Is your child a "fat bastard"*

The Cunning Linguist wrote: »

A 50" waist in primary school?!?

That child sits next to everyone in the class.

Shouldn't laugh but....

miss no stars wrote: »

Sorry, but the report was actually about 40" waists in primary school uniforms.

I know

And I was saying I just don't really see any kids that size in my kids primary school.

I wonder how many of us have noticed anecdotal evidence of children who are under-weight?

They're usually a bit harder to spot, but I would say it was a far more prevalent issue than the amount of overweight children.

miss no stars wrote: »

Kids' BMI ranges are different than those of adults. A 12 year old boy very well can be perfectly healthy with a BMI of 15.

Have a look at the bands for kids:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/images/growthchart_example1.gif

I understand that, and that's why I wondered about anecdotal evidence of underfed children. BMI measures as a percentile of the population, so it's not much good for anecdotal evidence. I've never seen a primary school child with a forty inch waist, never mind a secondary school child with a fifty inch waist, and I've lived in both the country and the city, and visited all manner of schools from DEIS schools to private schools, so I'm left wondering, where are all the fat kids that we seem to talk about every so often in newspaper articles and radio and tv shows?

Or is it just scaremongering?

Czarcasm wrote: »

I understand that, and that's why I wondered about anecdotal evidence of underfed children. BMI measures as a percentile of the population, so it's not much good for anecdotal evidence. I've never seen a primary school child with a forty inch waist, never mind a secondary school child with a fifty inch waist, and I've lived in both the country and the city, and visited all manner of schools from DEIS schools to private schools, so I'm left wondering, where are all the fat kids that we seem to talk about every so often in newspaper articles and radio and tv shows?

Or is it just scaremongering?

Underfed children are actually in the news at the moment Teachers bringing them in food.

It's not just scaremongering, I've seen some of these kids - some bigger tbh. The thing is, they tend to have siblings, so your chances of seeing them are probably 50% lower than the initial number would suggest.

ETA: it's probably worth mentioning that inadequate nutrition in childhood can cause stunted growth, rather than being extremely skinny.

PucaMama wrote: »

but at 6 10 he must have been a big tall man. surely he could have naturally been big

28st at 6'10" gives a BMI of over 40, which is still obese. Green_screen has already said that 4 of those stones were piled on while she was with him due to coke and takeaways, and that he was constantly out of breath etc.

A relative of mine has had a lifelong weight problem and is still referred to in a semi-congratulatory way as a big man with a big build - sure that's why he needs a second dinner at 9pm every night and puts away a litre of coke and a 6 pack of crisps in a single sitting.

TomoBhoy wrote: »

I don't see that many fat kids, seriously

That's because they are at home eating.

PucaMama wrote: »

but at 6 10 he must have been a big tall man. surely he could have naturally been big

He was tall, yeah, he wasn't naturally fat. He used to be a fairly lean rugby player, then gave that up in college and just lived off of junk food. Last I heard, he's down to 18 stone, though

_Redzer_ wrote: »

Doubtful considering a huge % of kids are overweight and obese.

I think it's more to do with the fact that many parents don't know what a healthy weight looks like for a child. I've seen overweight children being thought of as having a healthy weight, and normal, thinner children being thought of as skin and bone.
I think this is a problem right throughout many peoples lives when I've seen lads claiming 5'10 and 15 stone is average. Eh, no, no it's not, you're very overweight.

My cousins were thought of as being skin and bone by some parents -who shockingly had chubby kids themselves. My cousins ate like horses and never stopped racing around the place, so they were actually the healthy ones.

I think that's about the most sensible and measured point I've read in this thread so far. Many adults not only don't know what child development is, and what's nutritious for a child, as opposed to just shoving any old crap in front of the child. They go from eating processed gloop from a jar to eating processed gloop from a box. The parents only concern in that case seems to be "anything to keep the child quiet".

