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Childhood obesity

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  • deputy_randolph
    deputy_randolph Posts: 940 Member
    I was an overweight child with an obese mother. Our financial situation did contribute to our weight problems. My dad worked a manual labor job (was not overweight mostly) and my mom did not work due to mental health issues. She did buy the cheapest least healthy options...I remember (as an adult) reading the ingredients on the cheese in her fridge. Oil was the #1 ingredient....no milk at all. I asked her why she bought this brand...it was the cheapest option.

    I'm not a huge proponent of gov't intervention....BUT if better health and fitness education was instituted in the schools, it might help combat childhood obesity.

    I am also an elementary school teacher. And yes, it is VERY rare to see an obese child who has "healthy" weight parents. Occasionally, you do see obese parents that have healthy weight children. Honestly, it is usually only a matter of time before those healthy weight children become obese too (the older siblings are generally overweight).

    Childhood obesity isn't exactly child abuse, b/c the parents don't want to inflict harm, are ignorant on how to manage their own weight, and even more ignorant on how to manage their child's weight.

    At this point, I think that the best society can do (and maybe only thing) is to provide the children with knowledge on how to live a healthy lifestyle and hope that those kids are able to implement those skills when they are adults to fix their own weight problems...and prevent their own children from becoming obese.

  • Fyreside
    Fyreside Posts: 444 Member
    shaumom wrote: »
    we allow farms and ranchers to grow and sell their food with all sorts of pesticide residues, coatings, sprays, and gases used on the fields and on the food. But if someone sells food that has LESS chemicals and such used on them, the farmers and ranchers have to pay the gov't money to verify they have done so, yearly, which means the food itself costs more.

    I like the spirit of your sentiment, but you have this wrong. Organic farmers pay to be certified organic so they can label their product accordingly and charge a premium price for it. They have to charge a premium price because the yeild per acre of organically grown crops is significantly lower than those grown more intensively.

    Intensive farmers have big problems of their own. Companies like Monsanto have sold them proprietary seeds that are sterile and won't actually yeild unless fertilized with Monsanto fertilizers and sprayed with Monsanto herb/pesticides. These farmers aren't big bad money grubbing meanies who spray poison on your wheaties because they want to. They are mostly small business owners struggling to survive in a very very competitive market. The poisons and fertilizers are their single biggest operating costs.

    The reality is consumers want shiny red apples and bright yellow corn. Consumers like the idea of organic produce, but they like the look of produce grown in a more conventional modern way. So thats what the big retailers buy the most of. The only thing that will change this is consumer buying patterns.

    One more thing.. Chicken nuggets are made from all the bits of a chicken nobody wants to eat.. I mean ALL the bits lol. Thats's why they are cheaper.

    Everything else you said I agree with :)
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
    I don't think it's so easy to point blame at any one factor.

    I was an obese child starting from around age 8 or 9, and pretty much everything that people blame wasn't true in my case:

    * Neither of my parents was obese. My dad had been overweight as a child but was a tall and thin adult, my mom was on the higher end of a normal body weight but had nowhere near the issues I had with weight. Both of my grandfathers had been obese at some point in their lives (one as a younger man, one as an older man) but they certainly didn't play significant roles in my food intake.
    * Neither of my parents had an unhealthy attitude towards their own weight or diet. Mom would occasionally want to lose 10 pounds or so, but it certainly wasn't obsessive. Dad was a bit of a health food nut, but nothing too crazy.
    * We weren't poor, and we were permitted little junk food. Almost all the food I had was homemade from scratch, using whole and nutritious ingredients. Dad is big on gardening and so we had tons of fresh vegetables. Mom would sometimes bake desserts but that was an occasional thing, not a regular occurrence.
    * My parents really encouraged exercise; I was often shoved outside and told not to come home until dinner. I did eventually have video games and the like, but I wasn't allowed much time on them, particularly when sharing a single TV with my parents and brothers.

    For me, maintaining a healthy weight is a lifelong challenge; it's not enough to know about diet and nutrition, I have to plan my meals and stick to those plans or I'll regain pretty quickly.
  • robertapaquim78
    robertapaquim78 Posts: 1 Member
    Here, in Brazil, we had a huge increase of obesity, especially in childs. Children don´t do exercise and spend all day long playing games on internet or tablets..
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
    tomteboda wrote: »
    sky_northern wrote: »
    "11 OCTOBER 2017 | LONDON - The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London and WHO."

    http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/increase-childhood-obesity/en/

    I, for one, am VERY happy to live in a world where more children are obese than are underweight. This is a VERY good thing. We live in a world where more children have too much than too little.

    Obesity caries a lot of disease risks with it.
  • tomteboda
    tomteboda Posts: 2,171 Member
    Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
    tomteboda wrote: »
    sky_northern wrote: »
    "11 OCTOBER 2017 | LONDON - The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London and WHO."

    http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/increase-childhood-obesity/en/

    I, for one, am VERY happy to live in a world where more children are obese than are underweight. This is a VERY good thing. We live in a world where more children have too much than too little.

    Obesity caries a lot of disease risks with it.

    Compared to mass starvation?
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
    tomteboda wrote: »
    Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
    tomteboda wrote: »
    sky_northern wrote: »
    "11 OCTOBER 2017 | LONDON - The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London and WHO."

    http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/increase-childhood-obesity/en/

    I, for one, am VERY happy to live in a world where more children are obese than are underweight. This is a VERY good thing. We live in a world where more children have too much than too little.

    Obesity caries a lot of disease risks with it.

    Compared to mass starvation?

    Mass starvation is quite different than children being underweight.
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
    jdlobb wrote: »
    I would rather live in a society where children are over fed than starve. That's a given.

    But we're beyond that.

    I would rather live in a society that takes care of it's children and feeds them the proper amounts of food with real nutritional value.

    We're well past the point where we should use obesity as a sign of affluence and prosperity. More often than not, in the developed world, obesity is an indicator of poverty more often than of wealth.

    Exactly! Saying obese children is a good thing because at least they are't starving is ignoring most of the developed world. Both obesity and starvation are unhealthy. Healthy is better.
  • lucerorojo
    lucerorojo Posts: 790 Member
    robertapaquim78 wrote: »
    Here, in Brazil, we had a huge increase of obesity, especially in childs. Children don´t do exercise and spend all day long playing games on internet or tablets..

    Also the change in diet. In some parts of Brazil, since there was an increase in income, some poor and lower middle class people started to buy more processed foods as it was seen as "status" to eat cookies and junk food as opposed to rice and beans, fruit and vegetables. There is a good documentary about childhood obesity in Brazil. I have watched it a couple of times, it's so good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UGe5GiHCT4
    (It's in Portuguese, don't know if there is one with an English translation).
  • ugofatcat
    ugofatcat Posts: 385 Member
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa9tWnNO9pQ
  • czmiles926
    czmiles926 Posts: 130 Member
    Both my parents are overweight but me and my sister were very thin/underweight during childhood. I often wonder if we should have eaten more growing up but it's hard to tell. We always had home cooked meals with lots of veg but I remember wanting seconds a lot but sometimes there wouldn't be anymore seconds.
  • Lean59man
    Lean59man Posts: 714 Member
    I remember this really fat kid in my high school who sat at my lunch table.

    He would eat tons of cafeteria french fries and pizza and things like that everyday.

    You only need to gain an extra 5 lbs. to 10lbs a year and after a few years you are very fat.

    It doesn't happen overnight when you get fat but everybody expects that the problem can be corrected overnight.


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