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?

The diffence in diet is so obviously about education not cash-flow. I taught myself to cook, if you can read you can cook. Frozen veg is good. Being poor doesn't mean you should have a bad diet, ask all the pensioners out there. I was so desperate I ate rabbit and hare. How come we're not learning basic information about diet?

Being more does mean you are knackered and stressed, though.

sorry, 'poor'.

I was only bashing people on benefits to make a point that obesity isn't related to poverty.

But it clearly is at a population level, rebel, however you want to cut the stats obesity is strongly related to income.

Is lower income connected to lower education though?

If we all have the same educational chances what causes lower income?

It has many grey areas but overfeeding your child is cruel and feeding them unhealthy bad food is wrong and shouldn't be ignored. Parents who let their child get obese are guilty of neglet imo yes.

If people on a low income have no option but to eat processed and unhealthy food then you can't blame people for overfeeding their children and causing obesity.

No I haven't tbh rebel. Obviously at some stage a child becomes an adult and becomes responsible for their own well being. I don't use my childhood experiences as an excuse for my adult obesity. As an adult its down to self control, which I'm now addressing. But you're all right, it is about education. I'm re-learning portion size, what's good, what's not, good times to eat, importance of exercise, importance of setting good examples to my kids etc etc etc. It's just a shame I got to this age before I learnt it. Having the confidence and motivation to change bad habits into good is closely related to self esteem I believe. A lot of obese adults AND kids have little or no self esteem. This needs to be addressed at the same time as the re-education I feel.

Money is also an issue. Ever compared the price of a chocolate bar in the uk to the rest of the world? I couldn't quote exactly, but I know I don't eat chocolate on holiday for that very reason. And it's true about BOGOFs - look down any supermarket's central aisle and the majority of these are processed food. If there isn't much in the pot I don't blame people trying to stretch it a bit further. When was the last time anyone saw bogof on a banana say?

It's such a multi faceted debate here, there is no easy quick fix solution to obesity. A good place to start would be more physical activiy for kids at school and out, more walking to school, nutrition education from the outset, taxes on confectionary, ban on offers on processed food, but cheaper on more nutritious food, less out of town supermarkets, bring back local shops, with cheap local products that we can walk to, and self help clinics for obesity similar to AA or those to help smokers quit. Ideally. Jmo

Obesity is inversely proportional to povety. Just look at the third world for evidence.

When I diet, I spend less.

I don't think we can call what we have poverty.

Gotanewnameforthis, I very much identify with your childhood experience. My weight/size was this huge family issue: I've only very recently realised how much it became a focus for/distraction from all sorts of other stuff that was going on in my family. From the age of nine on, I was absolutely horrified about my own body. I turned down a boy I really fancied, at age 14, because I was so embarrassed about the prospect of him seeing me in my out of school clothes. I spent a huge proportion of my 20s and 30s 'believing I was the fattest most ugliest undeserving being to walk the earth' and I still have Ishoos from that.

Parents have a lot to answer for.

I don't think it is neglect as such because I don't thinkthere is any intent not to meet the childs need but I think it is part of an overwhelming trend for parents to try and be friends with their children and a reluctance to set boundaries and be the bad guy. There seems to be an endless movement towards parenting according to what we think everyone else does. There was a woman on radio 5 this morning who was making amazing statements like " well every child comes home from school and gets chocolate and crisps before tea" and "every kid has a treats drawer or goodies box and then they are just snacking from there" .
I was one of eight kids and we were POOR but my mum knew how to make big stews and bacon and cabbage and we ony had a treat on a friday ( cakes from the bakers my dad worked in). My older sister and I are only a year apart and we had exactly the same childhood in this regard. Yet whilst she has just rolled back the boundaries to the point where her son has chocolate bars and crisps for breakfast and then chocolate crisps and pizza for tea I have kids who come home to fruit if they are hungry and then a cooked dinner and pudding.
I am no better than she is but our experiences over the last ten years have been so different. One of my kids has special needs which are worsened by additives etc so I got used to saying no and meaning it. She on the other hand experienced and enjoyed the cosy sense of letting her kids have the things we weren't allowed and as the years went by any sense of proportion just seems to have got lost.
Sorry to be long winded but i am just trying to say that I don't think parents ever set out to do harm - on the contrary they just start wuith the chocolate button treats , enjoy the happy kid staring back at them and by the time the refusal to eat anything but crap sets in they are trapped and ...well buggered really

