Opinions on childhood obesity...

LonLB

It makes me FURIOUS.

Children are that way because of neglect on the parents' part.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bobby_Clerici

I made the mistake of going to Winco (grocery superstore) on a Sunday afternoon, which meant it was packed. While waiting in line, here is what I noticed: cart after cart full of processed food. Stouffer's Lasagna, Hamburger Helper, Swanson TV Dinners, Totino's Pizzas, Kraft Easy Mac, Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli, and that's not to mention the amount of soda, white bread, chips, hot dogs, treats, etc. Here's what I didn't see (and I looked because I had quite a bit of time while waiting in line): fruit, vegetables, fresh lean meats. It really made me wonder how often most households cook. I wouldn't begin to assume that what I saw on that one day is representative of all of society, but we've gotten fat off of processed foods. I heard one poster say, "If man made it, don't eat it" and I have to say that there's a lot of truth to that. The foods I saw (poisons more like) that were prevalent in shopping cart after shopping cart have been the creation of corporations looking to get rich- and they have. They've made their money off of our laziness and ignorance/denial about proper nutrition.

The sad thing is that the people in the grocery store that day were at least choosing to buy food at the grocery store instead of going to McDonald's. It's a lateral move at best, but it's something. Poor eating choices are everywhere. That's all convenience stores sell. Even regular sit down restaurants are guilty of serving oversized portions (e.g. Claim Jumper) or unhealthy "unlimited" sides (e.g Red Lobster, Olive Garden). The point is, choosing to eat healthily is sadly more time consuming and often more expensive. And an apple for $1 is less filling than a cheeseburger for $1, no matter how much healthier it is.

I think with as busy as people are they tend to take the path of least resistance. It's lazy. It's cheap. It's unhealthy. Do people know better? I think so. But obviously it's not enough to break the cycle.

But while I agree that parents need to be responsible for what they are feeding their children, I think this is something we need to tackle as a society. Our meats and dairies have hormones and antibiotics. Our fruits and vegetables have pesticides and fertilizers and are genetically modified. And everything else is sweetened with HFCS or aspartame. And we ingest this poison day after day. And we let our kids ingest it, which is even worse. The madness has to stop somewhere. Has to.

The easy target is the parents of obese children. It is. Especially if those parents are also obese. But while we're pointing fingers around us, corporations are making billions of dollars off of us, and laughing.

Funny how none of the evil corporate influence seemed to have affected any of my 5 kids.
What a coincidence.
Or maybe it's that we decided how to raise ours to be healthy and fit.:noway:
No, can't blame the food companies.
Parents are still in charge and fully responsible.
Why is this so hard? Are we just all victims?
This lack of self-empowerment is part of the problem.

bm99

I made the mistake of going to Winco (grocery superstore) on a Sunday afternoon, which meant it was packed. While waiting in line, here is what I noticed: cart after cart full of processed food. Stouffer's Lasagna, Hamburger Helper, Swanson TV Dinners, Totino's Pizzas, Kraft Easy Mac, Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli, and that's not to mention the amount of soda, white bread, chips, hot dogs, treats, etc. Here's what I didn't see (and I looked because I had quite a bit of time while waiting in line): fruit, vegetables, fresh lean meats. It really made me wonder how often most households cook. I wouldn't begin to assume that what I saw on that one day is representative of all of society, but we've gotten fat off of processed foods. I heard one poster say, "If man made it, don't eat it" and I have to say that there's a lot of truth to that. The foods I saw (poisons more like) that were prevalent in shopping cart after shopping cart have been the creation of corporations looking to get rich- and they have. They've made their money off of our laziness and ignorance/denial about proper nutrition.

The sad thing is that the people in the grocery store that day were at least choosing to buy food at the grocery store instead of going to McDonald's. It's a lateral move at best, but it's something. Poor eating choices are everywhere. That's all convenience stores sell. Even regular sit down restaurants are guilty of serving oversized portions (e.g. Claim Jumper) or unhealthy "unlimited" sides (e.g Red Lobster, Olive Garden). The point is, choosing to eat healthily is sadly more time consuming and often more expensive. And an apple for $1 is less filling than a cheeseburger for $1, no matter how much healthier it is.

