is important.

Re school dinners, the school here has started offering hot meals but there is never enough and once S1 and S2 have been through, it's all gone for the older ones. A teacher I know said it's also hard to get the children who eat healthily at home to eat hot meals because they are used to a better quality of food than school supplies. Tinned salmon doesn't go down well in children used to fresh (tinned salmon was posh when I was young!). If hot meals are not feasible, then surely a range of quality sandwiches and soup would be a better option and quite easy to prepare and serve.

I also agree that exercise and hmb's observation on keeping warm must be part of the equation.

This is a subject close to my heart.

My son is definitely on the chunky side - he weighs nearly 8 stone and he's the average height for a 9 year old. Like your son, copper, he's tubby round the waist. But then all our family on both sides weigh 'heavy'. Dh and I are both pretty average in build and my 4 year old is a wiry racing snake - yet when he is weighted at the clinic, his height is on the 75th percentile and his weight is over the 95th, so technically he is overweight. Yet one look at him and you'd see he isn't.

My husband gets very het up about our oldest son's weight. He really feels strict action must be taken by us all and is always commenting about his size to my son (not always critically, I add - my husband will also say if he thinks ds looks slimmer). However I think he is obsessing too much over this. Whereas my husband was average size as a child, I had a fat phase. I suddenly mushroomed at age 7, especially round the tummy, and didn't start to lose it till hit 11 years old. I never became skinny, but I did become average again. All this happened without any change in my diet or lifestyle. I didn't eat a Mcdonalds diet in those far off days of no fast food chains, but I munched my way through countless home made cakes and puddings, and always had a plate of buttery tea cakes after I came back from school, before my supper later in the evening.

My son mushroomed at exactly the same age as me, so I am hoping he will follow my patten. However I am not 100% confident. From the day they ewer born, my sons had different physiqus. My oldest son had a pronounced tummy always (even when he had no fat on it) whereas my youngest son did not, and developed far more muscle than fat. Both sons like their food. My youngest (4) has an average appetite but also drinks at least 1.5 pints of full cream milk a day.

My oldest, however, is very drawn to food. It's not that he loves junk food - he loves all food, and especially good food and he adores being taken out to grown up resaurants. He talks about these visits for months afterwards. He loves helping in the kitchen and can now nearly cook most dishes we prepare - macaroni cheese, stews, roasts etc. He can grill meat, make gravy, make cheesy mashed potatoes and other simple dishes unsupervised. He says he wants to be a chef when he grows up. He has packed lunches (fruit, sandwich, non fizzy drink and chrisps) not only because we can keep an eye on what he's eating, but also because he will take second and third helpings of any school meal going - vegetables, the lot! So in our case, his liking for junk food is not the main reason for his shape. It's his liking for food in general. But by getting heavy with him about food, I feel I am criticising and denying an intrinsic part of his personality.That's where my husband and I differ.

He is not sporty, but he is quite active on his bike and skateboard. However I do feel exercise (and some gentle limit to his eating) is the key for him to slim down. He seems to be stuck at a certain size at least - he is not getting bigger - so I am hoping he will grow taller in the next few years and even out naturally.

Going back to the report - I wonder what happened to the belief that many children get puppy fat and they will grow out of it?

Tigermoth - slightly off topic - I love the description of your son's activities in the kitchen. That's fantastic. I often get ds1 to watch/vaguely assist (he's only 6.5), but haven't ever let him near hot stuff/sharp knives. When did you start?

Stupidgirl,

I've re-read the whole thread and can't find a single post where anybody suggests that its not important or a fuss about nothing???

tigermoth, I think boys often do slim off when they grow. My brother is a really good case in point. He was very chubby from being about 9 to about 15, when he hit his growth spurt. He slimmed off a lot then, and then again when he came to university. Now he does a LOT of physical exercise, but he is skinny as a rake. I reckon even without that he would be 'normal', because before he left school he was slim.

If you want your son to do more activity, why not see what family activities you could do - say cycling at the weekend, or family football or something. It might seem less like making him do exercise.

