Are your children fat? Why are they fat?

Little CuChulainn

It just feels wrong telling my 6 month old that he can't have his bottle because he is looking chunky.

Qualitymark

Kids are fat because they no longer cycle to school and friends'. They don't cycle because there isn't a proper network of separated cycle lanes where they're not in contact with cars, like New York's http://www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014-09-03-bicycle-path-data-analysis.pdf.
If kids learned to cycle young, and cycled regularly to school, they'd quickly learn that you can do 80km in a day and take possession of your own space and your own country. They could cycle to Brittas Bay in a day! They could own the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Hills!
But kids are probably also fat because their parents are fat.

Penny Tration

Pherekydes wrote: »

My daughter tried on a debs dress today. Size 10 was too big.

My little sister is the same. Bought her debs dress yesterday in a size 10 (they had no 8s left), and is having to get it taken in in the waist and bust. Most of her friends though, are in size 14-16 dresses.

ToddyDoody

Too many burgers.

DJD

Qualitymark wrote:

Kids are fat because they no longer cycle to school and friends'. They don't cycle because there isn't a proper network of separated cycle lanes where they're not in contact with cars. If kids learned to cycle young, and cycled regularly to school, they'd quickly learn that you can do 80km in a day and take possession of your own space and your own country. They could cycle to Brittas Bay in a day! They could own the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Hills! .

Dunno if I agree with this. Cycle lanes weren't there when we were kids, cycling on the footpath was also a no-no back then too. We shared the roads with all other traffic. I think something has changed in peoples perceptions of danger and in their willingness to let their own kids take risks. (It isn't easy, I find it very difficult to let my 5 year old head off on her scooter more than 20 foot away from me. Haven't even got to the stage of letting her off on her own)

RandomName2

conorh91 wrote: »

When you cannot turn to reason, turn sarcastically instead to straw men.

Sarcastic. Sure. Straw man. What straw man? That the idea of citizen action, public shaming and the ideal model of citizenship have certain connotations?

conorh91 wrote: »

Nobody suggested anything racist; nobody suggested that totalitarianism is a solution.

Who said anything racist? But totalitarianism is indeed the obvious solution to the conundrum that you describe.

conorh91 wrote: »

This is an issue of public health: child public health, in particular. One in Four children in this country are too fat for their age.

It seems you are indicating a crisis where there is not one. Too fat does not equal obese. What percentage of these 25% are obese? It means that 25% are above an ideal weight. Presumably there are some (albeit less) who are below an ideal weight. Conflating an issue into a crisis for the purpose of a moralistic crusade? Hm.

conorh91 wrote: »

The responsibility for this health crisis lies with parents.
The solution to this health crisis is better parenting.

There is nothing racist or totalitarian about that. It is inexcusable for parents to expose their children to serious health problems and diminished quality of life through obesity.

And here is the inherent contradiction in your jeremiad. You on one hand say that the responsibility is that of parents, but you simultaneously say that it belongs to the public. Hell, why else would you otherwise attempt to expose such parents?

Bring them into a public place and cut off their hair.

Why "racist"? Now there's a straw man. Racism was always second to the proletarian nation among fascist groups.

Qualitymark

DJD wrote: »

Dunno if I agree with this. Cycle lanes weren't there when we were kids, cycling on the footpath was also a no-no back then too. We shared the roads with all other traffic. I think something has changed in peoples perceptions of danger and in their willingness to let their own kids take risks. (It isn't easy, I find it very difficult to let my 5 year old head off on her scooter more than 20 foot away from me. Haven't even got to the stage of letting her off on her own)

Driving has changed, though. People drive faster, and more people can afford to drive, many drivers are stressed, some are stupid - look at the use of indicators; and some are hostile to anyone on a bike, adult or child.
When we were kids (me, certainly), most drivers were either professionals or a certain age. Someone having a car at the age of 21 or even 17 was almost unknown.

strelok

Qualitymark wrote: »

Driving has changed, though. People drive faster, and more people can afford to drive, many drivers are stressed, some are stupid - look at the use of indicators; and some are hostile to anyone on a bike, adult or child.
When we were kids (me, certainly), most drivers were either professionals or a certain age. Someone having a car at the age of 21 or even 17 was almost unknown.