I think with as busy as people are they tend to take the path of least resistance. It's lazy. It's cheap. It's unhealthy. Do people know better? I think so. But obviously it's not enough to break the cycle.

But while I agree that parents need to be responsible for what they are feeding their children, I think this is something we need to tackle as a society. Our meats and dairies have hormones and antibiotics. Our fruits and vegetables have pesticides and fertilizers and are genetically modified. And everything else is sweetened with HFCS or aspartame. And we ingest this poison day after day. And we let our kids ingest it, which is even worse. The madness has to stop somewhere. Has to.

The easy target is the parents of obese children. It is. Especially if those parents are also obese. But while we're pointing fingers around us, corporations are making billions of dollars off of us, and laughing.

Funny how none of the evil corporate influence seemed to have effected any of my 5 kids.
What a coincidence.
Or maybe it's that we decided how to raise ours to be healthy and fit.:noway:
No, can't blame the food companies.
Parents are still in charge and fully responsible.
Why is this so hard? Are we just all victims?
This lack of self-empowerment is part of the problem.

The problem is there is no one at home to make meals from scratch or plan out great shopping trips or tend the garden. All of that work has been devalued.

amersmanders

Funny how none of the evil corporate influence seemed to have effected any of my 5 kids.
What a coincidence.
Or maybe it's that we decided how to raise ours to be healthy and fit.:noway:
No, can't blame the food companies.
Parents are still in charge and fully responsible.
Why is this so hard? Are we just all victims?
This lack of self-empowerment is part of the problem.

Well you're talking about how you've chosen to raise your children from the start. And congratulations- it's a tough job and you deserve the credit. I don't have children, nor can I- for which you should probably be grateful. But we talk about these obese children as though their fate is sealed. Immediate change is the responsibility of the parents. And if they don't have the knowledge or motivation to make changes to better themselves and their childrens' lives, then that needs to be rectified.

When you decided to make changes to your life and start losing weight that's when it happened- not until then. And I know it's hard work. But until people are convinced that it's worth the hard work, they're not ready. What I hear people saying in this forum is that because there's children involved- that the children are the ones who are really doomed to suffer, we're not willing to wait for their parents to figure it out. So that requires our own action.

stephenglover

OK,
So am I bad parent? my youngest daughter 5'4" 14 yrs old weighs 165#.
Tell me I am and I will show you I am not with a girl who can run laps,
do 2 hours of pure Cardio workouts with the best of people, she is 14
give me a break she will lose the weight. Most of the girls I remember from
school that were thin are now large and the ones built like my daughter caught
up to there bodies.

She is a second degree blackbelt and trains 3 times a week, 2 hours a day
and sevral tournamnets a year.
Doctors have not said a word about it and she goes for annual check ups
etc.

glovepuppet

if i didn't eat what i was given there was nothing else and i was sat at the table, looking at it.

i got an eating disorder. so that worked! :-)

Was the eating disorder because you didn't want to eat food, or because you had other issues (control, anxiety) to work out?

I don't see the cause-and-effect here. I'm really not trying to sound mean, but I don't know if that's a fair representation of the consequences of making your child eat green beans.

my food problems aren't a control issue. it's a fairly pavlovian thing. the stress of being pressured to eat food i disliked killed my appitete. the less i ate the more stressful mealtimes became. eventually it was more or less a phobia.

these days i maintain a healthy weight simply by eating in my bedroom. there's no pressure so i eat just fine. i've never freaked out about eating too much or eating the wrong thing, but when i'm stressed my appetite still shuts down.

i always offer my kids an alternative. beans are as healthy as peas are as healthy as carrots. rather than bully the into cabbage i'll let them off with an apple. they don't get offered chips instead but they are allowed choices.

bm99

OK,
So am I bad parent? my youngest daughter 5'4" 14 yrs old weighs 165#.
Tell me I am and I will show you I am not with a girl who can run laps,
do 2 hours of pure Cardio workouts with the best of people, she is 14
give me a break she will lose the weight. Most of the girls I remember from
school that were thin are now large and the ones built like my daughter caught
up to there bodies.

