Uk Obesity epidemic discuss

Heidi1987

A few people have mentioned that healthy eating etc should be covered in school. I teach in high sschool and through citizenship I teach about healthy eating, being active and the importance of a healthy heart and how to have a healthy heart. Now i cannot comment on all the school in the UK, but I just wanted to mention that most schools, like mine, will cover the basics. But i think that this shouldnt just be left to citizenship, it should also be included in food tec (i have noticed that all the things that the kids seem to make in food are unhealthy desserts...... not a great message and things that kids should be learning how to cook) and PE, to hightlight the importance of this subject, bringing in as many cross curricular links as possible

dids01

A few people have mentioned that healthy eating etc should be covered in school. I teach in high sschool and through citizenship I teach about healthy eating, being active and the importance of a healthy heart and how to have a healthy heart. Now i cannot comment on all the school in the UK, but I just wanted to mention that most schools, like mine, will cover the basics. But i think that this shouldnt just be left to citizenship, it should also be included in food tec and PE, to hightlight the importance of this subject, bringing in as many cross curricular links as possible

I teach science to secondary school children and at KS3 there is a unit on diet but more to do with waht diet should include and about btheir building blocks . My small contribution to get kids thinking healthily on this topic is to compare two different diets and explain the concequences of following each (use a good nutritional one and a poor diet full of fast food). this usually turns into a debate and is useful for the students.

Doesn't have to be PE food tech or citizenship we can all do something in what ever subject healthy eating even in maths you could price up eating at Mcd all day or making something.

Luckily my school has healthy school status so that the chef makes good choices for the kids.

Judas_Queen

A few people have mentioned that healthy eating etc should be covered in school. I teach in high sschool and through citizenship I teach about healthy eating, being active and the importance of a healthy heart and how to have a healthy heart. Now i cannot comment on all the school in the UK, but I just wanted to mention that most schools, like mine, will cover the basics. But i think that this shouldnt just be left to citizenship, it should also be included in food tec (i have noticed that all the things that the kids seem to make in food are unhealthy desserts...... not a great message and things that kids should be learning how to cook) and PE, to hightlight the importance of this subject, bringing in as many cross curricular links as possible

I loved food tec at school! But we always made healthy stuff.. which was quite annoying at the time.. i only made one cake! Haha.. I made lots of vegetable curries, bolognese type foods, but i don't ever remember using oils, butter etc. Lots of vegetables, and taught how a balanced meal would look on a plate with pie charts etc.. clever! But not now.. my little sister in law is on about making cakes, and desserts and that type of thing.. not good!

Loonymoon

I think we have to be careful with the BMI scale too. A lady at work was told her child was obese, there's nothing to him, he's fit, skinny and very active. But the nurse who told her that didn't use common sense and started saying he shouldn't eat this and that etc etc. The poor child is 7 years old and went home thinking he was fat which by far he is not and it gave him a real complex about the way he was and of course it made my colleage feel awful. Next time she took him in it turned out the nurse had read the scale wrong and infact he was in the healthy range! If she'd took one look at him and applied some sense she'd have known something wasn't right there.

Sezmo83

Making healthy options cheaper might help but I doubt it. I didn't find it any more expensive to buy healthy foods than unhealthy, if anything it worked out cheaper because I didn't have all the rubbish in my basket. Organic is another matter, I can't afford that lol. Cooking from scratch is so much more time consuming than sticking a frozen meal in the oven or microwave and I think that's a big part of the problem. A lot of people just don't have the time to do it. Or the inclination after a long day at work.

People also don't know HOW to cook. I'm one of the generation who was never taught to cook at school. I was absolutely lost when I moved out and relied on things that came with cooking instructions such as frozen chicken nuggets, frozen chips, microwave meals etc. I've graduated to cooking meals from scratch but it's taken a lot of searching the internet for instructions and recipes. I'm all for bringing in life lessons in school, things such as shopping on a budget, cooking healthy meals, changing plugs etc. Personally I think it would make much more sense to teach things like this than to teach some of the things I had to learn!