Also obesity often runs in families. The cases being noted won't be a situation of spoiled children and parents not saying no. It's more likely to be obese parents and obese children. And people do say the daftest things. There was a similar survey recently and someone was quoted as saying that parents use quick sweet treats rather than interacting with their children. And pointed out that it's better to take your child ice skating than buy them a bar of chocolate. Well, of course it is but there is a huge difference in cost between those two things.

They were discussing this on Today on R4 this morning. There was an 'expert' of some kind (didn't catch her name) who said that primary school children should be skinny - ie you should be able to count their ribs. Which seems a bit sweeping somehow. We aren't all the same. But if that is 'normal' there are quite a few overweight kids out there

btw I don't think poverty is the main issue when it comes to weight/malnourishment. It's about education. I remember watching a program years ago about a family trying to live on benefits - they were saying that it cost so much to feed a family. Then got the frying pan out and made eggs, bacon and chips. My veggie friend was with me and starting tutting about how much cheaper it would have been to buy a bag of lentils and perhaps some cheese and make a vegetarian meal. Not sure anymore that it would be cheaper but certainly as cheap and a lot healthier. Options don't come just with more money, but with education too.

Our culture seems to be to feed kids tons of sweets though, even if as a parent you are very cautious, as soon as your child steps out of the door people try to give them sweets and treats, kids parties, old ladies, grandparents, summer fetes, school, nursery, at friends. I went to the bank the other day and an old man gave me a sweet. It's easy to lose track of the amount of sugar being taken in. As people don't know how to cook or time to cook they tend to buy cakes and biscuits and don't realise how much sugar is in them, a milky way has something like 7 teaspoons of sugar and the minimum recommendation is something like 6 teaspoons a day. More than that can reduce a childs immunity by something like 25%

some tinned baby food deserts have the equivalent sugar content to a doughnut

So pag, who would you say has the healthiest kids - you or your sister? Sorry if that puts you on the spot, I'm just interested if the different dietary regimes have led to different outcomes.

But I really don't think that it's the amount of sweets a child has that makes it fat per se rebels. We ate sweets as a child and weren't fat. I do think it's more down to the quality of the meals that children are given. A handful of sweets on top of 3 good balanced meals a day (and conditional on them being eaten) aren't going to do too much harm. A handful of sweets on top of one long graze on over-sugared and over-salted snacks and no fresh food is only going to compound the damage.

From my observation there's no doubt that in the UK we are getting fatter. I'm currently in a Third World country and I've been struck at the difference in body shapes.

Almost everyone here is much more muscular than in the UK because of the physical work many people do, inc women. 'Muffin tops' are the preserve of the wealthier classes because it indicates you can afford to eat more food and be driven round in a car instead of walking.

I also know that poverty doesn't have to equal bad diet. My mother lives on a basic pension and eats well and my sister has brought up her family on the lowest NHS wages but would never dream of buying as much as a shop-made cake, let alone a ready-meal. It can be done, the pity is that no one is showing others how to do it.

suedonim - I agree. I bring salad or home-made soup into work every day. Most of the food we eat is made from scratch TBH. I always elicit comments such as 'I couldn't be doing with that and " how do you find the time?". From people with and without kids, and all ages too.

It's reckoned that an average person will sit down for 40 years of their life. We don't walk anywhere, go to work in offices, sat at a computer and then go home and watc TV and eat cake, that we haven't made

we then pay a fortune to go on a running machine at the gym..