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Childhood obesity
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It's called child abuse. it's not mince words. Letting your child get fat is child abuse.9
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It's called child abuse. it's not mince words. Letting your child get fat is child abuse.
I believe it is a lot more complicated than that. Certainly parents need to be involved in making sure their children are getting the proper exercise and nutrition, and in walking the walk and acting as role models. I wouldn't call it child abuse in most situations.2 -
It's called child abuse. it's not mince words. Letting your child get fat is child abuse.
I believe it is a lot more complicated than that. Certainly parents need to be involved in making sure their children are getting the proper exercise and nutrition, and in walking the walk and acting as role models. I wouldn't call it child abuse in most situations.
I would say the ratio is the opposite of what you think it is. I wouldn't call it child abuse in SOME situations. Some kids are just *kitten* human beings from top to bottom, and no amount of good parenting is going to change that.
But also, those decisions that kids get to make about their own exercise and nutrition don't start until WAY late in the game.
I was fat long before I ever had any freedom to exercise or eat how I wanted. Years before. But I was set up for failure, because my parents cared more about "loving me" and "making me happy" than about my health. I love my parents, but that was abuse by neglect. They know this now, and regret it.
If a teenagers gets fat, I couldn't care less. They're mostly horrible people by then anyways. But they make their own decisions.
But when I see a CHILD that's obese, someone that's 6, 8, 10 years old? that's neglect. pure and simple. A 10 year old does not have enough freedom to affect their health so dramatically, and if they do...yeah, that's definitely neglect as well.5 -
I read an article once that said that making foods off limit can cause binge problems later, so I tried a little experiment with my kids. I let them have sweets and junk food of their choosing, and not just on special occasions, however I do only allow two snacks in a controlled portion in between meals. I keep whole nutritious foods around as well and surprisingly, my kids reach for the nutritious foods as much as the junk foods. Also, meal times are strictly whole, nutritious foods, since I make all meals. My kids are all healthy, but have learned portion control, and that, yes it's ok to eat junk in moderation. they don't feel deprived, therefore when presented with large amounts of their favorite junk foods (like during Christmas or Easter) they eat a few bites and save the rest for later. I came from a home with active, healthy parents but was very restricted in the foods I could eat. When I was turned loose, I couldn't control myself with junk food, causing major weight gain, not that it's my parent's fault, but because I had no self control. I'm finally learning that now (: That being said, I don't just give them a bag of chips or candy and say have at it, which is what a lot of parents I know do. I give them appropriate portions and balance it out with really healthy meals6
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I would definitely balk at a government backed activity initiative. I hated sports as a child and always preferred passive activities such as singing in a choir, writing in my diary or reading a book (and yes watching endless disney films!) I was slim until puberty and then I suddenly had breasts (A to a D cup in a year!) and the womanly fat that came with them. But I think that despite my inactivity, the food that I ate was always nutritious and, coming from a family of 6, was always shared appropriately.
I guess this applies more to older teens but another thing that kept me from gaining too much weight was that I did not have a car until I was 23 so if I needed to get somewhere I would have to walk there or get a bus (which inevitably involved walking). From around the age of 14, my parents always trusted me to find the best way home and would only collect me from somewhere if there were no other options (e.g in the middle of the countryside). I still have the attitude today and will pretty much always choose to walk if my destination is less than 2 miles away.0 -
It's called child abuse. it's not mince words. Letting your child get fat is child abuse.
I believe it is a lot more complicated than that. Certainly parents need to be involved in making sure their children are getting the proper exercise and nutrition, and in walking the walk and acting as role models. I wouldn't call it child abuse in most situations.