She is a second degree blackbelt and trains 3 times a week, 2 hours a day
and sevral tournamnets a year.
Doctors have not said a word about it and she goes for annual check ups
etc.

When you know better, you do better.

Chances are your daughter isn't happy with her weight. Have you talked to her about it? Does she know how to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way? She may feel helpless to do anything about it. Weight problems do not just go away on their own.

SherryTeach

As far as doctor's commenting on weight, I went from 103 to 136 in 4 years, and my doctor didn't say one word.

bm99

As far as doctor's commenting on weight, I went from 103 to 136 in 4 years, and my doctor didn't say one word.

I weighed 245 pounds and my doctor didn't say a thing at my physical.

stepherzzzzz

This is kind of off track but I was sorting through some old family photos yesterday and I came across my mother's senior class photo....from 1950!
There was not one overweight student in that photo (out 119 students)
They came from a semi rural town in Virgina
There was a Soda shoppe in that town but no fast food.
Not every household had a TV.
Most kids helped around the house/farm/neighborhood
Every kid rode a bike because if their families had a car...dad or mom usually took it to work.

I read recently that what the average American piles on their dinner plate in one sitting would have fed a family of 4 in 1950.
I wonder about all that.

You don't even need to go back that far to see a difference. When I compare my old class photos to my sister's, who is only four years younger than me, there's a huge difference in the average size of the students. There were a couple of chubby kids in my class but most of us were thin, whereas my sister's class had a few thin kids and the rest either chubby or overweight.

Grimmerick

For me, childhood obesity is a black and white subject - child abuse. The end.

The PARENTS control what the kid does, and what comes into the house, and what kind of eating habits these kids will have. If they are obese, the parents should take the full blame and, to a radical extent, I think they should be charged with child abuse.

Here's my personal reason.

My aunt is massively obese (350-400lbs). Her children have always been heavy and there is no excuse. They are now fully grow and MASSIVE. I think my one cousin is actually pushing 500lbs and it is ALL her fault. She never taught them how to eat properly, she encouraged eating unhealthy foods and unhealthy/lazy habits, and she wouldn't LET them play sports. They were 'too violent' for her.

With all of the information out there, if someone has excessively overweight kids (I'm talking 200lbs at 10 years old here), there is no excuse to be this way. None. And with all the health risks of being overweight, not to mention the emotional and mental risks, I seriously think it should be a chargeable offence.

I also think the same of dog owners who have fat dogs. You control what goes into this dogs body, so therefore, it's your fault they are fat. The end.

Like I said, my opinion on this is very black and white and it may be too extreme for some.

Perhaps once you gain a little more life experience and maturity, complex issues won't seem so "black and white" to you.

First of all to the person I am quoting great Profile pic!...........I love Eddie Izzard and that stand up show was the BEST.

and then to the person you quoted I guess you have never heard of Prader Willi syndrome, Would you charge those parents? Not so black and white is it.
Also would you charge parents when their kids aren't making good grades in school for failing to make sure they are growing to be educated and contributing members of society? or maybe we could charge the teachers and the parents

AlsDonkBoxSquat

earlier today there was a post about the cause of obesity, I'll state here what I stated there:

Please note that I understand that there are hormonal or medical reasons for obesity, my comments do not include this population as their solution is more complex and involves with getting answers for their medical issues.

I think in many cases (not all) it has to do with societal complacency. As a society we’ve become pretty lazy and are not proactive about our lifestyles as far as activity levels and food thoughtfulness or accountable for ourselves and our decisions.

Also, I think it has a lot to do with our society’s idea of more is more, or quantity over quality. We want bigger plates of food to “get more for our buck” when we can eat less and be more satiated with higher quality ingredients.

