Doctors say childhood obesity is neglect - do you agree?

[mylittlefreya]

The article is here

I think it's interesting the comment about undernourished children being automatically a cause for concern, but its almost not politically correct to say the same about overfed children.

I also think peoples perceptions can be quite distorted - there is a big difference between chubby, and obese, but often I don't think people see this.

At some level this worries me and at another it relieves me.

What do other people think?

I love VisciousSquirrel's post so I'm going to cut and paste it because it is so brilliant.

'This thing of "if some people can do it why can't others?" Er, for the same reason some people can climb Everest, run marathons, learn Ancient Greek, do archery, and others can't. Because we're all different and respond to our circumstances in different ways. I just don't accept the "if she can do it, so can she" argument, it's not valid.'

ViciousSS - it's relatively new - last year, I think. It's not about unhealthy snacks (unlikely in these parts), it's about snacking at all, which is deeply discouraged. Three square meals a day and possibly a goûter at 4 pm for the youngest children. No snacks.

I actually buy into this completely - one of the areas where I have gone native

colditz - daily bathing also prevents disease spreading.

I noticed the anti-snacking thing when we were in France in March. Whenever there was an ad for food (I think just food aimed at children?) there was a message along the bottom of the screen e.g. about doing exercise or not snacking.

I think its a bit of a shame from the country that came up with that genius snack - a slab of chocolate slapped in a baguette - or maybe you can still have that as part of a meal?

Anna, good hygiene prevents disease spreading, but I have never seen anything to suggest that daily baths or showers are necessary.

There is also a school of thought that believes that exposure to unhygienic conditions in early childhood develops our immune system in such a way as to prevent allergies and strengthen our immune system. This is the study Colditz is referring to.

For example, children with older siblings and with pets were found to have the strongest immune systems and least allergies.

Sad about the anti-snacking direction France is supposed to be heading in though. I have always admired France for having a relaxed and IMO healthy attitude to food.

Agree with ViciousSS that snacking is more natural to our natural metabolism than 3 square meals.

WEll, this is a v.tricky one! My dd2 absolutely loves her food & would eat all day if I let her. Fortunately I know the adverse consequences & so will not let her, however at just 4 she's the biggest in her age group & her tummy always seems to hang over her skirt/trousers which makes me feel concious that I have a 'fat child'. At home when she asks for food (almost every 5 mins or so it seems), I will only allow her to have fruit, which luckily she does enjoy. I don't want to make an issue of things as this may upset her later in life but I know I get judged for how she looks.

Anchovy - that's a lovely idea.

Whoa this is a long thread and I've only skimmed it but my tuppence worth is this:

I do think that allowing children to get obese is a form of neglect on the parents' part but I think they should be given a support worker, access to fun exercise classes etc before even contemplating removing a child from home.

I totally disagree that it's hard to eat healthily on a lower income; you just have to think a bit more and buy junk a bit less. Lots of cheap things are healthy - carrots, lentils, potatoes, other dried pulses, veggie soups etc.

BUT ultil the government changes cookery lessons in school from 10 different ways to make a pizza and compare it with a bought one, to how to make decent family meals for a sensible price, then many people will not know how to make these cheap nutritious meals and will continue to buy crap.

This is of course, encouraged by the supermarkets, with their offers on ready meals, crisps and biscuits - so cheap they're almost giving them away; but lack of offers on fresh fruit and vege. Also, places like Tesco, where the quality of the fruit and vege is quite frankly appalling, don't help.

Certainly those who are sensitive to sugar are advised not to snack and have three good regular meals. It's the snacks which seem to have made us fat and food being everywhere thus encouraging snacking. When I was a child we were not allowed any food of any kind except at meal times and then later on when we were older our mother would sometimes bring us dried fruit a bed time. I think that was also for her convenience - she didn't want the kitchen a running buffet sort of area. My father came home for lunch every day and we came home from school until I was 10. We ate our main meal at lunch time. I was with someone this week who walks home for 20 mins every lunch time as his office is near home and has lunch with his wife just like my father did for 40 years.

On the issue of cost I do think a lot of our meals here are very very cheap and obviously I'm hugely privileged and very well off by most standards but we might have baked potatoes - okay if you don't have a microwave because you're too poor I suppose that's out. We cook loads of brown rice in one go and heat it up when needed. That is so very cheap. It also keeps better than bread so less waste. Also tinned sardines, carrots. The simple meat, carb and veg meal this country ate (with during WWII no sweets at all as they were not available) meant children in 1944 were the healthiest this country has ever been and those meals are not hard to cook or elaborate.

My kids have chocolate biscuits, cake, crisps, everything, but not all the time. Even though my ds has aspergers and dyspraxia and so is exceptionally exercise-averse, neither of my children is fat. Actually, my stepdaughter, who now at 15 is a gap size 6, was chubbier than either of them. I think learning to manage snacks and treats as part of a healthy diet is a good idea. the problem lies with people who were brought up badly nourished, never learned to cook from their own parents and who are now raising another generation of children who think crisps are a meal. I'm absolutely no food faddist. Tonight the children had spinach pasta, which they loved, followed by chocolate chip cookies and yoghurt. It's the overall picture that counts.

