Obesity

[HampshireSeagulls]

Quite possibly. They are probably satisfied with being fick, rather than fin.

I would have thought that the school had rights to stop foodstuffs or anything from being passed through the gate. If they wanted to feed their own children then they should have either given it to them alone or taken their kids out of the school and faced the consequences.

It does seem to tally with this general pandering to children.

After Johnny has mugged a old lady for the 5th time in a year.

'He is a good kid' says the father, slurping noisily from a Special Brew Can 'He hasn't been in trouble for ages and is misunderstood by the pigs and scum that rule the school'.

Parents. Love 'em. Some parents are great, some should not have been allowed to breed. Especially so young and within their own home.

The school has remarkably few rights to force children to stay in school (short of involving Ed Welfare following a repeated pattern), and it's difficult to prevent food being brought it unless you could invoke the "allergy" clause. Doesn't help when your school is a "healthy eating" school and the Head and Deputy have a McD breakfast in the morning and leave their bloody evidence lying around!

 

[Lady Bracknell]

What I really can't understand is why any very young child should be obese in the first place. Only in the first couple of years of their life it is so easy to keep them away from junk food. My son didn't know chocolate existed until he was nearly 2 and someone gave him an Easter egg! Likewise with crisps, cake and fizzy pop which simply didn't get bought in the first place.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

What I really can't understand is why any very young child should be obese in the first place. Only in the first couple of years of their life it is so easy to keep them away from junk food. My son didn't know chocolate existed until he was nearly 2 and someone gave him an Easter egg! Likewise with crisps, cake and fizzy pop which simply didn't get bought in the first place.

A full baby is a quiet baby, presumably. Although I would have thought that feeding your kid junk food would make them hyperactive and so on.

If ees 'appy. I'm 'appy!

Parents. Love 'em. Some parents are great, some should not have been allowed to breed. Especially so young and within their own home.

The school has remarkably few rights to force children to stay in school (short of involving Ed Welfare following a repeated pattern), and it's difficult to prevent food being brought it unless you could invoke the "allergy" clause. Doesn't help when your school is a "healthy eating" school and the Head and Deputy have a McD breakfast in the morning and leave their bloody evidence lying around!

Education is the way forward, plus family life. Blair's Britain has definitely failed on that point and there has clearly been a failure in improving the family unit. We are having to work harder than ever and much else seems to take a back seat.

 

[Beach Hut]

What I really can't understand is why any very young child should be obese in the first place. Only in the first couple of years of their life it is so easy to keep them away from junk food. My son didn't know chocolate existed until he was nearly 2 and someone gave him an Easter egg! Likewise with crisps, cake and fizzy pop which simply didn't get bought in the first place.

Very good point and this is totally a parental issue

 

[Lander]

I am and i'm losing it, its not hard, well i have found its not

 

[Beach Hut]

I am and i'm losing it, its not hard, well i have found its not

Are you really ? What do you weigh ?

 

[Lander]

Are you really ? What do you weigh ?

Yea loosing it, and i refuse to say on here, but i was told to lose 10% by my doctor at hospital due to my liver being at risk and im only young and over the weekend i had a big think and this week i have completely changed my life! i feel so much better about it too

 

[Gully]

I was queuing at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago, a woman started to empty her trolley onto the checkout behind me. The first few items she unloaded were something like a dozen two litre bottles of fizzy pop, the whole trolley was full of junk food, tv dinners and products loaded with sugar and e-numbers...in fact the most nutritious item was a loaf of white bread. I looked down at the items that I was buying and felt that I was missing out on something, all I had was fresh fruit and veg, a nice piece of fish and all the ingredients to enable me to cook up some healthy and nutritious meals for the week. With the woman was a lad who looked about 15 or 16, if I say that she was big boned and he was carrying a little puppy fat then I am being generous. I am quite happy to be in fair physical shape, considering that I am just on the wrong (not my opinion) side of 40...I can only guess that this woman was about the same age as me, yet if I look down I can see my reproductive organs, she would have needed the assistance of a large mirror to see hers!!!

Back to the original question, is it child abuse, think that might be a little too strong...but I certainly consider it to be neglect. The main problem is poor education, the problem certainly lies with the parents, if they are too ignorant to know what is healthy for themselves to eat then what chance do their kids have?

 

[HampshireSeagulls]

I was queuing at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago, a woman started to empty her trolley onto the checkout behind me. The first few items she unloaded were something like a dozen two litre bottles of fizzy pop, the whole trolley was full of junk food, tv dinners and products loaded with sugar and e-numbers...in fact the most nutritious item was a loaf of white bread. I looked down at the items that I was buying and felt that I was missing out on something, all I had was fresh fruit and veg, a nice piece of fish and all the ingredients to enable me to cook up some healthy and nutritious meals for the week. With the woman was a lad who looked about 15 or 16, if I say that she was big boned and he was carrying a little puppy fat then I am being generous. I am quite happy to be in fair physical shape, considering that I am just on the wrong (not my opinion) side of 40...I can only guess that this woman was about the same age as me, yet if I look down I can see my reproductive organs, she would have needed the assistance of a large mirror to see hers!!!

Back to the original question, is it child abuse, think that might be a little too strong...but I certainly consider it to be neglect. The main problem is poor education, the problem certainly lies with the parents, if they are too ignorant to know what is healthy for themselves to eat then what chance do their kids have?