was born in 83 and i remember quite clearly up until the 90's at some point, i was able to play football, hockey or even just rollerskate around the main road of my little village/town at any hour of the day as there was just so little traffic on the road. they had to install traffic lights in the town shortly after the new millenium, the traffic just exploded in no time at all

Qualitymark

strelok wrote: »

was born in 83 and i remember quite clearly up until the 90's at some point, i was able to play football, hockey or even just rollerskate around the main road of my little village/town at any hour of the day as there was just so little traffic on the road. they had to install traffic lights in the town shortly after the new millenium, the traffic just exploded in no time at all

And it's lunacy. We're coming rapidly to the end of the world's oil reserves

http://www.worldometers.info

and we're using a fuel that's estimated to run out in under 40 years to drag us around in one-person vehicles for short journeys. Insanity! Without oil, there'll be no plastic, no electrical wiring (unless we go back to covering the cables with cloth), no computers, no phones, no cars…

But getting back to fat kids - we're bringing up a generation of passive people who sit on couches playing computer games. What do we expect.

DJD

strelok wrote:

was born in 83 and i remember quite clearly up until the 90's at some point, i was able to play football, hockey or even just rollerskate around the main road of my little village/town at any hour of the day as there was just so little traffic on the road. they had to install traffic lights in the town shortly after the new millenium, the traffic just exploded in no time at all

Qualitymark wrote:

Driving has changed, though. People drive faster, and more people can afford to drive, many drivers are stressed, some are stupid - look at the use of indicators; and some are hostile to anyone on a bike, adult or child. When we were kids (me, certainly), most drivers were either professionals or a certain age. Someone having a car at the age of 21 or even 17 was almost unknown.

Agree with both points here, but...
Just on my own experience of cycling to school in the late 80s early 90s, in a school of ~1000 kids. During that time I remember an increase in traffic too. At that point maybe 50% of the school cycled. Very few would have got lifts in. Sometime after I left they put in cycle lanes along the road towards the school and yet about 10 years ago, so few kids cycled, they closed the bike shed permanently and put in a one way system in the car park to cope with all the parents dropping kids off.

Tar.Aldarion

Most people are overweight these days with the trend getting worse and worse, this shifts perception of what a healthy weight is. Most people that think their children are not overweight, they actually are (study I saw said 95% of parents) http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/chi.2014.0104
78% of people thought their obese child wasn't overweight. If everybody is overweight, you think everybody is normal, it's just natural. People have started bringing their children to doctors saying they won't eat and they are wasting away, just because they are not overweight.


It's all pretty much diet, about 5% of people I know eat healthily, majority don't exercise either but the diet is the main thing for weight.
You can't out train your diet.

"childhood overweight and obesity have been shown to predict adult weight status and the health problems associated with excess weight in adulthood."

Fukuyama

Qualitymark wrote: »

But getting back to fat kids - we're bringing up a generation of passive people who sit on couches playing computer games. What do we expect.

That's quite dismissive of kids today.

There's no school at the minute and my area (Dublin estate) is overrun with kids playing football and hanging around. Plenty of em on bikes too.

I think people remember their childhood with rose tinted glasses as though they were some kind of olympian, never sitting still.

I was a kind in the 90's, early 2000s. And a teenager in the late 2000s. I did a lot of exercise like football and cycling. I remember matches that literally went on for 8 or 9 hours. And on slow days just heads and vollies to keep busy.

However, there were plenty of times we just sat around playing Xbox, going the chipper or lying on the grass in a park.

I'm not knocking your point entirely. Kids are growing up with Facebook, Netflix and YouTube that offer a never ending stream of entertainment that kids of even 7/8 years ago wouldn't have had. So responsibility lies with the parents to get them active just as much as it lies with the parents to teach them about healthy food. One of the best ways is to lead by example but upon surveying the average Irish person in their 30s/40s it's painfully obvious that they're as guilty as their kids.

QuinDixie

fatties are increasing in numbers due to the huge drop in food prices in the last 2 decades, the explosion of tv channels and computer games and failure of government to put a extra tax on sugar and fast food.
Parents should also take some of the blame, not preparing healthy meals is pure laziness.

Fukuyama

strelok wrote: »

was born in 83 and i remember quite clearly up until the 90's at some point, i was able to play football, hockey or even just rollerskate around the main road of my little village/town at any hour of the day as there was just so little traffic on the road. they had to install traffic lights in the town shortly after the new millenium, the traffic just exploded in no time at all

Most definitely. Recently came across a picture of my road taken in the mid-90s. A few cars parked around sure but nothing like today. Everyone has a driveway and more often than not it has space to hold 2 cars. Some houses around here even have 3/4 cars.