Getting people off their backsides and exercising would help but how do you do it? Again, people don't have the time or the inclination after a day at work to go out and get some exercise. And for those struggling to put food on the table joining a gym or taking up a sport isn't an option, it's too expensive. Walking is free but most people seem to hate doing it.

Sezmo83

I loved food tec at school! But we always made healthy stuff.. which was quite annoying at the time.. i only made one cake! Haha.. I made lots of vegetable curries, bolognese type foods, but i don't ever remember using oils, butter etc. Lots of vegetables, and taught how a balanced meal would look on a plate with pie charts etc.. clever! But not now.. my little sister in law is on about making cakes, and desserts and that type of thing.. not good!

You MADE things in food tech? At my school we bought a chocolate log at Christmas and decorated it. We didn't cook anything ever. And all the teacher did was threaten to throw us out of windows and accuse us of being racist so we didn't learn anything either.

ziggy67

I saw this on the breakfast news on TV this morning too...some reference was made to the fact that half the population in the UK would be classified as obese by 2030 if the government doesn't do something now..clearly this has to start with children being fed healthier diets and being encouraged to do more exercise and sport than they currently do both during and after school hours..I remember a while back when Jamie Oliver desperately tried to tackle this problem by encouraging schools to provide healthier school lunches....yet parents were shown on TV in some areas handing bags of chips from the local chip shop through the school railings at lunchtimes because their kids did not like the new food....I don't know how children can ever be expected to adopt a healthy attitude to food when their parents think it is clever to take this line of action.

climbingpanda

In school we have to be very careful about what we teach kids (or so it seems) I decided to use BMI to teach students to rearrange formula and be able to substitute values into formulae (we have to make everything practical, no chalk and talk even in maths!). As it would be insensitive to get students to work out their own BMI data was given to them on fictional people and they worked with this ... parents still complained to the school about the lesson ... unbelievable!

kyle4jem

Part of the problem is the word "obesity" itself. Once we stopped using the word "fat" we medicalised the condition and looked for causes other than our own behaviour. It's no wonder people look instantly for a medical solution such as surgery or pills without first trying to eat less and move more.

Fat is a feminist issue... or so we were told in the pre-PC 80s. :embarassed:

But Berry is right... we need to reclaim the word FAT and stop trying to make an excuse for our overeating. I affectionately call MFP "Facebook for fatties" when I talk to my real-life friends and family about it... because for me that's the best way to describe it. Of course MFP is much better than Facebook (the attraction for which I personally don't understand... but let's not go there :laugh: ) and it is most definitely a term of endearment :smooched:

I'm Kyle, I'm FAT... I want to stand up and be counted :bigsmile:

Oishii

I lived in Japan for 3 years, and I wonder if it might help to look at a country that's rich, has a lot of processed food, but actually isn't fat.

1) Kids learn about food by eating it. School dinners are compulsory while education is (up to 15), and at the schools where i worked, everyone was given a chart showing what today's protein, carbs, veg etc were, and their advantages. Cake was for dessert about once a month. My huSband, who is Japanese, looks at his plate to find the protein, complex carbs and veg. He can't stand it when my parents have scones for tea! Children who know why they are eating what they are eating are better equipped to make good choices later in life.

2) Parents expect children to make their own way to school. Where I lived, that mainly meant cycling.

3) Most kids love PE because it's the only time they don't have to think! PE is not sport (there are after school clubs for that), but focuses more on whether you can swing round a bar, make human towers, run a reasonable distance. Sports day can include piggy back fights, whole class skipping (jump rope) and other things our litigious society could never condone. It is fun though, and builds on group loyalty.

3) Snack food portions are smaller. The kids I worked with loved chocolate, etc, but I realised later, the pieces were tiny.

4) Restaurant portions are reasonable too.

I'm not suggesting that Britain can become Japan, but rather than taking tax pot-shots, maybe we should be trying to emulate somewhere where things seem to be better.

sleepy184

I have just listened to the Jeremy Vine show on listen again and I too was quite disappointed with it. It seemed to brush over the subject and much more time was spent on the next item. Although the next item was shocking, i would of liked more calls on the first item sometimes I feel they try to fit too much into the show.