I think the food dudes programmes they run in schools are great, but they're not keeping up the momentum, and they're only tackling the more immediate aspect of the issue, whereas I actually think a multidisciplinary approach is what's needed, to address education around child development as a whole, everyone's attitude to nutrition and child development, and not just targeting the fat kids and accusing their parents of child abuse (I'd sooner say it was child neglect than abuse, as the connotations are obvious, and that's unlikely to have any positive effect on the issue).

Education is what's needed, not shaming people, because shaming people will have the opposite effect to the intended effect.

miss no stars wrote: »

Underfed children are actually in the news at the moment Teachers bringing them in food.

It's not just scaremongering, I've seen some of these kids - some bigger tbh. The thing is, they tend to have siblings, so your chances of seeing them are probably 50% lower than the initial number would suggest.

Well just the reason I mentioned it, or why reading this thread reminded me of it in the first place, is that from talking to children of all ages, even more so now in primary school than secondary school (as in it's rising at a faster rate among primary school children now than secondary school), children are being influenced by what they see, hear and read in the media, and more and more you can see how they are being influenced in terms of their thinking about body image by what they see in the media. I've talked to children who say they hate themselves for the way they look. These are young children, there's no way they should be coming out with stuff like that. But they are, and a lot of it has nothing to do with parental child neglect, but peer pressure from other children.

I think if we are to tackle the issue, we should actually get serious about it rather than just paying lip service to the idea, because these children who don't know what a normal healthy body weight is, are the same children that will be shaming other people in society who are different from them a few generations from now, and will have no qualms about it either as it's what they've grown up with.

Czarcasm wrote: »

Well just the reason I mentioned it, or why reading this thread reminded me of it in the first place, is that from talking to children of all ages, even more so now in primary school than secondary school (as in it's rising at a faster rate among primary school children now than secondary school), children are being influenced by what they see, hear and read in the media, and more and more you can see how they are being influenced in terms of their thinking about body image by what they see in the media. I've talked to children who say they hate themselves for the way they look. These are young children, there's no way they should be coming out with stuff like that. But they are, and a lot of it has nothing to do with parental child neglect, but peer pressure from other children.

I think if we are to tackle the issue, we should actually get serious about it rather than just paying lip service to the idea, because these children who don't know what a normal healthy body weight is, are the same children that will be shaming other people in society who are different from them a few generations from now, and will have no qualms about it either as it's what they've grown up with.

Yeah, let's get serious about it. While it's sad that kids are worried about how they look, maybe that's because we're not being specific enough as a society. Maybe we need to say to parents: "Your child is overweight. You need to get them to a healthy weight. We have X programme, if their BMI does not go down, you will be facing child neglect charges." Instead we're saying "kids are getting so fat, here kid, have a magazine full of airbrushed unusually thin teenagers posing as adults". Oh and, I don't think shaming kids is right, but if shaming their parents is what it takes then by all means go ahead.

Imagine a 10 year old boy with a BMI of 22 - he's obese, around the 95th percentile. To be equivalently underweight (i.e. in the 5th percentile of weight), he'd need to have a BMI of 13. If your average 10 year old is, say, 135cm, to be obese their weight needs to be 40kg. To be that height and underweight, their weight would need to be 24kg. To be an average weight for their height (healthy average), that would mean a BMI of 16.5 and a weight of 30kg.

So we're talking about kids who weigh 1/3 more than they should. If a kid weighed 1/3 less than they should we'd be extremely concerned. The fact that 1 in 4 ten year olds weighs 17% more than they should (overweight) is absolutely something we should take seriously.

miss no stars wrote: »

Yeah, let's get serious about it. While it's sad that kids are worried about how they look, maybe that's because we're not being specific enough as a society. Maybe we need to say to parents: "Your child is overweight. You need to get them to a healthy weight. We have X programme, if their BMI does not go down, you will be facing child neglect charges." Instead we're saying "kids are getting so fat, here kid, have a magazine full of airbrushed unusually thin teenagers posing as adults". Oh and, I don't think shaming kids is right, but if shaming their parents is what it takes then by all means go ahead.