Yes, and we don't on average eat more calories than we did in the 1950s. We eat fewer but we exercise by walking to work, school, then at work or doing housework we don't expend calories unless we're a cleaner or farmer or yoga teacher or whatever and yet we haven't reduced our calorie intake to take account of the fewer calories expended.

I've heard people say that snacking (healthily) is supposed to be better for people than three square meals. But I wonder if psychologically it just keeps everyone thinking about food all day long. And encourages a mentality that hunger must be assuaged immediately. I well remember the phrase "no, it will spoil your dinner."

I think it is worrying when parents with obviously overweight children don't do something about it. Whether that's about encouraging exercise or changing diet. But I was brought up by a mother that had gone through rationing, so learned how to be very frugal when required. It is hard if you live on a sink estate with little access to a decent supermarket, but it is also to remember that in general we now have access to a wide range of on the whole fairly high quality food and that one of the major effects of the growth of the big supermarket chains is that food prices have come down significantly. I know that many people do not know how to cook, and that processed foods are heavily advertised, but there are lots of healthy eating messages out there too. As parents do we not have some responsibility for finding out how to look after our children? On the snacking front, if I didn't feed my ds between meals he would completely flake (and so would I), so I think that that is pretty ill advised. The fruit at break time has been great for us (a pity it isn't extended to junior school)

People don't always see their child as fat even though they might be. I know it sounds odd but I mentioned before this study at Exeter University that showed that parents didn't know what a child was meant to look like. I think that on the whole if children run around a lot and don't eat fatty, sugary snacks, they do seem to be slim. ut if you're a chubby womanand your husband is big, you might expect your child to be large too. And people talk about puppy fat as if that's inevitable.

NKF. there are probably different schools of thought. If you're Type II diabetic or sugar sensitive type of person and possibly depressive too then spiking your blood sugar levels up and then down all day even with a snack of fruit (a lot of fruit is quite sweet and sweeter than 10 years ago - they did tests as our tastes have changed, even grapefruit!) may not be wise. Other people I doubt it has much effect on and 5 or 6 small meals may be fine for them.

..and possibly what we take to be hunger is may be just a signal to go out ahd hunt down an animal or spend 2 hours hunting from fruits on trees if we were 10,000 years ago but now it's immediately available we take the first sign of hunger as the have the food now rather than spend the next 1 - 2 hours finding it or cooking it.

Kathy - here in Paris, which is a big, dirty, city we all need to take a daily bath or shower. Indeed, both my stepsons have had problems with eye infections from having dirty fingernails (so scrub nails daily and keep very short), verrucas from dirty sports changing rooms (scrub feet daily and they don't develop) and nits are everywhere but totally preventable if you wash and condition hair daily.

When I go to my parents' house in the English countryside I am very noticeably less dirty than here. So I suppose it does to quite a large extent depend on the cleanliness or otherwise of your ambiant environment.

nits are not totally preventable by daily washing, anna, sorry.

But I definately see your point about city living being dirtier - when I spend the day in my local city, I always want a shower when I get back - but I live wuite rurally, and there just doesn't seem to be that level of grime.

colditz - well, the recommendation here in Paris is to wash and condition daily to prevent nits, and since my stepsons have done this they haven't had a nit between them. And this is pretty common lore here and what schools recommend for the common good - basically, if all the children in the school practise a very high level of hygiene, you don't get nit infestations (or verrucas or athlete's foot or worms or all the other joys of childhood).

@ worms

LOL colditz

We have lots of eczema in my family and are very careful about the products we use. Fortunately my partner runs a company that sells lots of dermatological products, so we have easy access. That way, I'm manic about hygiene and disease prevention but we keep itchy skin at bay...

Actually, my daughter's skin is a lot more sensitive to the hardness of water than to products. Sometimes on holiday her skin gets really dry and itchy, in other places it softens up.

The Frencyh are known world wide for their obscure and often medically incorrect views on health so the nits don't go for clean hair thing which in the UK is regarded as rubbish would not surprise me at all about the French. I do find the French clean than the English actually. I think a lot of us English men and women have no problems going out to the shops in trousers with paint on them and a school in the UK was complaining that about 20 mothers were taking the children to school in pyjamas as the mothers couldn't be bothered to dress. Not sure you're likely to get that in France.

But on food if we all ate at meal times and more at home we'd be healthier. People eat out so much and it's there you eat more and the portions are too large. in the US we were ordering a meal for one and then sharing it between the twins and me and we still had enough to eat.

Dermatology is much more advanced in France than in the UK, Xenia . It really depends on the area of medicine.

Hygiene has nothing to do with veruccas. Or nits (except if you don't treat them).