He sounds amazing in the kitchen! He will have no shortage of girlfriends in the future!

roisin, my dd 4 (nearly 5) is great at helping me, she has just started handling sharper knives (with my supervision) but she is also a careful child. Hopefully over time she'll be able to cook us breakfast in bed

I am also surprised that, whilst there is so much coverage of children getting fatter and much blame being heaped on the parents, you never read anything about the junk served to even the youngest children as 'school dinner'. My daughter's old school (she is in reception and moved to a different school after Christmas) served up turkey twizzlers, chips, pizza etc followed by jam roly-polys or ice cream. Fridays the children always got a 'Happy Meal'-style box with chips, a hot dog in a white bun and a large choc-chip cookie - seriously!
The company providing the food sent out an info leaflet trying to justify them serving such crp - e.g. they said that a slice of pizza is no different from a cheese & tomato sandwich, additives are part of a balanced diet, and processed meat is he only sort of meat children will eat. It really pssed me off majorly but then dd moved schools so I didn't bother to take it up with them.

Stupid girl are you counting me as someone who thinks its a fuss about nothing? I don't really, and I am sure its a problem for society in general, but in our particular case I have far bigger worries. DS1 is under a nutritionisit and although his diet is appalling he appears healthy and is the correct weight for his heigth (75th centile for both). I would love him to eat a vegetable (any would do) and more than one fruit (2 if you include freshly squeezed orange juice), and if he ate meat I would be overjoyed. However there are so many issues he has to do with food that theres not much I can do about it (well there is and we've got so far in one area, but now I need to set up a new programmme called ABA- once thats up and running I will use it to tackle the food issues but I would imagine that won;t be for another 6 months or so) In the meantime I can't worry about it. I did notice that ds2 was copying ds1 so he is no longer gluten free and gets nursery lunches (so he can copy the other children instead).

I used to worry about it but then I read "can't eat, won't eat" by Brenda Legge and realised that his diet wasn't so bad. At least he eats more than one colour of chocolate button.

I still think that concentrating on food and not exercise (especially walking) is a mistake. Oh and portion size as well- agree totally with Aloha.

I find it really odd that we go from worrying about how little children are eating (see loads of threads on MN on this) to worrying about overeating and being overweight. At what point does this happen?

My DS (always categorised as a good eater) is probably eating about twice as much as he was doing a couple of weeks ago. I assume he is going through a growing spurt. he's definitely got much thinner than he was but I suppose this is normal at 3 yo.

I think that you can't focus on children's weight problems without dealing with the whole family's diet, and that opens up a lot of other sensitive issues, esp for the mother's self image. I have only one friend whose children are getting chubbier and chubbier, because they are driven everywhere and eat too much fatty sugary food. But my friend (who is not obese but is overweight) also has her weight issues, and last time I asked her to come dancing, she said she felt too overweight, and she is doing a silly crash atkins diet and I suspect that she fasts sometimes. I was more interested in telling her that she looked fine and should not think that only skinny people can dance, than in giving her a lecture about how to raise her children. When we go out, I try to pick a healthier restaurant, and when she suggests that we skip dinner, I say that I think eating dinner is very important and I can't enjoy myself if I am hungry. What else can you do, apart from sanctimoniously giving your own child apples and cereal bars when you are all out together, and pointedly making your child walk when your friend's children are being pushed in pushchairs? We visited an aunt at Xmas who is overweight and I had a chat with ds beforehand that he must not announce (as he tends to) that she was fat, because it would hurt her feelings, but I explained that I had chosen a Xmas present that was not chocolate/ biscuits/ cake because I was worried about her health, and when we visited her, I had primed ds to tell her that we wanted to go swimming at her gym with her.

Do I think it 'doesn't matter'? I think it does, but I also feel, incredibly strongly, that children - girls - get bombarded with the idea they should be stick-thin. And if they aren't, they are unhappy, and that means that they eat and also they have a sense that if they're so fat already they might as well get fatter.

I only came to terms with my own size - which is really quite normal, as it happens - about five years ago, and I do not want to make my daughters go through the same thing.

My dh was an overweight child and has miserable memories of being picked last for football. He made a conscious effort to be a healthier teenager and really got into cycling. He was overweight for 2 reasons - bad diet and a long illness that left him immobile for over a year. He is determined our children won't be overweight but we have agreed it should be through activity and not just diet alone. I am lucky in that my children will eat fruit and a little veg but they also have chocolate and crisps and cakes and biscuits but not everyday at every meal. If they see other children get these things then I don't want a biscuit or a bag of crisps becoming an obsession with them. I think everything in moderation is fine for my children apart from fizzy drinks which they don't like anyway.