Shaming parents doesn't work though, that's my point. It's never been shown to work in the past, and it won't be shown to work in the future. Education on the other hand...

Imagine a 10 year old boy with a BMI of 22 - he's obese, around the 95th percentile. To be equivalently underweight (i.e. in the 5th percentile of weight), he'd need to have a BMI of 13. If your average 10 year old is, say, 135cm, to be obese their weight needs to be 40kg. To be that height and underweight, their weight would need to be 24kg. To be an average weight for their height (healthy average), that would mean a BMI of 16.5 and a weight of 30kg.

So we're talking about kids who weigh 1/3 more than they should. If a kid weighed 1/3 less than they should we'd be extremely concerned. The fact that 1 in 4 ten year olds weighs 17% more than they should (overweight) is absolutely something we should take seriously.

You're talking there about a prepubescent child. A lot can happen in puberty, not the least of which are growth increases in height, so I wouldn't be overly concerned with your statistics as you're putting them forward there. I'd be more concerned about the perception that interpretation of those statistics may cause though.

That's f*cking gorss. Parents should be slapped f*cking silly.

YFlyer wrote: »

What would a typical childs body fat content be? I'm 13% body fat and was told that I'm a fat bastard

If you were genuinely 13% then there is no way you would be called that. You may be underestimating your BF, a lot of the methods are incredibly inaccurate.

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I couldn't believe it when I heard 50" earlier on the radio.

A 50" waist on a fully grown man would be extremely obese. I can't even begin to fathom what a child with a 50" waist would look like.

A 50" waist child would be an anomaly. Never happened.

miss no stars wrote: »

It's a 50" waist on secondary school trousers. As in, on a person who is physically a fully grown adult.

You would still need to be very obese to have that measurement. So, you might have a small handful of teens with that measurement. But holding them up as a common example is sensationalist.

miss no stars wrote: »

They aren't being held up as a common example. I think it's more the fact that manufacturers are actually making these to keep in stock that is causing people to be aware that they are becoming more common. No teenager should have a 50" waist. No 12 year old should have a 40" waist. That those sizes are stocked is a disgrace.

I'd say very few do. There will always be outliers. They probably stock, like, 5 in each of those waists. Or less even.

We need to strike more of a balance between 'security' and 'complete paranoia' when it comes to child safety though as it's resulting in too much of this dropping kids directly into the classroom in an armoured 4x4 type scenarios.

Back in my day you walked and got the bus to school. The ordinary public bus, which didn't even have CCTV and not a single person in my class was abducted amazingly enough.

The other issue is that school bags these days are absolutely insanely heavy. WTF have publishers been selling teachers? They seem to be all carrying around about their own weight in books.

Schools need to provide lockers / book storage facilities and books should be more modular i.e. maybe split in 4 or into chapters that can be stored in folders. More of it could be made digital too.

These huge heavy bags are also resulting in more kids being dropped at the door of the school as they physically can't carry the bags.

Bigus wrote: »

I honestly think calling Junk and sugar foods TREATS, is part of the problem.

Nice Poisons would be more appropriate .

You hear this from nutritionist and doctors too " treats are ok now and again" this is glamourising rubbish and trash which are fundamentally the problem.

They are okay now and then, though, that's part of healthy eating. A little of what you like and NOTHING in excess. Letting a kid pick out a bar and bag of crisps once at the weekend is not excessive, it's not a fundamental problem. It's actually teaching them self control around indulgent items. It's a treat, something to be had as a rarity. The same way sharing a bottle of wine over dinner is a treat, not something to be had with every meal. It's quite healthy to teach kids that there are nice things in the world like that, that you can eat them now and then, but - now and then is the limit. You have to live a little.