Ireland's road network has improved considerably. Anyone who thinks playing football is as easy as throwing two jumpers on the ground is having a laugh. The young lads on my road can barely keep a match going with all the cars driving past. I can understand if they get frustrated and just opt for FIFA multiplayer instead.

I'd like to say that it'd be enough to just create more playable green areas but sadly, they just get overrun with junkies, skangers, broken glass and knacker drinking.

Maybe we need more organized sports and extra cirricular activities like American Highschool where NOT participating looks bad on college applications.

Wibbs

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

If everybody is overweight, you think everybody is normal, it's just natural.

I've definitely noticed that trend alright. What we perceive as "fat" is a lot larger than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. The "fat bloke" in my year at school was a good bit away from fat by today's standards and he was the Fat Kid(™). The only one. The other thing I noticed down the years is "middle aged spread" seems to be hitting people earlier than it did. I don't mean obesity as such, just more men and women thickening up in the gut fifteen, twenty years before they should kinda thing*. More car use, more sedentary careers?

On the food front, yes we went overboard on the "fat is bad" while adding more sugar, but thinking back to my childhood in the 70's we damn near ran on sugar and now banned chemicals.:D However one thing was different, about the only carbs we got in "proper meals" were spuds and bread and portions were smaller. There were no macdonalds and few enough takeaways and they generally weren't regular visits. We saw little enough pasta and the like, "Chinese"(takeaway shíte) food was very rare too. Meat and two veg were the staples. No soya or any of that shíte to be seen.





*I read an interesting study into the stats on women's sizes by age and country(European). Basically it found that at 50 the size of an average say Italian or Spanish woman was the same size as the average British or Irish woman at 50, but at 20, 25, 30 the Latins were most certainly less fat. Then again currently the fattest children in the EU are Spanish.

316

The internet has a lot to answer for this.

strelok

Wibbs wrote: »

On the food front, yes we went overboard on the "fat is bad" while adding more sugar, but thinking back to my childhood in the 70's we damn near ran on sugar and now banned chemicals.:D However one thing was different, about the only carbs we got in "proper meals" were spuds and bread and portions were smaller. There were no macdonalds and few enough takeaways and they generally weren't regular visits. We saw little enough pasta and the like, "Chinese"(takeaway shíte) food was very rare too. Meat and two veg were the staples. No soya or any of that shíte to be seen.




.

remember those little jelly wrestler figures you used to be able to get? full of e numbers. e numbers made everything better

mikom

My kid is better than yours.

Half this thread.

Qualitymark

I don't know that it's true that we've discarded fat. Look at fast food. I was on a train the other day and opposite me was sitting a handsome man buried inside the mountain of fat that was his obese figure and head. He'd brought a snack onto the train - some kind of fried chicken pieces and chips, and a milkshake.
But mainly I'd blame the fact that we use the fast-disappearing supplies of fossil fuel to haul our immense bottoms from couch to another.

mariaalice

mikom wrote: »

My kid is better than yours.

Half this thread.

It one of the reason for having children and its a sort of madness that take over otherwise sensible people, it starts with ..my children wont be getting sweets except five chocolate buttons every forth Friday, plus they will be given books, all media will be strictly rationed they will study and do well academically and so on followed by the opportunity to judge other parents...she is getting them dinner out of the chipper gasp.. we never give our children chips ( its usually she and never he when give out but its always 'we' when talking about how well your dong as a parent )

Cold War Kid

Fukuyama wrote: »

That's quite dismissive of kids today.

There's no school at the minute and my area (Dublin estate) is overrun with kids playing football and hanging around. Plenty of em on bikes too.

I think people remember their childhood with rose tinted glasses as though they were some kind of olympian, never sitting still.

I was a kind in the 90's, early 2000s. And a teenager in the late 2000s. I did a lot of exercise like football and cycling. I remember matches that literally went on for 8 or 9 hours. And on slow days just heads and vollies to keep busy.

And that's only a few years ago - you can be sure people would have been saying you and your peers, when you were teens, never bothered going out playing, and were spoilt, and just sat on the couch all day, etc.