We have a lack of will power or self control, we find drinking and eating as social activities as opposed to playing sports and being active, we take our food away from the table when people tend to eat more when distracted, we blame the manufacturers of our food for our health issues instead choosing to educate ourselves and take accountability for our food decisions, we are content with eating out of a bag or box, we are too lazy to put in the time and effort and instead gravitate toward the quick fixes that aren’t a sustainable fix. A change in our obesity rates requires a societal change with people wanting to be educated and deciding to be accountable about their bodies and their lifestyles.

There is a way to be a lazy parent too. We take the time to take our son to the play ground, Little Gym, Education Museams geared toward activities, on a bike ride, whatever to keep him active like we are. You don't just teach your children to be active by being active, but also by encouraging them to be active, they learn by what they see and do. Turning on the TV is easy, turning it off and getting out the door regularly is the hard part. Just like food, offering your child baked chicken and steamed veggies and standing your ground when they don't eat it is the hard part, giving in and making them chicken nuggets and fries when they refuse to eat is the easy way out.

knackarsch

My daughter (3 1/2) is long and lean for her age, and I want to do everything I can to keep her that way. Recently she started to get really bad about demanding treats, always sweets and only at grandma/grandpa's where we lived. We had a family discussion and decided to remove all the sweets from her line of vision. Before, you couldn't open the cabinet for a bowl of cereal without hearing "I want those cookies instead!!!" and now, all she sees is the cereal. And she changes her mind and asks for an orange instead. Refusing to give in to the screaming child is HARD. It's tempting to give in, but it only makes things worse.

We recently moved in with my fiancé and his kids. He is a type 1 diabetic, and the amount of junk food is way, way less here. Her behavior with food has changed immensely in the last month. She also gets to watch someone take insulin every day (she's bug eyed and fascinated when the syringes come out), and she gets the kid-friendly talk about too much sugar being unhealthy.

Flab2fitfi

I do agree that child hood obesity is a major problem and many times it does come down to what food they are given at home.

However i do get annoyed at the whole a child will eat if hungry enough. I've sat in a dieticians office with an 18month old who will only eat certain foods and when we tried to change her diet stopped eating and became very underweight.. This child is now going for a diagnosis of autism .

My eldest son ( who also has autism) will not eat the majority of the home cooked meals I provide due to sensory issues and we know as parents that his diet is not the healthiest but we take each day as it comes and try to encourage him to make good choices. We are lucky that we are quite an active family - the car get left at home most days and my son runs for his school.

I also have friends who children are seriously overweight but have medical issues that causes this and its not down to bad parenting. Sometimes it is so easy to judge and blame the parents.

Tropical_Turtle

There are multitudes of reason behind this. I know for myself, I came from an abusive home, where I witnessed a lot of things that my folks did to each other (not me per say), but my mom used food as a comfort to me. That is how I came to think food cant hurt me, it is a comfort when things are bad. Food was my friend because it would not scream or throw things that I would have to avoid. My moms intent was not to abuse me with food, her intent was to try to comfort me and make things better for me, when in all actuality she ended up hurting me in the long run. (We had this discussion and she feels guilty for it)

Now on the other hand, my uncle and his wife, when they had their son, by the age of 3 he could name ever fast food restaurant within 3 miles of his house and his favorite meal. They only fed him fast food, and heavy greasy fried things. No wonder the kid is now 350lbs and has boobs bigger than me. I know my aunt, she only fries stuff, because she will tell you that is how her family was raised (mind you my uncle who used to be thin is now incredibly heavy due to what his wife cooks and lack of gettin off his butt). My aunt cooks like Paula Deen does, fried and butter on everything with heaps of gravy.

It is easy to point fingers from the outside, but no one always knows the true story behind what is going on. Some is sheer laziness, some is for many other reasons.