Anyway, I wish I had been listening to it at the time because I would have called in. I do not normally call radio shows but some of the comments incensed me.

I have been fat for as long as I can remember. At school I was really bullied for various reasons but my weight was one of them. Once I left school, (which is something I could not wait to do) I started work and again, the bullying continued. For years, I was tormented, sometimes physically usually mentally.

I tried so hard to loose weight and I just couldnt. I did not know what to do. It along with other things sent me into a spiral of depresion but the taunts continued. I aksed for help from the management but they did not help. That made it worse. I left that place and went to another. The bullying was not as bad at the new place however, I was still "Teased" over my weight.

I was still trying to do something about it. My family are all big really and therefore, that did not help. My wife would tell me that I would die if I did not start loosing weight. It hurt. I was trying so hard and yet not seeing any results and the more people kept on at me the worse it got. I just could not do anything about it.

We had a competition at work between a couple of us to see who could loose the most weight each week. It worked for a short period but then the momentem of the others invovled dropped off and I had stopped loosing. Again, I became depressed.

I had joined a gym but was so tired from work that it was difficult for me to go. I would do my best to attend but I was still not seeing any results. I had various health problems, back, knees etc that the more I exercised, the more it hurt. I just could not see an answer.

I approached my doctors various times on the matter. They were not interested! All's they did was give me the weetabix diet and told me to take it away and do that. Needless to say, that did not work.

I was starting to find walking difficult, I would become breathless. I would have numerous pains and when I went to the drs, specalists with my knees etc they kept saying " well if you wernt overweight you would not have the problems" Again it made me feel really bad.

Earlier this year, my close friend had a heart attack. I was shocked. I went to see him in hospital and it hit me quite hard to think that he could have died. It made me think and made me more determined than ever that I was going to do something with myself.

I had discontinued my gym as it was costing me too much and I was not going that often due to time constraints etc so with what I was saving from the gym I brought a Wii fit.

I made sure that even if it was only 30mins, I would go on it as often as I could. I joined MFP in Feb and have religiously tracked my food since then. I have done my best to stick to the calories given even though at times this has been hard.
I have forced myself to exercise sometimes coming in from work late, having tea and then going for a short walk or even leaving the car at home and walking work etc or the shops etc.

At times I did not really feel like exercising but MFP spured me on. I made myself to go out and do it. Often I felt sooo much better for doing it. At times I am in a lot of pain when walking but I talk to myself and see the results I have achieved so far. I push myself through the pain and carry on. Sometimes I will give myself a rest day the next day but ensure that I only eat my cals for that day, no more.

So far I have lost 62lbs. I was 44waist trousers, I have just been out shopping a few weekends ago, and replaced all my trousers with 34 waist!!! And these are loose.

My wife no longer says when shopping for clothes that she is looking for size FAT but now says she needs to look for slim jim size.

My profile says "The journey has started" It has, but it is no where near complete. To contine I have to work at it. I do not want to loose much more weight now even though the doctor says I should loose around another stone and half. I am now working towards toning etc.

Sorry for such a long post, but I have heard so many people say, I dont have time, I cant afford, I havnt got this, or I havnt got that etc. We can constantly make excuses for ourselves or we can draw the line and say Right this is it. I mean it and I will do it!

It is by no means easy and if you are still reading this, I'm sure you will agree it has been far from easy for me. It brought a tear to my eye typing some of this stuff going over the history of my life and the pain that was there but I thought it might just spur someone on who is in the same situation. I think the most important point is not to expect to much too quick. Do it gradual.

I am no expert and I am still learning every day. I have some great friends here on MFP (You know who you are!) and I really apprciate the support and motivation they have given me. I have not found many people like that in my life. I am really grateful to the owners of MFP for providing this site and above all it is free. It is the only thing that has worked for me as you can see.

Feel free to add me as a friend as I do my best to offer support on the diaries etc and I value the feedback I get. Together we can crack it. Hold on in there.

Thanks for reading.