Agree. If by "fat" we mean obese then yes, there is evidence that obesity in childhood can raise risk of future disease regardless of weight and activity in adulthood. Inactivity in children can affect bone growth. But 'child abuse' suggests willful hurt. And that is rarely the case.0 -
sky_northern wrote: »I don't agree with this quote:
"Professor Ezzati adds: 'These worrying trends reflect the impact of food marketing and policies across the globe, with healthy nutritious foods too expensive for poor families and communities. The trend predicts a generation of children and adolescents growing up obese and at greater risk of diseases, like diabetes. We need ways to make healthy, nutritious food more available at home and school, especially in poor families and communities, and regulations and taxes to protect children from unhealthy foods.'"
The recommendations I agree with but not sure how governments can affect real change. Food culture has changes with easy access to calorie dense foods and changes in technology which means kids.
I've heard some interesting proposals for this sort of thing, actually.
Like this one - 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.
What would it be like if ALL farmers had to use the least chemicals, use the healthiest conditions, etc.... and a farmer had to pay the government money for permission to use the chemicals (which, lets be honest, would mostly be large companies paying)? Then healthier food would be cheaper, and food with more chemicals would be more expensive.
Or pushing that further, you could look at a higher tax, the less healthy a food is (like the luxury tax, only for health, you know?). I'm sure there are other ideas people could float around for this.
Because right now...the professor is in no way wrong on the fact that healthy, nutritious food is too expensive for poor families. When you are trying to keep kids alive, you consider calories first, and vitamins and minerals second. A couple decades ago, a lot of junk food was more expensive than a similar amount of healthy calories, in many cases. That's not true anymore. Chicken nuggets will get me more calories for cheaper than the same price of plain chicken, for example. And it just keeps getting worse.
I definitely agree that parents impact their children's food choices. But there are more factors involved that I think shouldn't be ignored that can make a difference. And I think the gov't or various institutions CAN have an influence on a lot of these.
--Doctor education on nutrition is pretty much nonexistent (if they get an entire chapter on nutrition in their entire medical education, it's unusual, according to some doctors I've spoken to about this), so they seldom have much to give parents by way of advice for healthy diets for their kids. If doctors knew more about nutrition, perhaps they could do better at helping parents help their kids.
--Education in schools on nutrition is guided by things like our gov't food pyramid, which is heavily influenced by lobbying and political agendas (interesting articles about this last food pyramid are around, about the fact that the dairy industry lobbied hard to keep dairy on the food pyramid, when numerous scientists no longer felt that it should be there, for example). More integrity in our government would help with this, or more varied sources on nutrition in our schools.
---Advertising companies now sometimes hire psychologists to help them make commercials most likely to make people buy their foods, and a LOT of terrible ideas about food and nutrition get passed on to people that way. And considering these are now on TV, computers, billboards, and so on, kids and their parents are bombarded by this constantly. More rules about advertisements and what they are allowed to claim could help with this.
I am not denying that parents have a major influence on their kids' weight. But that doesn't mean there isn't stuff that we can do, as a society, to help significantly.
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Like this one - 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.
This is not the government - this is a direct result of the organic industry lobbying the government to put regulations and controls on organic farming. Want someone to blame? Go blame the industry, not the government. Also, organic farming does NOT yield food with more nutrients than inorganic farming - there are numerous studies that prove this.Or pushing that further, you could look at a higher tax, the less healthy a food is (like the luxury tax, only for health, you know?). I'm sure there are other ideas people could float around for this.
Individual foods are not healthy or unhealthy (unless you are eating Crisco from the can by the trowel full) - it the overall diet that is healthy/unhealthy. Also, if you care to look, there is a very long and involved thread in the debate section that shows just how deep into a rabbit hole this particular argument will go.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10416222/should-junk-food-be-taxed/p1---Advertising companies now sometimes hire psychologists to help them make commercials most likely to make people buy their foods, and a LOT of terrible ideas about food and nutrition get passed on to people that way. And considering these are now on TV, computers, billboards, and so on, kids and their parents are bombarded by this constantly. More rules about advertisements and what they are allowed to claim could help with this.