ETA: on top of my comfort eating as a child (mind you I was very athletic - swam, tennis, volleyball, hiking, golf (i loved being outdoors), I ended up with a disease called Cushings Diease, which was the final straw in weight gain. I ended up ballooning to 320lbs at my heaviest. So was that also my parents fault? No The doctors figured out I started with Cushings when I went through puberty - great thing for a teenage girl NOT! I had such a rare form of it - less than 1% of the people who end up with Cushings end up with the type I had. It took YEARS to figure out what was going on.

mtaylor33557

This is kind of off track but I was sorting through some old family photos yesterday and I came across my mother's senior class photo....from 1950!
There was not one overweight student in that photo (out 119 students)
They came from a semi rural town in Virgina
There was a Soda shoppe in that town but no fast food.
Not every household had a TV.
Most kids helped around the house/farm/neighborhood
Every kid rode a bike because if their families had a car...dad or mom usually took it to work.

I read recently that what the average American piles on their dinner plate in one sitting would have fed a family of 4 in 1950.
I wonder about all that.

This was a different America - a totally alien culture.
This was the WWII generation - not the hand-wringing, sniveling crybabies brought up by the "baby-boomers".
Much has changed, and today, taking ownership of your life and tapping into self-empowerment is not the norm.
Back then, people knew no other way to live.

What the heck caused baby boomer parents to change parenting from the way they were parented to be so much more laxed on upbringing of kids and less willing to discipline? (this probably is off topic from the childhood obesity exactly... but I know it plays a role in it.)

I was raised by a baby boomer parent... but my mom, and her two siblings were overweight growing up, and my grandparents never were by much at all until they hit their middle aged to older years. I obviously don't know exactly how my grandparents parented my parents... but my dad's parents were losers who never paid him any attention, and I know for sure he strived to parent better than what he received. But my mom's parents SEEM to have raised her the same as she and my dad raised my brother and me. Our morals, values, education... all good... but eating habits suck. Still to this day my grandmother thinks we have to have dessert with everything AND eat it first! We are from Texas, so I don't know if it's the fact of southern traditional fried foods and sweets that was part of my family's issue... but I do know the comfort eating was a big role for sure. You "cured" everything with food in my family!

I think it's a southern thing. My husband's mom and grandmother are like this. The food they cook is delicious, no doubt.. but it's terrible to eat it every day! We just got back from a long visit to their house and his grandmother was actually almost "bragging" becuase she thinks my 2 year old had "gained weight" while he was there because she was doing such a good job of feeding him. What?!

He did not, though.. he doesn't enjoy their cooking because he doesn't eat that type of food at home and its strange to him. He picked at most meals, but he ate several figs straight off the fig tree.

Bobby_Clerici

OK,
So am I bad parent? my youngest daughter 5'4" 14 yrs old weighs 165#.
Tell me I am and I will show you I am not with a girl who can run laps,
do 2 hours of pure Cardio workouts with the best of people, she is 14
give me a break she will lose the weight. Most of the girls I remember from
school that were thin are now large and the ones built like my daughter caught
up to there bodies.

She is a second degree blackbelt and trains 3 times a week, 2 hours a day
and sevral tournamnets a year.
Doctors have not said a word about it and she goes for annual check ups
etc.

Bottom line: 165 is too fat.
It's great she's active in all those things, but this thread is about who is responsible.
Parents are.
Address the issue; that's our job - not rationalization.
Good Luck.

Bobby_Clerici

When I was growing up, the information was simply not there. There's no excuse now. It's our responsibility as parents to educate our children and to guide them into a healthy lifestyle. I couldn't imagine how I would feel if one of my children became a diabetic as a teenager b/c I ignored their obesity as a youth! If you need educational resources, inbox me. I run a non profit nutrition company and our primary focus obesity education and prevention. You should really watch this video.

http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/films/main-films/Crisis. It's bad enough that McDonalds and other fast food places spend Billions in research to figure out ways to entice our children in to eating junk food.