It's been said about all generations since TV became the standard in every home and video-games became available, so that's about 40 years of it being said.

Young kids always playing outside where I live too.

I don't think the physical activity thing is a factor - well not much of one anyway; there is probably a bit of a decrease in it - there's bound to be. But the weight gain is virtually all down to food I think. There's no question about it that it's the norm to eat far, far more today than 20 years ago.

Qualitymark

It would be interesting to have a poll: a) what weight are you; b) what weight are your kids. When I see fat kids they're usually with fat parents. Not always, but usually.

syklops

fleet_admiral wrote: »

Oh I know that, he eats very well but we allow him one treat a week, he is a fecker for baby stem broccoli and pink lady apples. he is just coming up on 3 so I intend to get him involved with the cooking very soon

Hang on a second, he is coming up on 3 and gets a McDonalds once a week? :eek:

strelok

nothing wrong with that, provided the rest of his weeks eating is reasoanble

mcdonalds isn't bad food by and large, it's just quite calorific so it's not something the average person wants to be eating every day or even several times a week

beks101

I think historically and traditionally, good parenting is about keeping your child well fed, fit and healthy and anything weight-wise that deviated from the norm would set off parental alarm bells.

These days, the default is to be overweight. Definitely for Irish adults and it's increasingly common among kids too. It varies - dare I say it - among different classes and backgrounds, but take a stroll through any city or town centre and your average person is a good few notches above a healthy BMI. Factor in age and slowing metabolisms and middle aged spread and it just gets worse over time.

Working off that sort of a template, it's no wonder parents don't worry if their kids are looking a bit more "cherubic" than is probably healthy. It looks normal to them: it looks healthy. It's "puppy fat", they'll "grow out of it".

I went through various 'chubby' stages myself as a teenager, nothing major, a few pounds here and there, but nothing that ever was met with any negative or critical comments. Losing weight though, was always met with criticism.

Even now. BMI-wise I'm smack in the middle of things, 5 feet nothing with a healthy dose of curves, but frequently in conversation it's "you wouldn't get it though you're skinny". "Eat a sandwich!" "I bet you're one of those people who never eats." This is comical. I'm nowhere near underweight. But in certain circles, I'm the slimmest. Whereas at the same weight in other countries, I'd be the most 'cherubic."

It's strange. And unsettling. I know the BMI thing is the long contested debate, but when it gets to the stage that people's perceptions of what is healthy and what is not has been flung so far out the window by what they see around them, I think these yardsticks are essential. If you have a BMI over 28 or 29, unless you're some sort of professional rugby player, no two ways about it - you are overweight.

syklops

strelok wrote: »

nothing wrong with that, provided the rest of his weeks eating is reasoanble

mcdonalds isn't bad food by and large, it's just quite calorific so it's not something the average person wants to be eating every day or even several times a week

He's "coming up on 3" and is "quite active". When I read the first post I assumed he was 8 and was playing football 3-4 times a week. How active can a three year old be? Terrorising you not withstanding.

Qualitymark

lightspeed wrote: »

A sugar tax does not work. They tried a soda tax in Denmark and reversed it after Danish business's suffered as people went to bordering countries such as Germany.

The tax was in place for over 70 years, though

Penny Tration

strelok wrote: »

nothing wrong with that, provided the rest of his weeks eating is reasoanble

mcdonalds isn't bad food by and large, it's just quite calorific so it's not something the average person wants to be eating every day or even several times a week

Having worked in a fast food place, I wouldn't worry about the calorie content of a weekly McDonalds, but I'd definitely worry about the high salt content.

Qualitymark

Jenny Thalia wrote: »

Having worked in a fast food place, I wouldn't worry about the calorie content of a weekly McDonalds, but I'd definitely worry about the high salt content.

And the fact that it's served with a "soda" (Coke or whatever) or milkshake. I like the occasional one - maybe every nine or ten months - but as a diet they're not great.

strelok

Jenny Thalia wrote: »

Having worked in a fast food place, I wouldn't worry about the calorie content of a weekly McDonalds, but I'd definitely worry about the high salt content.

sodium isn't actually that dangerous at all unless you already have hypertension, the whole salt scare thing of the last few decades was as baseless as the fat fearmongering.

i'd still be wary of it with children alright but i can't think of a good reason, im pretty sure it's just a hangover of being beaten over the head with 'salt is dangerous' all my life