Of course they do - their goal is to maximize profits (I will NOT get into a moral debate on whether or nat that is a good thing). Also, here in the US, there are VERY strict laws and regulations that come with very steep penalties against those that break them, concerning what can and cannot be claimed in advertising. Do companies sometimes stretch those rules as far as they can - sure, but that is simply part of human nature and until you can come up with a 'better' human, this is going to happen.
eta to add link3 -
sky_northern wrote: »I don't agree with this quote:
"Professor Ezzati adds: 'These worrying trends reflect the impact of food marketing and policies across the globe, with healthy nutritious foods too expensive for poor families and communities. The trend predicts a generation of children and adolescents growing up obese and at greater risk of diseases, like diabetes. We need ways to make healthy, nutritious food more available at home and school, especially in poor families and communities, and regulations and taxes to protect children from unhealthy foods.'"
The recommendations I agree with but not sure how governments can affect real change. Food culture has changes with easy access to calorie dense foods and changes in technology which means kids.
I've heard some interesting proposals for this sort of thing, actually.
Like this one - 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.
What would it be like if ALL farmers had to use the least chemicals, use the healthiest conditions, etc.... and a farmer had to pay the government money for permission to use the chemicals (which, lets be honest, would mostly be large companies paying)? Then healthier food would be cheaper, and food with more chemicals would be more expensive.
Or pushing that further, you could look at a higher tax, the less healthy a food is (like the luxury tax, only for health, you know?). I'm sure there are other ideas people could float around for this.
Because right now...the professor is in no way wrong on the fact that healthy, nutritious food is too expensive for poor families. When you are trying to keep kids alive, you consider calories first, and vitamins and minerals second. A couple decades ago, a lot of junk food was more expensive than a similar amount of healthy calories, in many cases. That's not true anymore. Chicken nuggets will get me more calories for cheaper than the same price of plain chicken, for example. And it just keeps getting worse.
I definitely agree that parents impact their children's food choices. But there are more factors involved that I think shouldn't be ignored that can make a difference. And I think the gov't or various institutions CAN have an influence on a lot of these.
--Doctor education on nutrition is pretty much nonexistent (if they get an entire chapter on nutrition in their entire medical education, it's unusual, according to some doctors I've spoken to about this), so they seldom have much to give parents by way of advice for healthy diets for their kids. If doctors knew more about nutrition, perhaps they could do better at helping parents help their kids.
--Education in schools on nutrition is guided by things like our gov't food pyramid, which is heavily influenced by lobbying and political agendas (interesting articles about this last food pyramid are around, about the fact that the dairy industry lobbied hard to keep dairy on the food pyramid, when numerous scientists no longer felt that it should be there, for example). More integrity in our government would help with this, or more varied sources on nutrition in our schools.
---Advertising companies now sometimes hire psychologists to help them make commercials most likely to make people buy their foods, and a LOT of terrible ideas about food and nutrition get passed on to people that way. And considering these are now on TV, computers, billboards, and so on, kids and their parents are bombarded by this constantly. More rules about advertisements and what they are allowed to claim could help with this.
I am not denying that parents have a major influence on their kids' weight. But that doesn't mean there isn't stuff that we can do, as a society, to help significantly.
Very true I am in residency now and we had 1 day lecture on nutrition and thats it LOL. All they basically say is show us the healthy plate and say 2000 calories a day etc. That is why you should never take what a doctor says about nutrition unless they have had additional education on the matter. Most people from MFP know far more about nutrition than any physician. (with basic training)2 -
Leading by example is the only and the best way to teach our children healthy eating habits.
My 6yo was telling me about his friend and in the middle of conversation he goes " Hey mommy it's a little weird, his parents don't even go the gym". So of course I had to tell him how people can be healthy in other ways and going to the gym is not the only way...but to him, parents going to the gym is what "normal" is, because that's what he sees us do every day.4 -
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.
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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
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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.5 -
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.4 -
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..0
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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.1 -
Need2Exerc1se 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?3 -
Need2Exerc1se 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.2 -
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.6 -
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.0
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