Sometimes struggling poeple are so overcome in their own life they can't care for kids properly.
Life can be painful.
I get it.
At day's end, it matter's not.
A kid still deserves a shot at life, and that's our job as a parent.
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR ENDEAVOR!

Mymag

TL;DR

aww, i was gonna say that. you beat me to it. so yeah, i didn't read any of this because i was too lazy, so i don't know if i'm saying stuff that's already been said, or if this is completely off topic.

first of all, please, never tell your kid they're overweight. please. not only do they already know it, but they probably see themselves as 20 pounds heavier than they are, and you don't know if they might be getting teased at school for it or something.

okay, so obviously it's the parents job to keep the kids healthy when they're little. once the reach a certain age, though, (definitely by the time they're in high school) they know that eating cookies and potato chips is bad for them. so if they wanna be unhealthy, it's not really the parents' job anymore. i mean, encouraging them to be healthy is good. trying to control what they eat and forcing them to exercise is bad. believe me, i'm still 19, and i have four siblings. so maybe i don't know parenting, but i do know kids. making them do anything, even if you're right, is just going to make them resent you.

i mean, if an 8 year old is obese, it's the parents' fault. but if it's a 16 year old, they've gotta start taking some responsibility. my parents would (and still do) nag me all the time about eating my vegetables and going outside for some exercise. and the thing is, i like vegetables, but them telling me "make sure you don't forget some salad! you're gonna have some broccoli, right? YOU'D BETTER HAVE SOME CARROTS!" it's just annoying and makes me not want to. they'd also tell me i HAVE to go outside sometimes. no negotiating. so i'd walk a block to the park, sit on the swing for a half hour, and go home. basically, you can drag a horse to water, but even if you shove his face in it, you can't make him drink.

however, there are definitely ways parents can help their kids without causing so much resentment. keeping junk food out of the house is an obvious one. also, for me, 90% of the reason i'm overweight is because i eat when i'm bored. i'm one of those "there's nothing to do here. let's go see what's in the fridge." so for me, it really helps when my mom will leave out a couple of cut up apples, or some baby carrots or something. we snack on those instead of chips or whatever, and then, if it's set out a little bit before dinner, we'll have less room to stuff ourselves with mcdonalds and icecream. do help your kids to be healthy, but be SNEAKY about it. if you trick them into thinking that snacking on carrots was their idea, or at least if they know it was their own decision, they'll probably feel better about themselves, too. like "wow, look at me! i'm so healthy! i have such good eating habits!" and if they think that, they might be more likely to wanna eat better on their own. making them feel bad, scaring them, or forcing them isn't gonna help. and even if it does make them healthier physically, it won't do much for your relationship with them, which i think most people would agree is more important.

ak_in_ak

For me, childhood obesity is a black and white subject - child abuse. The end.

The PARENTS control what the kid does, and what comes into the house, and what kind of eating habits these kids will have. If they are obese, the parents should take the full blame and, to a radical extent, I think they should be charged with child abuse.

Here's my personal reason.

My aunt is massively obese (350-400lbs). Her children have always been heavy and there is no excuse. They are now fully grow and MASSIVE. I think my one cousin is actually pushing 500lbs and it is ALL her fault. She never taught them how to eat properly, she encouraged eating unhealthy foods and unhealthy/lazy habits, and she wouldn't LET them play sports. They were 'too violent' for her.

With all of the information out there, if someone has excessively overweight kids (I'm talking 200lbs at 10 years old here), there is no excuse to be this way. None. And with all the health risks of being overweight, not to mention the emotional and mental risks, I seriously think it should be a chargeable offence.

I also think the same of dog owners who have fat dogs. You control what goes into this dogs body, so therefore, it's your fault they are fat. The end.

Like I said, my opinion on this is very black and white and it may be too extreme for some.

I was an over weight child and still am. My mom was a nurse and tried everything she could to help me. I refused to play sports becasue of my weight and I would sneek food. I also have PCOS and have had it since I was 13. What I am getting at is it is not her fault! She tried very hard to help me and i was not able to lose weight until I wanted to.