Lots of fizzy pop - guess what lines in the supermarkets sell best when they are marked out as "3 for £1", etc....how often do you see them seriously pushing cheap healthy eating stuff. They know what sells, they would be silly to do deals on the stuff that the proles don't want to buy in bulk.

Ignorance, backed up by nasty old consumerism and capitalism.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Every little helps, Hampshire. Every little helps.

 

[Gully]

Fair comment Hampshire about the cheap deals. The crazy thing is that you can often buy ingredients to make something really wholesome and tasty for far less than you pay for a pre-packaged microwaveable meal. I think that a lot of people who have a really bad diet are frightened by the idea of actually cooking something themselves, it really isn't that difficult to follow a recipe.

From a personal point of view the only cooking lesson I had was at intermediate school at the age of 10, we cooked a victoria sandwich cake and cottage pie...my mum told me to make sure your hands are cold when you make pastry...that is the sum of it, other than that I have taught myself.

 

[NMH]

There is a certain karma to deliberate obesity (includes lazy slackers that passively do not exercise, and ice-cream guzzling cows). The fact is, fat people do not live as long as thin people, in general. Look in any old people's home - fat oldies? No, they do NOT make it to their late seventies and eighties. Most have coronaries by their sixties. Eat now, die sooner. It's a choice that some take.

 

[Questions]

The reason we get fat is that food is too tasty nowadays.

For thousands of years we were hunter / gatherers who existed on meat, berries and nuts. Ok a nice pork chop is a bit tasty but for the most part it all tasted like shit. Who would want to eat too much of that crap. Even 40 years ago it was bland. But now its all soooooooooooo delicious.

 

[Wienergull]

One thing I've noticed about the UK having lived abroad for 6 years is that the choice of food is absolutely staggering now. Whenever I go to Sainsbury's or Tesco's now, I am overwhelmed by the amount of instant gratification that is on offer. It's like being in the States, and it's no wonder that British society is facing similar problems now with obesity. Supermarkets in Vienna and Berlin have a far more limited range, which can be frustrating in one way, but on the other hand makes people buy more fresh produce or food they have to cook rather than just reheat.

 

[clapham_gull]

I don't have children, but am absolutely astounded by the shit I see parents piling their trolleys up with in Supermarkets.

I cook for two very night after work and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to extend that to children without resorting to crap.

I was never fed rubbish and my grandmother brought three children up on her own with very little money in her pocket doing the same.

Easy for me to say with no children, but it seems to me it's all education (of the parents) and there seems to be a whole generation who don't have the first idea about how to prepare a meal.

Thank god the knowledge was past down to me. I prepare a meal from fresh ingrediants every night and can honestly say I've only eaten something "ready prepared" possibly four or five times in the last ten years and only then cos my cooker blew up.

 

[Yorkie]

There is a certain karma to deliberate obesity (includes lazy slackers that passively do not exercise, and ice-cream guzzling cows). The fact is, fat people do not live as long as thin people, in general. Look in any old people's home - fat oldies? No, they do NOT make it to their late seventies and eighties. Most have coronaries by their sixties. Eat now, die sooner. It's a choice that some take.

I don't think that is strictly true. I know of two old people whose doctors had them as clinically obese. One died at 94 and the other has their 95th birthday this November and still going strong. Most old people in an old people's home are overweight because they cannot walk around as well so therefore cannot exercise.

 

[dougdeep]

What I really can't understand is why any very young child should be obese in the first place. Only in the first couple of years of their life it is so easy to keep them away from junk food. My son didn't know chocolate existed until he was nearly 2 and someone gave him an Easter egg! Likewise with crisps, cake and fizzy pop which simply didn't get bought in the first place.

Exactly, kids seem to have too many options these days, it was eat what's given to you, or go hungry in my day.

 

[Gully]

I can empathise with clapham, my mum brought us kids up on very little money as she chose to stay at home rather than work, but the food that we did get was wholesome and healthy. Looking at me you wouldn't exactly describe me as a salad dodger, but a healthy diet and reasonable amount of exercise keeps me in trim.

I watched a programme a few weeks ago about a lass who had had a stomach reduction as her weight had balooned to about 30 stone. The worst bit was her mother, I would losely describe her as un-educated and pathetic, who knew that her daughter was over-eating as a young child but had felt unable to do anything about it. Wrong, you stupid bitch, if you hadn't stocked the kitchen cupboards up with junk for her to graze on then the problems she has faced in her life may not have happened. The daughter had faced a life of humiliation because of her size, it affected her health and confidence...on the upside, she seemed to be getting things back in order since her operation and had been going to college.

 

[Starry]

What I really can't understand is why any very young child should be obese in the first place. Only in the first couple of years of their life it is so easy to keep them away from junk food. My son didn't know chocolate existed until he was nearly 2 and someone gave him an Easter egg! Likewise with crisps, cake and fizzy pop which simply didn't get bought in the first place.

Exactly.

My child went to a birthday party aged 5 and was given one of those mini boxes of smarties and had no idea they were for eating, they thought it was a marble style game.

That said, the young children now that are obese are the products of parents who have no idea about nutrition for all sorts of reasons - not taught properly in schools, raised in a family where mum/dad don't cook, lazy etc. It's really shocking talking to some people at baby yoga. Our babies are 8-15 months and one of them mums was going out for lunch, fine, and she said I haven't got anything for her (baby) I'll give her a few chips from my plate. Ugh.

 

[adrian29uk]

We have the worst diet in the whole of Europe period.